Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘lunch’

Tuna Salad Boats

Posted in Cutting out processed food, Fish, Fresh Vegetables, Gluten-free, Healthy Lifestyle, Kid Food, Low carb, Lunch, Paleo-friendly, Real Food, Recipes, Salads, Wraps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2013 | 2 Comments »

IMG_20130120_141001

These are one of my favorite lunch items. I make the tuna salad and pack my romaine leaves in a ziplock the night before, so I can just grab my lunch bag and head out the door in the morning. Enjoy!

Tuna Salad Boats

Makes 4 leafy green boats of happiness2013-01-20 14.07.54

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 romaine leaves, washed and dried, thicker stem ends cut off
  • 1 can of tuna, drained and flaked
  • 1 stalk of celery, chopped finely
  • 1 T. dried currants
  • 8-10 crispy almonds, chopped (here’s a recipe for how and why to use soaked and dehydrated nuts)
  • 1/4 c. olive oil mayonnaise, plus or minus, depending on your tastes (here’s a great recipe, with video!)
  • salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

  1. Combine all ingredients EXCEPT the romaine leaves and mix well.
  2. Fill the romaine leaves with the tuna filling, holding like a soft taco.  Proceed to “mmmmm” and “ahhhhhh” over the devastating, tiny hits of sweet from the currants, the crunch from the celery and almonds, and the silky, savory, and healthy olive oil mayonnaise tying it all together.

Read Full Post »

15 Real Food School Lunch Boxes!

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Here’s a rundown of the last few weeks of school lunches.  I hope you find some cute ideas here!

A double corn fritter sun with cheese rays, and apple and cucumber slices. Snack is grapes and a string cheese cut up, in the Wexy bag.

Little ham and cheese sandwiches cut into pumpkin shapes on a bed of romaine, pineapple and strawberries, cucumber slices, and cheese cubes with fresh raspberries for snack.

Chicken tortilla soup (kept hot in the blue Thermos), some sprouted Way Better blue corn chips, a few sticks of cheese, strawberries and kiwi, two mini banana muffins, and half a fruit leather cut into a pumpkin shape. For Jessica’s snack, I cut a string cheese in half and put those and two grapes in the piggy, then put the outside of the pumpkin fruit leather cutout on top of that.

A real-food version of pizza “Lunchables”. I cut rounds out of a whole wheat pita, shredded some cheddar, used a pastry cutter to cut Applegate ham slices into fun little wavy squares, chopped some fresh pineapple, and dropped a cube of frozen homemade marinara sauce in. Voila, Lunchables! For snack I put a string cheese and a few strawberries into a Wexy monster bag for Jess, and Abby got olives.

Garden veggie soup, half of a whole wheat pita, pineapple, and cucumber slices. Snack for Jess is a string cheese and a sectioned clementine in a Wexy monster bag. (Abby got black olives.)

Jessica’s is on top, with an Applegate salami and cheese sandwich on sprouted bread, cut into a heart with a little monkey skewer holding it together, atop romaine leaves. Abby’s is the bottom lunch, with the same sandwich parts but cut into bats and put on kabobs. Then both girls have apple slices, a few grapes, clementine wedges, celery, and sunbutter. For snack, Jess has a string cheese, some grapes, and 3 multigrain crackers in a monster Wexy bag. Abby has black olives and grapes in the froggy.

Ham, cheese, grapes, clementine wedges, carrots, and a paleo pumpkin muffin that Jess helped make. Snack is a string cheese and a handful of grapes.

A paleo pumpkin muffin, butter, clementine wedges, celery, and plain yogurt with a bit of honey mixed in and berries. For snack, Abby got bunny-shaped cheese cut-outs and grapes, and Jess got a smoothie freeze pop.

A little ham and cheese sandwich cut into an acorn shape, string cheese, celery with sunbutter and raisins, corn and peas, and homemade apple sauce. Snack is a smoothie freeze pop.

Beans, meat, and cheese in the hot Thermos, tortilla rounds, lettuce, carrots, red pepper slices, and fruit leather strips. Snack is a berry yogurt smoothie freeze pop.

