Finding Dory Lunches and Movie Review

I was given two tickets to see a pre-screening of Disney-Pixar's "Finding Dory" in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own. Well, except for what my 4-year-old tells me to say... Since I was only offered one ticket in addition to my own, I couldn't take both girls. My youngest won the coin toss.

image copyright Disney-Pixar 2016, used with permission

The basic story (without too many spoilers, I hope!) starts one year after Nemo was rescued, with Dory living "next door" to Nemo and Marlin. Being someone with no short-term memory must be pretty frustrating and scary, but living and caring for someone with this condition has unique and frustrating challenges too. Which Marlin learns all too well. Along the way, Dory gets a flash of memory from her childhood, which prompts a quest to find her parents. After reminding Marlin and Nemo that they know all too well what it's like to love someone who is lost to them, the three of them embark on a grand oceanic adventure! And find some new "family" along the way!

image copyright Disney-Pixar 2016, used with permission

The title suggests that this movie is about Dory getting lost and (hopefully) found. And while this does happen (a few times!) this story is really about Dory finding herself. Finding her own strengths and trusting in her own abilities after a lifetime of being treated as "less than" - and realizing that she's not "broken" after all! This movie resonates a lot with me personally, since as a mother of a child with an "invisible" cognitive disability, I love stories that feature characters who are loved and accepted and even valued as "different, but not less." I can't wait for her to see it!

Since the oldest one didn't get to come, I wanted to make her a special lunch to celebrate getting to see the AMC Sensory Friendly showing coming soon (Regal also offers My Way Matinees now.) And I had to make a Dory lunch for the little one too, of course!

Dory and Nemo

GF goat cheese quesadillas, organic grapes and carrots

My 2nd-grader loves cheese, and has been asking for quesadillas. Normally I just use corn tortillas, since they're naturally gluten free and easy to find. But I happened to grab some gluten-free flour tortillas the other day, and it turns out they take cookie stamper imprints fantastically well! I foresee a lot more tortillas in our lunches next school year!

Since I was trying to make Little Sister's lunch at the same time, I opted to cook these quesadillas in the oven instead of a frying pan to free up some time. I accidentally overcooked them a tad. Which turned out to be a good thing, since my oldest prefers "crispy" cheese. She didn't even notice that these were quesadillas - she thought they were just fun cheese crisps! Ha!

I got the Nemo and Dory cookie cutters and stamps as part of my Disney Cakes and Sweets subscription. So many lunch-able Disney goodies! I didn't have any whale or octopus picks to represent other characters from the movie, so I grabbed some cartoony sea life cupcake picks just for fun.

Dory-tilla Sandwich

GF Dark Chocolate Dreams "fairy bread" tortilla sandwich, organic blueberries and spinach, rosemary vinaigrette

My preschooler (4) isn't a big fan of cheese, except on pizza, so instead of a quesadilla, she agreed to try a "chocolate peanut butter quesadilla." (Yes. I know "queso" means "cheese." To them "quesadilla" means "tortilla food." Ha!)

After cutting out three Dory shapes from the tortilla, pressing the stamp firmly into one of them, and carefully spreading the the Peanut Butter Co Dark Chocolate Dreams between the layers, I lightly buttered the stamped top. I then spent an agonizing amount of time carefully applying dye free natural-colored blue, yellow, and black sanding sugars. (The black one was found at Whole Foods.) I used a tiny spoon to help scoop, pour, spread, and corral the different sugars, and had to resort to my bento tweezers a few times to move errant grains of sugar. For the eyes I used tubes of natural-colored blue and black icings sent from a friend in Australia (loads of dye-free food options there!) and added some natural purple sugar over the blue for the irises.

A few sea life cupcake picks finish the theme (naturally I don't have the octopus or sea turtle from that set, since the store selling them as singles only had these two options! Pfaugh!)

This lunch was definitely more time-intensive than I can normally be bothered with. "Luckily" we slept in so late that I had to just take the girls to school and go back home to pack lunches. This gave me a few hours before I had to head back to school to deliver them, so I could take the time to do them fancy!

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image copyright Disney-Pixar 2016, used with permission

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FINDING DORY is now playing in theatres everywhere!

Lunches for a Day at the Aquarium

 

My friend Candy Girl from Bent On Better Lunches was bringing her whole troupe to Seattle for a day at the Aquarium, so the girls and I joined up with them for the day. I wasn't sure if the food court would have anything safe, so I packed fun nibbly lunches for the girls and myself. I used a few fishy accessories to give them an Aquarium feel. And I opted to pack nut-free since so many schools and daycares come through, and my kids aren't the best at washing their hands after eating!

Harbour seals

Z's Aquarium Lunch

Glutino pretzel chips, dye-free Sharkies fruit chews, Sunbutter On-the-Go pouch; organic carrots, raspberries, grapes, currants

I got the silicone "sandcastle" muffin cup in a knights set from Amazon UK, which my friend from Eats Amazing kindly had shipped to her home and repackaged to send to me. The fish ones came from eBay, but the fish cup from this set would have worked nicely here.

I cut some carrot slabs with a tiny fish cutter I found online. This one is a little bigger, but would work great too.

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Fish-E Lunch

Organic carrots, raspberries, grapes; Glutino pretzel chips with Sunbutter, dye-free Sharkies fruit chews

Happy jellyfish

Nibbles for Mama

Apples, plantain chips, organic carrots, Cocomels, Sunbutter with organic chia seeds and hemp hearts

I tried to pack lunches that would be easy to stop and nibble throughout the day, since we had the double stroller for the girls to relax in, and I wanted to keep us as mobile as possible to hang out with our friends. I decided to try mixing seeds into my Sunbutter for a yummy dip, and packed foods that would taste great with Sunbutter. Yum!

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UK Only

Best friends and anemones 

Mini Vegetarian Octo-Dogs!

I despise hot dogs. I always have. I hate the smell. I hate the taste. And I hate the nasty ingredients. But my girls both love them. Blarg. Luckily (unlike my husband and I) they also like the gluten-free vegetarian SmartDogs! These make a quick and easy lunch option, with much better ingredients than the meaty version!

I'd Like To Be Under the Sea...

Z's lunch: SmartDog w/ketchup and GF bun, organic kale chips, organic apples

For both girls I cut the veggie dogs first, then cooked them as directed (boiled in the microwave.) With regular hot dogs, the cooking curls the "legs" and emphasizes any features cut into the dogs. Sadly, this is not the case with veggie dogs. *sigh*

...In an Octopus' Garden With You!

E's lunch: Organic apples, snow peas, tomatoes; SmartDog w/ketchup and GF bun

Since there wasn't a lot of room for adding containers of ketchup, I opted to put the ketchup on the buns, even though it makes the whole thing less attractive. On the plus side, it helped hold the legs in place to give the octo-dogs a more "active" look! Win!

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