MOMables Lunch Menu Planning Subscription - Giveaway! (Ended)

When I first heard about MOMables, I was intrigued but skeptical. First off, why would someone pay for lunch ideas? Surely I can be creative on my own, right? [No. Apparently not. At least not when staring into my fridge at 2AM hoping for an inspiration to jump out and hit me. The only thing jumping out is the stack of little mystery containers perched precariously on a shelf.]

And we weren't packing lunches every day, since my 4-year-old isn't in full-time school yet. Why pay for 5 lunch ideas per week, when I'm only packing 1-2? [Because I don't always feel like making every single recipe I see. And as she's getting older, we have more and more other activities before or after school, where I need something packed up to feed her in the car in between. And who says it has to be packed in a box and eaten only at school, anyway? It's not like she doesn't need to eat just because we're spending the day at home! These recipes and ideas work just as well with plates and bowls! Plus, Mamas need to eat too!]

Wait now. What is MOMables again?
MOMables is a lunch menu planning service to help busy parents (or other caregivers) pack a variety of fresh, wholesome school or daycare lunches for kids. In 10 minutes or less a day!

And at only $5 to $6 per month (depending on how many months you subscribe to at a time - 3, 6, or 12) it comes out to as low as $.22 per day, or $1.14 per week. Heck. Even if I'm only using one or two ideas a week, that's well worth it! While the subscription is designed to help you build lunches week by week, and the shopping lists are compiled so your lunch necessities for that week are already planned out for you, I like to browse through past weeks and find inspiration based on the ingredients I have lying around already.

What's in it for me?
With everything planned out for you - main menu items, suggested sides, notes on what you can prep in advance or make extra of for dinner one night, and even the weekly lunch shopping list (broken down into categories - deli, produce, dairy, etc) - you can save a lot of prep time, and no longer worry about getting a balanced variety of healthy foods in your child's diet. As well as save money by not having to resort to buying heavily processed and unhealthy pre-packaged lunches. And less wasted food, since you can just buy what you need for that week, often using extras in another recipe, instead of trying to guesstimate and ending up with extra food going bad in your fridge.

Yeah, but I have [more kids than you] and a full-time job. I don't have time to cut cheese into little flowers, or draw faces on everything. And I don't have the time or the budget to find fancy-shmancy stuff like Brie or fennel!
You don't need any special skills, tools, or hard-to-find gourmet ingredients to make these lunches. You just go online and download your weekly menus (you can still access the previous week's menu, in case you had a week off and forgot or something! Ahem.) from their members-only access tab, take your shopping list to the store, and follow their simple recipe plan. There are even pictures!
[Note: I use an outside file-storing site (DropBox) to store my weekly menu PDFs, and I have an app that lets me access them from my phone, so I can pull up the menus right there in the kitchen, and I don't have to worry about remembering to print or bring the grocery list to the store!]
You can still cut the foods into cute shapes, though. You know. If you want to...

My MOMables Experience

I hardly even count my first foray into MOMables territory, since really I just used an idea I had remembered seeing in my free week for joining the email list as a last-minute addition to my lunch. And then I let my free sample menu languish, forgotten, in my Downloads folder. Later, I won a free 3-month subscription from another blog. And then I forgot. I just wasn't cut out to plan ahead and be even remotely organized. (Yes, I know. MOMables does all the hard work of planning, and even making a list. But remembering to bring that list to the store, or even remembering to print it out was beyond me!) It wasn't until a "bread crisis" occurred that I realized what a gem I had in my MOMables menu plans! (And I got off my duff and put it all into DropBox to make it even easier for myself!)

One time, early on in the week, I discovered our brand-new loaf of bread was all moldy! And no way was I dragging both kids to the grocery store by myself just for bread. We'd have to wait for the weekend.
I ended up finding so many inspirations in the various weekly MOMables menus, and had so many of the ingredients needed (or could fake it with substitutes,) that I had a hard time deciding what to make! I decided on The Snacker for my first breadless lunch that week.