Half a ham and cheese sandwich on sprouted bread with cute little critter sticks stuck in. Half a banana with pineapple smeared on the end to prevent browning. Since both of my chicklets are battling colds right now, I want to make sure I’m sending lots of vitamin C. Clementine slices and kiwi chunks. Plain yogurt with frozen berries. For snack I made two large sections of ants on a log and put them in a Wexy bag.

Sprouted bread toast with cream cheese and a dollop of fruit spread. I put wax paper between the two layers of toast. Celery, cucumber, and pineapple. Jess has clementine wedges and a string cheese in a monster Wexy bag, and Abby has olives in her froggy. She cannot get enough of the olives.

Soup is in the blue Thermos, toasted sprouted bread with butter and two cheese bees, apple slices, and corn and peas. Snack is a smoothie freeze pop.

Whole wheat pasta with julienned carrots and cheese sticks, cucumber and red pepper slices, and a clementine with a jack o’ lantern face drawn on. Snack was a monster Wexy bag with apple slices and a string cheese.

Leftover chicken fajita mixture is kept hot in the blue Thermos. A whole wheat tortilla is rolled up, and there’s also yogurt and fresh raspberries, with a berry smoothie freeze pop for snack.

Read Full Post »

School Lunch Boxes – Week #5

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

If you’ve been watching my Facebook page, you’ll have seen me posting these this week.  I DO plan on posting soon about a book I’m reading, Trick and Treat by Barry Groves.  It’s fascinating.  It’s an in-depth, evidence-based look at why what we’ve all been told about “healthy” nutrition is wrong.  I can’t wait to share about it.  What are you reading right now?

Monday’s lunch was chili with a little sour cream mixed in to cut the spiciness (kept hot in the thermos), cornbread cut into pumpkins and topped with butter, cheese moons, apple slices, and a chocolate foil-wrapped bee for a treat. We found the bees on vacation last weekend and they were a special treat for the girls. Snack was in the Wexy bag; cheddar pumpkin seed flat bread broken into cracker-sized pieces, and a few pieces of cheese leftover from the moon cut-outs.

Tuesday’s lunch was toasted, sprouted bread oak leaves on a bed of romaine and a cut-up string cheese, and some kiwi chunks on the side. The little compartment had hummus with a radish slice flower stuck into it. A little gummy worm was hiding in the leaves!

Wednesday’s lunch was bean dip, ham, and sprout roll-up kabobs on a few leaves of romaine and maple cheese leaves, with celery/sunbutter/organic dried cranberry logs and fresh pineapple chunks. Of course the gummy is hiding out in the “ants on a log” sticks – where else would a worm hang out? Snack was grapes and half a string cheese cut up into chunks in a Wexy bag.

Thursday’s lunch was two waffle hearts with cheese hearts, a few grapes, some celery sticks and apple slices, and strawberry cream cheese dip/spread. Snack was a smoothie freeze pop.

Friday’s lunch was garden veggie soup, an apple flower on romaine leaves, half of a ham and cheese sandwich, and some kiwi slices. Snack was a smoothie freeze pop.

Read Full Post »

School Lunch Boxes – Week #4

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Monday’s lunch was leftover chicken tortilla soup (kept hot in a thermos), a couple of strawberries, string cheese, a banana muffin, some cucumber slices, and a gummy worm. Snack was raw cashew chia pudding with half a strawberry in it.

Tuesday’s lunch was whole wheat banana pancakes cut into leaves a and an acorn, strawberry cream cheese spread, an Applegate ham “rose”with baby romaine leaves and cheese hearts, and a clementine. Snack was a smoothie freeze pop from the smoothie batch Jess and I made on Sunday. They’re strawberry, pineapple, and plain yogurt. I used a food processor to make the strawberry cream cheese spread, and all it contains is cream cheese, strawberries, and about a tablespoon of agave.

Wednesday’s lunch was split pea soup (in the blue thermos to keep it hot), sprouted seven grain toast “oak leaves”, a pat of butter, a gummy worm, apple slices, strawberry cream cheese dip, and little “pumpkins” made out of carrot slices and frilly toothpicks.

Thursday’s lunch was a ham, cheese, and romaine lettuce wrap, watermelon, and a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie. Snack was apple slices in a Wexy bag.

Read Full Post »

School Lunch Boxes – Week #3

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , on September 23, 2012 | 6 Comments »


For dinner Monday night we had Applegate’s Organic Chicken and Apple sausages, so I took a leftover one and sliced it up. Along with sprouted seven-grain bread and cheese cut into hearts, they made for some very cute “Lunchable”-type kabobs! Sliced cucumber, baby carrots, apple slices, and 9-count-’em-9 jellybeans made this a fun, healthy Monday lunch. Snack was some raw cashew chia pudding with sliced strawberries on top.


Tuesday’s lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich in the shape of a star with a little panda bear pick. Jessica loves broccoli so there was some of that tucked around it. Heirloom cantaloupe and organic strawberries are on the kabobs, and a few carrot sticks are visited by a gummy worm. Snack is celery with my sunflower seed butter (recipe: http://wp.me/p2igon-fE) and dried currants. I put them on a toothpick to secure them together, then wrapped them in wax paper and into a Wexy bag for the lunch bag.

Wednesday’s lunch was cantaloupe and strawberry kabobs on a bed of romaine, a cheese oak leaf and acorn, whole wheat alphabet noodles and peas, raw chocolate pudding, and a yummy organic gummy for a treat. That’s right, the chocolate pudding was not a treat – made with only cashews, walnuts, bananas, and raw cacao, that pudding was a nutrition-packed protein, potassium, and antioxidant super-food! Snack was a frozen smoothie pop.

Thursday’s lunch was a farro hotdish (kept hot in a thermos) with a romaine side salad and cucumbers, cheese oak leaves, kiwi hearts, and a gummy worm. Snack was crispy sweet Jonagold apple slices dunked in a water and lemon juice mixture to keep from browning, in a Wexy bag.

Friday’s lunch was toasted sprouted seven-grain bread with tuna salad, cucumber slices, baby carrot, celery with sunbutter, and a sectioned clementine. Since I’ve declared Fridays to be “Fruit Leather Fridays”, I used a cookie cutter to make it into the shape of a unicorn. Snack was a banana muffin.

 

Read Full Post »

School Lunch Boxes – Week #2

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2012 | 7 Comments »

Well… happy Sunday!  How the heck did that get here so fast?!  If you’ve been following my Facebook page, you’ll have seen me posting my daughter Jessica’s lunches this week.  She’s 10 now and apparently has outgrown Tinkerbell.  When I asked her at dinner tonight how she liked her Tinkerbell that I put in her lunch, she kind of shrugged and gave me this look I am quickly becoming to understand is on par with the look you give your grandma when she brings out her new atomic clock that she ordered through Publisher’s Clearing House.  I am the uncool parent that tries really hard, and gets sympathy points for that, but when push comes to shove, Tinkerbell’s shoved to the bottom of the lunchbag.  She saw my fallen face and quickly reassured me that “Don’t worry, Mom, nobody else saw it.  I took it out of there really fast.”  So.  Tinkerbell is on the D-list with the purple peace sign set these days.  Ah well.  The rules change hourly, at times.

Monday’s lunch is whole wheat waffle heart-shaped sandwiches with cherry cream cheese filling, cantaloupe/kiwi/pineapple salad, and turkey and string cheese cube kabobs on a bed of sprouts. Two organic gummy worms grace the heart compartment. Her snack is in the Wexy bag, and it’s a blend of dried unsweetened coconut flakes, dried cranberries, roasted pepitas and sunflower seeds, and a (very) few Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips.


Tuesday’s lunch is whole wheat wraps with my herbed bean spread, sprouts, and ham. Abby’s wrap has avocado but Jess doesn’t like avo. Odd child. There are also grape and cheese kabobs, and a blobby of the cherry cream cheese as a dip for
celery. A few kiwi hearts and some jellybeans are in there for color. I’m not sure why, but a lot of these lunches are coming out orange and green. They’re sorta monochromatic, but at least they’re not just different shades of brown like the processed food lunches available at school.