MOMables PBJ Snackers, Rainier cherries, Ranch, ketchup,
Squash "Grater Tots," Vanilla Greek Yogurt (cinnamon in bunny bottle)

Another time I was down to heels-only on my bread, but had extra noodles lying around (because why go to all the trouble of boiling water for just one serving of noodles?) Well. A quick browse through my MOMables menus, and I found the perfect recipe. I even had all the ingredients! 

It had never occurred to me to "think outside the sandwich" before. I might go wild and crazy and do pinwheel roll-ups with a tortilla once in a while, but still, basically, a sandwich. So this was my first foray into something other than a sandwich or leftover mac-n-cheese.

Snow peas, cheese, BBQ Sunflower Seeds, raspberries,
MOMables Under the Sea Pasta Salad

It was a big enough hit I even made it again! And now you can too!

Now how 'bout them apples? Or noodles, in this case!

But what if we have food allergies, or other dietary restrictions? Or just plain don't like something?
No problem! These menus and ideas are just guidelines. It's easy to use rice instead of noodles, or soy butter instead of peanut butter. Chicken instead of tuna. Tofu instead of meat. You get the idea. Whatever you would normally substitute for that food or ingredient should work just fine. Or just skip that recipe and find something you liked from a previous week!

How can I tell if MOMables is right for me and my family?

Get 3 days worth of lunch menus for free and check them out. And sign up for email updates from MOMables with free recipes and tips to access another week's worth of lunch recipes for free!

Or would you rather try it a little longer? For as little as $18 (for the 3-month subscription) you can get started!

But for one of you, MOMables is letting me give away a free 3-month subscription! Sweeeeet!

a Rafflecopter giveaway (ENDED)

*Disclaimer: I received a free 3-month subscription to MOMables for the purposes of reviewing and posting about their service. I mean, because I'm awesome.

Kinda Hello Kitty Bento

Monday, 7/30/12 - We had My Gym camp bright and early at 9am, which is normally the time we get up! So I had everything ready the night before.

Kinda Hello Kitty Bento

For her breakfast/lunch, I packed an EasyLunchbox with a revisit of the first real MOMables recipe I'd ever done - Under the Sea pasta! This time without peas mixed in, since she had picked them out the last time. It was the perfect choice, since it would keep her fingers and face clean (unlike a PBJ or PB-chocolate) before camp, and I had all the ingredients lying around!
Plus I had extra cooked house and man noodles laying around, since if I'm going to go to all the effort to make noodles (and yes, making noodles IS a huge effort for me,) I may as well make more. Just in case I want them for something... So I don't have to cook them again.

Tucked next to the re-usable spork, I used a cupcake-topper butterfly ring to hold her rolled-up cloth Hello Kitty napkin. (Be sure to check out her other stuff too!) I decided to stick in some Hello Kitty picks to match. Hence the "kinda." Silicone cup (holding the pasta) is from Daiso.

MOMables Under the Sea Pasta Salad, broccoli and yellow carrots,
Pink Dip, strawberries

For her snack, I had a washed and re-used Belly Washers bottle with a Hello Kitty topper filled with water, and a Hello Kitty snack box (thanks to my BBF from Bentoriffic, who found it for me Little Z at Target's Dollar Spot!)
For the crunchy, I used some Trader Joe's Root Chips, with some organic Champagne Grapes in the little cup.

Water, champagne grapes, Root Chips

So naturally, since we are not morning people and it's hard to get up and ready in time, my glasses broke first thing. I get out of the shower, put on my glasses, and next thing I know, one of my lenses goes flying! I had a repair kit in the car. But the screws were all jammed together in the bottom of their container, and wouldn't come out. Darnit. So we had to get in the car and drive with a half-blind Mama.

Z was not convinced at my ability to drive without my glasses, and kept worrying that we would crash into everything because "you can't see anything without your glasses!" I kept trying to explain that I could see shapes and motion and such, but not details. She wasn't buying it, and spent the whole drive fretting. And munching her breakfast/lunch.