Wednesday’s lunch is two whole wheat banana pancakes cut into beehives and stacked on romaine leaves and a few sprouts; cheese bees and hearts; pineapple pieces rolled up in Applegate organic ham; a cherry cream cheese dollop surrounded by apple pieces; and two organic sour gummy worms. For snack there is a Wexy bag with some dried coconut flakes, raisins, and toasted seeds.


Thursday’s lunch is organic garden vegetable soup (in the blue Thermos), which I will heat up in the morning so it’s still hot at lunch. The sandwich is organic ham and cheese on sprouted 7-grain bread, with organic corn, peas, strawberries, and two sugary little gummy worms. Snack is a smoothie freeze pop. It is really important to us to only buy organic strawberries. The laundry list of pesticides used on conventional strawberries is criminal.

Friday’s lunch is leftovers from tonight’s dinner. In the blue Thermos there will be refried beans, taco meat, and melted cheese, all kept nice and hot til lunch. Then in the big compartment there is lettuce on the bottom with 4 mini-tortillas cut from one large tortilla. With the scraps from the big tortilla, I cut out hearts, brushed them with coconut oil (the only oil that’s ok to heat) and sprinkled a little sea salt on them, and baked them for about 10 minutes at 375 degrees F. Chips! Then there are also strawberries and carrots, and fruit leather.

So what do you pack in your kids’ lunches?  Do they help choose, or do you surprise them with little things?  Do you include a treat every day, or once a week?  I look forward to hearing from you!

Read Full Post »

School Lunch Boxes – Week 1

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, School Lunch Boxes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2012 | 8 Comments »

If you’ve been watching my Facebook page, you’ll have seen me posting these this week.  Jess and Abby have given them rave reviews, and a few suggestions.  I’m glad they like them as much as I like making them.

The kabobs are cheese, Applegate turkey, and whole-grain tortillas, on top of a serving of spring greens and three more tortilla hearts. There is a banana muffin (that we made together) and cut-out apples dipped in fresh lemon juice to keep from browning. Three small organic sour gummy worms are tucked in around the muffin for a treat.

Turkey and cheese hearts, cantaloupe and kiwi, peas, a mini banana muffin, and organic gummy worms.

Two halves of a wrap with Great Northern Herbed Spread, turkey, and sprouts. Jess loves sprouts. I put romaine and sprouts underneath the wrap too. Cheese bees and hearts to decorate. Kiwi and cantaloupe were a big hit the previous day so they showed up for an encore. Then in the last compartment there is a small handful of walnuts and a few jellybeans. (Jess has since asked me not to send nuts because one of the friends that sits at her lunch table is allergic to nuts – whoops!)

It was a short week because of Labor Day, and I missed one lunch because I tried using my lightbox to photograph it and my camera phone freaked right the frack out.  I called it a day because I was tired and wanted to relax.  I’m not going to make these lunch box pics a death march for myself.

Tonight I made whole wheat waffles, cherry jelly cream cheese spread, roasted pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds, and lunches for the girls and myself.  I’m going to try my darndest to post lunches every day on my Facebook page, and weekly on Sundays on the blog.  I hope you are enjoying them.  Let me know if you think I’m plum crazy in the comments.  I certainly think I am, but I’m having fun so I’m just going for the ride.

Also, do you use Twitter?  Do you subscribe to Tweets?  How do YOU find Twitter useful?  I’m toying with the idea of starting a Twitter feed but don’t want to get sucked into a black hole of constant updates, either giving or receiving.  I’d like to hear your experience with it.  I hope to hear from you in the comments.  Thank you kindly!

Read Full Post »

First lunch of the new school year!

Posted in Kid Food, Lunch, Real Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2012 | 4 Comments »

I am SO excited to share this with you.  I am starting a blog series on real food lunch boxes that I’m making for Abby and Jessica this year.  Tomorrow is Jessica’s first day of school and I made this lunch extra-special with lots of hearts.  The kabobs are cheese, Applegate turkey, and whole-grain tortillas, on top of a serving of spring greens and three more tortilla hearts.  There is a banana muffin (that we made together) and cut-out apples dipped in fresh lemon juice to keep from browning.  Three small organic sour gummy worms are tucked in around the muffin for a treat.  There is Organic Valley whole milk (from pastured Wisconsin cows) in her Thermos where it should stay nice and cold until lunchtime.

For a snack, I put a smoothie freezie pop into a Wexy bag.  I did this so as it thaws, the silicone top is kept on better, and also so it doesn’t go all over if it leaks.  I haven’t used these silicone freezie pop molds before so I didn’t want to take any chances.

Now, this may not seem like a lot of food, but it’s real food so it’s a lot more filling than chicken nuggets or whatever they’re serving in the hot lunch line.  Jessica also only has 20 minutes to eat, starting from when they get into the lunchroom to when they line up to leave.  I asked her to let me know how it goes.

I think it’s going to go pretty darned well.  What do you think?

I started making Jessica’s and Abby’s lunches at 8:02 pm, and it was 9:02 pm by the time I had cleaned everything up and put my lunch tote back up in the cupboard.  My goal is to get lunch preparations down to 20 minutes, but the first day of school is kind of a big deal and I wanted it to be special.)

Read Full Post »

Let’s do lunch.

Posted in Conscious Eating, Eating Out, Healthy Lifestyle, Lunch, Processed Foods, Sustainable Farming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Today I went out for lunch with some coworkers.  We went to a small, comfortable, local family restaurant.  In my old food lifestyle, I very much enjoyed getting their tuna salad wrap, or their huge grilled chicken cobb salad for lunch.  Today I was at a loss what to get.  The tuna salad has regular mayo in it, which I’m assuming consists of the ingredients listed below (Hellman’s and Best Foods brand mayonnaise ingredients):

Soybean oil, whole eggs, vinegar, water, egg yolks, salt, sugar, lemon juice, natural flavors, calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality).

I have a problem with everything that’s bolded.  The soybeans are GMO; genetically modified foods have been proven to cause problems with infertility and organ damage, as well as diabetes and obesity.  The whole eggs and egg yolks are from GMO-corn-fed factory farm chickens.  The salt is iodized table salt that has been processed to remove all of its nutrients, and actually has to pull minerals from your body’s stores to process it.  The sugar is refined.  The lemon juice is reconstituted from the lowest quality non-produce-section, non-organic lemon juice.  Natural flavors is code for MSG.  Calcium disodium EDTA I had to look up, because that’s certainly not in my cupboard.

“Calcium disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetate is the calcium salt of disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetate more commonly known as EDTA, which is a polyamino carboxylic acid that is produced synthetically from ethylenediamine, formaldehyde and sodium cyanide. It produces a colourless, water-soluble solid that is used in many products as a chelating agent, emulsifying salt, anti-oxidant, preservative, stabiliser, and as a sequestrant.

(source: http://www.foodditive.com/additive/calcium-disodium-ethylene-diamine-tetraacetate-edta)

Holy SHIT.  Why would I want to put THAT into my body??  That’s just the mayonnaise.  JUST THE MAYONNAISE.  Then we could talk about the canned tuna in water (also full of MSG), and the tortilla with its refined white flour and preservatives.

I turned down the cobb salad because even though I could order it without grilled chicken (pumped full of antibiotics, fed a diet of government-subsidized GMO corn at factory farms and kept in tiny cages unable to stand up fully for their entire lives, then processed at a centralized meat processing center manned by exploited immigrants in unsafe conditions), eggs (from similar chickens), bacon (from factory farm pigs fed a diet of government-subsidized GMO corn, etc. then cured using nitrites and several kinds of excitotoxins aka MSG), or dressing (a chemical soup of preservatives, pesticide-laden herbs, highly processed government-subsidized GMO corn syrup and thickeners, and several kinds of excitotoxins aka MSG).  I’d be left with non-organic greens grown in nutrient-deficient soil 2,000 miles away and laden with pesticide residues and possible e-coli contamination from the manure put on the lettuce fields, which comes from feedlot cattle (meant to eat grass because they’re ruminants) fattened and sick with a gut full of e-coli from eating government-subsidized GMO corn) and a few slices of non-organic avocado, and a weak little non-organic orangish tomato from 1,000 miles away.