After I dropped her off, I went to my eye place, and picked up the glasses I had ordered months before and forgot to pick up. Problem solved!

   

Happy Feet Bento

I would like to state for the record that I think it's stupid that in the movie Happy Feet, the main character, Mumble, still has his fuzzy hair on his neck not only at the end of the film, when all the other penguins from his hatching are all normal-looking, but also in the sequel, even after he's old enough to have a kid himself. Yes, it helps the kids keep track of who's who. But still.
[And yes, I can totally buy into talking, singing, and dancing penguins. But not ones who don't molt like everyone else! I know. I'm crazy like that.]


Thursday, 7/26/12 - "Lights! Camera! Action!" week at Little Gym, so I was desperately grasping for movie-themed ideas and went with a "Happy Feet" bento, kind of. We had Z's gym class, followed by E's baby gym class, then a Summer camp for Z. Normally I wouldn't have scheduled her camp on the same day as class, but Monday was her last day of swim class, Tuesday and Wednesday we were at my sister's, and Z chose to have camp Thursday so she could come to the farm to pick up our CSA share with me on Friday instead.

Happy Feet

PB-chocolate almond butter on sandwich thin, CoJack cheese,
sugar snap peas and broccoli, strawberries and raspberries

I had two different sets of bento picks with a penguin in them; a clear sea animal set and a painted opaque sea animal set (both from Daiso.) So I stuck them in with the berries.

In my silicone penguin cup, I put little cheese penguin stacks, made with a mini penguin cutter. I cut some tiny triangle beaks out of a few, but got bored with that real quick. I added a hair bow pick (also makes a great bow-tie!) in between two of the slices to make a girl penguin, since Z really goes for that kind of thing.

For the sandwich, I chose one of the whole-grain sandwich rounds I'd found at the store recently, and used the same mini penguin cutter to cut a shape out of the top layer of bread. I kind of tried to make a lighter PB tummy, but it was hard to do since I wasn't exactly sure where the penguin would be once I put the pieces together, and the bread was uneven enough I wanted to line the edges up the way it had come. So I scrapped that idea.

From the cut-out penguin bread, I used little feet and beak cutters to make shapes and added them back on. Sooo cuuuute! (If you choose to do this with, say, a ham and cheese sandwich, you can use ketchup, mustard, maple syrup, honey, cream cheese, etc as glue.)

Mama's Lunch

Spinach salad w/carrots, blueberries, raisins, dressing; broccoli and
carrots w/Very Pink Dip, toasted "Everything" bagel thin w/cream cheese

Aaaand I just now realized that, despite double checking against the picture on the package to make sure I did it right, I got the beak upside-down on my sandwich and cheese penguins! Doh!

    

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat This Bento

Right now Little Z is really into Mo Willems' Pigeon series. We have the first three; "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late," and "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog."
She likes to "read" them aloud [she has them memorized and recites them.] Her favorite is the hot dog one, because of the little duckling. Since her My Gym camp theme was "Bring Your Favorite Book" I HAD to make her a lunch to match, right?

We went to a library story time recently, and they read The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? which also features the duckling and pigeon, so she is desperate to own that book now as well. Plus all the others she doesn't have. Hint hint, Grandma! Also the Knuffle Bunny series by the same author. Great stories, although the third one chokes me up just thinking about it. *sniffle* Since we just re-borrowed them from the library, I had thought about making a Knuffle Bunny lunch, but the circles for these guys were just waaaaay easier to think about doing!

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat This Lunch!

Bread and cheese (and an olive slice and carrot bits,) uncured turkey dog,
tomato paste-ketchup blend, mustard, carrots, Rainier cherries

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat My Lunch: I used a Tupperware Smidget sauce container to cut the larger circle for the pigeon's head out of whole wheat bread. Then I cut freehand from the cut-out circle (so the edge would already be rounded) to make the neck and part of the chest and tail. From other scraps, I cut the two wings.
I used a largish mini circle cutter to make an eye out of mozzarella, and added a slice of olive for the pupil. I cut the beak out of a scrap from a yellow carrot, and chopped the rest into sticks. Doh! I forgot the white band around his neck. Oh well. Those cheese scraps were pretty tasty...

Guest Starring The Duckling!: I used the same cutter as the pigeon's eye to cut the duckling's head out of Colby Jack cheese (or "spotty cheese," as we call it,) and another circle out of mozzarella. I hand-trimmed around the outside of the mozz one to make it smaller, since I didn't have the perfect cutter. A little snippet of CoJack for the neck, and a smaller circle out of mozzarella again, smudged with natural blue food coloring, and some hand-cut bits of orange carrot coin to make the beak!

The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog: I finally found some uncured no-nitrates-added hot dogs - at Trader Joe's! Now I can feel a little better about letting her eat them. This was a turkey one. I still don't like them. I dislike the flavor and feel of hot dogs. And because they have no preservatives, I can't use them up before they expire. So I froze them. I defrosted one on the "meat" setting for 2 minutes, then nuked it on "high" for 30 more seconds (my standard. She prefers them not cooked and not hot, but I prefer killing off any potential risk of listeria. I win. My lunch, my rules.)
After reading on Family Fresh Meals that I could use tomato paste instead of ketchup for a healthier version, I've been meaning to try it. The taste and texture are much richer, so it will take some getting used to. She ate it just fine the first time I subbed it in, but saw me scoop it out of the can the second time and said she didn't like the flavor. I added some salt and sugar to it that time, and she ate it up. This time I blended it in a mini muffin cup with some regular ketchup to smooth it out and help the transition. She's been asking for mustard a lot lately too, and the duckling asks for some at the end of the book, so in it went! The tiny yellow silicone cup is some kind of candy mold from a set I found at a kitchen specialty shop.

All That And a Bag of Bento

Let me tell you, putting this lunch together took very little time. Maybe 5-minutes, tops, to cut and assemble both characters and out the rest of the foods in there. It took longer to find the book in her rat's nest room than it did to make this lunch!
Including the time it took to decide what ingredients to use, find them in my fridge, and find the right cutters, I spent maybe 15-minutes on this lunch. And that's because I'm very unorganized and tend to forget where stuff is and only grab one item per trip, so there's a lot of back-and-forths.
If I had made this for her to take to school on her own, I would have used something like cream cheese, mayo, ketchup, maple syrup, or honey (depending on what would taste best with each item) to "glue" the various pieces to the bottom of the box and each other. Maybe used uncooked spaghetti noodle bits to secure the stacked stuff.

She LOVED it! I don't have many pictures of her with her lunches lately because she either snarls and hides from the camera, or gives me a "scary clown" fake grimace-grin. I had a feeling this one would be something special, so I poised myself facing over the back of the driver's seat, got my camera turned on and ready, and then handed her her lunch! This moment was worth every finger ever sliced. Every dropped or flopped masterpiece. Every nanosecond of time I could have spent watching TV instead of making her a "beautiful lunch." This is why I get up in the mornings!

So naturally, she refused to eat it. But she made sure they each had a chunk of hot dog "because at the end of the story they shared the hot dog!" She did eat some of that, plus her cherries. And half of the duckling's beak because it had wandered off and she didn't know what that random chunk of carrot was supposed to be.

    

Green Mashed Potatoes - For Mama and Baby

Life is like a CSA box... You never know what you're gonna get!

...I happened to get a freakishly large kohlrabi. It was at least the size of two, maybe three, regular bulbs. I was getting tired of Veggie-Ham Bake, since we'd just had it two weeks in a row, so I needed to find something else to do with it. I also had a fennel bulb laying around, and no idea what to do with it either. Searches for yummy recipes for each vegetable offered up "mashed" options. Hmm...

I used this recipe to give me an idea of how to prep the fennel, but since I don't own any mascarpone cheese  (nor could I pronounce it to save my life,) I decided it was too fancy for me. Plus the fennel smells like black licorice. I do not like black licorice, so I needed to use it in a dish where it wouldn't dominate, in case it tasted that way too. (It does. Blech.)

I mostly followed this recipe by Farmgirl Fare for the mashed kohlrabi idea, as well as much of the directions and ingredients.

I didn't add any salt during the cooking process, and I pureed the potatoes, which is a textural no-no (unless you're using fingerlings,) so that this would be safe for Baby to eat too. (Pureeing potatoes does something funky with the starches and makes them glue-y rather than fluffy. Fingerlings are the exception to this for some reason.) I had russet and red potatoes. And since I wanted to keep the peels on, I needed to make sure they'd get chopped small enough for her. I also was lazy wasn't in the mood to puree just the fennel and kohlrabi, and keep the potatoes separated enough during cooking to mash them instead before combining.

Green Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

2-3 kohlrabi bulbs, and leaves if possible. (Or one freakishly huge one. Mine was 1lb 6 oz)

Approx. 1 lb potatoes, cubed (I had 1lb 4oz)

1 bulb fennel (optional)
Sprig or two of Rosemary, or a few leaves of basil, or some fresh (or frozen) herbs of your choice.
1-2 tsp salt (depending on the amount veggies you actually have. Skip this if making for baby.)

1 c water
2 pats butter (unsalted if making for baby)

1 onion, chopped

1 green garlic bulb and stem, minced or 3 tsp minced garlic (roughly 3 cloves, minced)

1-2 tsp pepper

2-3 Tbsp liquid - vegetable or chicken stock, cream, milk, water, etc. Might not be needed.

Directions:

Step 1: Prep veggies.

Kohlrabi: Cut off the stems and set aside. Peel away skin until you get below the fibrous-looking layer. Cube, or slice, your choice. I cubed mine into roughly 1-inch chunks.
Rinse the leaves (discard any yellow ones) and cut the stems off. Coarsely chop leaves and set aside.

Fennel: Remove the stalks, slice bulb in half, then cut center out of bottom, to remove inner leaves.

Step 2: In a large saucepan (with a lid preferably, but I used a ceramic plate,) heat up 1 cup water until boiling (dissolve your salt in the water, if using.) Turn heat down to Medium and add kohlrabi, potatoes, fennel, and rosemary or other fresh herbs. Cover and cook approximately 30 minutes, stirring and re-covering every 5-10 minutes, until tender.*
*If you want to make it harder on yourself and have this be smooth enough for baby without ruining the texture for the adults by pureeing the whole thing, use 1/3 c water with the potatoes in one pot, and 2/3 c water with kohlrabi and fennel in another. Follow the same directions, then in Step 4, puree the kohlrabi and fennel, and mash just the potatoes.

Step 3: Meanwhile, add 2 pats unsalted butter to a frying pan and sauté onions on medium low heat until softened, roughly 5 mins. Add garlic and cook another 2-3 minutes; don't let garlic brown. 

Add the kohlrabi leaves to the frying pan. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Allow to cool a little, then puree in food processor or blender. Set aside.

Step 4: Mash the kohlrabi, potato, and fennel chunks (remove rosemary stems, if applicable.) Add onion-garlic-leaves mash and blend until smooth. Add 2-3 Tbsp additional liquid (cream, soup stock, water, etc) if needed, and pepper to taste.

Serve warm.

Aherm. Those are NOT my toes peeking in the picture!

The Verdict

Everyone loved it. Well, kind of. I would definitely make it again, but not with the fennel. In fact, if fennel is ever in my box again, I won't take it. It smells like black licorice, which I hate. And it made the food smell and taste a little like black licorice. Not enough to bother me overmuch, but enough that I would have preferred this without.
But with a puddle of butter and salt on top... yummmmm! I already have an idea on how to do this next time, and avoid the glueiness, since Baby is doing better with larger chunks of peel and things in her foods.

I froze some up for Baby in little 1-ounce cubes.

Since I prepared this with Baby in mind, I pureed it all up in the food processor, instead of mashing. Which, of course, made it all gluey. Hubby and I liked it anyway, but the frozen cubes were quite rubbery when thawed, and I had to add more water. It looked kind of gross. Baby E liked it okay though. She's a big fan of flavor!

Dye-Free August Summer Camp Snacks - Part 1

Since we switched to a dye-free diet for Z, I packed her snack for the first day of camp, just in case. But at Little Gym they let me check all the labels in their snack cupboard. And other than the Cheez-Its having TBHQ, all their snacks were free from petroleum-derived ingredients. So I okayed them. She just couldn't have their Kool-Aid. But I left her snack just in case. She ended up refusing their snack altogether, even though the teacher told her I had okayed it. She knew my snack was safe.
That afternoon, on the ride home, I told her that she could eat their crunchies for snack, but I would be happy to continue packing a snack for her if she preferred. I asked if she wanted to eat their crunchies, have ME pack crunchies, or have me pack fresh fruits and vegetables to eat with crunchies. She chose the fresh fruits and veggies! Well! Certainly can't say no to THAT!

You don't see them, but I include some kind of Trader Joe's juice box with her camp snacks. Normally she drinks water or milk throughout the day, but the other kids get Kool-Aid, which she loved last year, so I try to make her just as happy with something she can have. I bought Trader Joe's Lemonade, Fruit Punch (reduced calorie,) and White Grape Juice boxes, all based on her request at the store when we bought them. If I have time, I ask her which one she wants. Otherwise I grab whichever one we have the most of. On the 9th (seventh photo down,) she requested pink lemonade, so I poured some from the jug in the fridge into a re-used Belly Washers bottle with a Hello Kitty topper. I can't believe I forgot to include it in the photo! (It was the ballerina one. We also have the bee topper one.)

 [This post contains affiliate links.] 

Tuesday, 7/31/12 - Animal Week! This is her favorite themed camp, since the pet store guy brings in exotic animals for the kids to touch and interact with. We signed up for three of the four days they offered it at our regular Little Gym (Monday conflicted with swim class,) and all five days they offered it at the other nearby Little Gym the following week (they have to do them on different weeks because the pet guy can't be two places at once!)

Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, yellow carrots, raspberries

In honor of Animal Week, I chose her new My Melody bento box - because it's a bunny! I got the flower pick either from Daiso or Uwajimaya (a huge Asian market chain in Seattle. Great bento selection, but a little pricy for me.)

Wednesday, 8/1/12 - I found this Hello Kitty sandwich box at Target's Dollar Spot last year. It's the perfect size for a snack! The silicone divider cup was from a 3-pack at Daiso.

Trader Joe's Herb Popcorn , sugar snap peas,
cherries, champagne grapes

Thursday, 8/2/12 - We were practically out the door before I remembered her snack! All the previous boxes used were either dirty or the lids weren't yet matched up with the bottoms, and I was in a hurry. So I dug through my bento box stash and found this smallish box from my Laptop Lunches set! That'll do, pig. That'll do. And when looking for a cup to hold the fruit, I found my two-cherries one. I couldn't NOT use it! Less fruit than I normally include though.

Rainier cherries, Trader Joe's Herb Popcorn

Monday, 8/6/12 - Garden Bounty! The peas and blackberries are from our "garden." (ie: she randomly planted the peas at some little gardening playdate, and I thought they wouldn't survive so I didn't bother labeling them. Har har. Joke's on me. Nothing I planted this year survived, except her stinky little pea plants! My spinach and some mystery herb from my sister last year apparently seeded themselves and grew on their own (plus some "volunteers" from the dirt her plants came in.) And the blackberries are weeds, but they had so many blossoms when we went out to hack them down that we decided to give them a reprieve until Fall.) Not sure what kind these peas are, but the husk (shell? pod?) is not really edible. It just kind of pulps up in your mouth and doesn't break up when you chew.

Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, mystery peas, blackberries

All my animal-y boxes were still dirty, so I used a Tinkerbell sandwich box. Or Disney Princess. Or maybe one of the Target Dollar Spot or Dollar Tree ones I have accumulated over the years...

Tuesday, 8/7/12 - Leftovers! More of the popcorn from the previous day's little baggie (I had bought little individual-sized bags of the popcorn for her T-ball game snack day, and we're slowly going through the ones I have left.) The last four cherries from the previous week's CSA box, two apple slices leftover from McDonald's (no judging. It was next door to the oil change place, and we had thirty minutes to kill at dinnertime,) and two blackberries from the previous day's snack.

Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, cherries, blackberries, apples

Wednesday, 8/8/12 - The last of that little baggie of popcorn, and I remembered the green beans from the previous week's CSA box. And she had made me buy the champagne grapes at our CSA farm, but then hasn't been eating them when I put them in her snacks and lunches, even though she gobbled them down that first day. Plus I got her drink in the shot, just for fun. And I had forgotten to take the pic before leaving, so had it in my hand and set them both down on the hood of my car for a photo op.

Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, green beans,
champagne grapes

Snack box from Target's Dollar Spot (via my BBF from Bentoriffic!) Taller muffin cup from IKEA (too tall for our EasyLunchboxes, but just fine for Muffin Tin Meals and these taller snack boxes!)

Thursday, 8/9/12 - Her first real animal-themed snack for animal week. What with the bears and all - silicone bear cup (eBay,) and Teddy Grahams. In the Hello Kitty sandwich box, and (not pictured) with her Hello Kitty Belly Washers refilled with pink lemonade.

Honey Teddy Grahams, champagne grapes, snow peas

Friday 8/10/12 - More backyard Bounty. The last of the mystery peas. One of them was the no-eat-pod kind, the rest looked like eeety-beeety widdle snow peas. The mini hearts were punched out of a Trader Joe's Sweet, Savory and Tart Granola Bar. She had asked for a "chewy bar" when I asked what she wanted her "crunchy" item to be. I wanted to make stars, but couldn't find my mini star cutter. (It was on the baby's bottle-drying rack! Doh!) Star shapes would have gone perfectly with the star cups for my Little Gym superstar! (Blue cups from World Market - 6/$3!)

Trader Joe's "chewy bar," blackberries, mystery peas

Box was a One Fish, Two Fish Seuss sandwich box from Target's Dollar Spot. Not that any of MY stores had them! My Bento Blogging Buddy from Molly's Lunchbox rounded them up from one of her local stores for me! Thanks Mama!

We had also signed her up for a Parent's Night Out at Little Gym, since Hubby will be working several weekend days this month, and out of town another several days and a weekend, so we wanted some mostly-adult time (we had Baby with us.) This wasn't the best week for it, since between the five 3-hour camps, the make-up class from the week before, her regular class, and this, she was clocked in at over 20 hours at Little Gym this week! Oy! But it was the only game in town, and both Little Gym locations near us are close to cheap second-run theaters, so we can take Baby with us and not feel guilty about her making a little noise, or walking away if we have to (one theater is $2 tickets, the other is $3. The POPCORN costs more than our tickets!)
The Parent's Nights Out are pretty much just like camps, except 30-minutes longer, and at night. And they lock the front door and don't have the extra person in the lobby, like they do all day during classes.

I re-used the uneaten blackberries and peas from her earlier camp snack, and added some Brads Raw Leafy Kale Chips - Vampire Killer (garlic flavor) that I received from my August Foodie Penpal (sneak peek!) and some Annie's Cheddar Bunnies.

Garlic Kale Chips, mystery peas, Bing cherries
and blackberries, Annie's Cheddar Bunnies