These were my choices.  Seriously.  Our food system is so very broken.  Food is not just AVAILABLE;  it is aggressively and deliberately MARKETED based on whatever the food producer pays the marketer to emphasize; fat content, calorie content, flavor, appearance, status, ideology, personal vanity, shelf price.  Food is not marketed on what truly matters about it: the nutrition your body can use from it.  The source and conditions it is created in.  What the true costs of the food are, not just the final shelf price.  Where it comes from, how and how far it’s transported, how it’s processed, the effects all of these elements have on the final product set in front of you.  The information the majority of people use to make food choices is a chaotic jumble of disconnected “facts” that have nothing to do with the actual nutrition of the food being consumed.  There’s a very good reason for that, which is if the curtain was drawn back on where our food originates, most people wouldn’t BUY that food.  They’d demand, with their voices and dollars, real food with real nutrition, as local and fresh as possible, without chemicals, without processing, without unsustainable animal-rearing practices void of basic life ethics and rife with horrific abuse worthy of a post-apocolyptic blockbuster movie.

I ended up ordering a portabella mushroom on a plain no-butter toasted kaiser roll with tomato, lettuce, and onion.  It came with kettle chips.  It was expensive, and I didn’t eat most of it.  But it did make me think, and it inspired me to write, and to add my voice to the rising tide of voices that are slowly but surely being heard.  Pulling back the veil that is drawn carefully over our food system is necessary.  It is a very large windmill, and we are all riding very small donkeys.  But maybe the agility is just what we need.  Giddyap!

Read Full Post »

A 420-word lunch, via cell phone. My fingers are numb.

Posted in Healthy Lifestyle, Lunch, tagged , , , , on March 27, 2012 | 3 Comments »

image

This is my typical lunch, eaten at my desk.  I used to go out daily for lunch – subs, Noodles, chinese, etc.  In January, when I first started bringing a healthy whole raw lunch, it was like I was breaking an addiction.  I felt really deprived when everyone else left for lunch. I felt outraged that I work 45 hours a week and I couldn’t even have a lunch.  I was grieving my daily indulgent, expensive, and deeply unhealthy and unsatisfying lunch lifestyle that I’d been creating for 15 years.

I think it’s important to know that these are feelings you may experience if you are upgrading your food choices in your life.  Richard and I used to go out to eat 4-5 times a week, 5 years ago, and multiple times a day.  We were making great money but we invested most of it into degrading our health slowly and expensively.

For the last few years, we went out to restaurants at least twice a week, sometimes with the kids.  We felt we’d really cut back.  Then in January we made our lifestyle change to healthy, organic, whole and raw foods, mostly plants.  Since January 11th, Richard and I have eaten out 3 times together.  All three times were unsatisfying and expensive (when I compare what we spent on substandard food to the abundance of fresh whole foods we could have purchased for that same money).

We are down to eating meat maybe twice a week, and we go days at a time before I even notice we’ve been meatless.  When meat is part of the meal, the portions are a fraction of what we used to eat.  With a family of 5, we can easily get two full meat meals and and 1-2 soup meals, and some leftovers, from one free-range organic whole chicken.  Most of these meals are a big green salad to start, and some steamed veggies, and a whole grain or starch vegetable (like a potato or squash) for sides.  Pasta is too refined and processed for us to include it more than maybe once or twice a month.  Grass-fed organic beef, used sparingly in dishes that make the most of it, is included maybe twice a month.

My intent for this post, typed painstakingly in via my cell phone’s touchscreen keyboard, was just to share what I was having for lunch today.  I guess this just goes to show how much more I have to say about the choices I and my family are making when it comes to food these days!

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 94 other followers

%d bloggers like this: