What's For Dinner? September Week 4

{Our menu for the week of September 24-30}

CSA share picked up on September 20th:

Contents: 1 kohlrabi, 1 bunch lettuce, 1 cluster of bunching onions, 2 ears corn on the cob, 1 head broccoli, 1 red + 2 green tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 green pepper, 2 acorn squash.

Right away, I roasted one of the squashes and last week's beets. I pureed the squash and froze it in an ice cube tray for Sophie and then pureed the beets to make pancakes for breakfast this week.
Before the beet pancakes, however, I tried another new pancake recipe over the weekend: Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes with fresh berry topping.

I thought they were delicious and so did Sophie, but for some reason, Will didn't care for these as much. Very unlike him...

For dinner on Saturday, we had scalloped potatoes and ham (sorry no pic) - yummy comfort food.

On Sunday, for our trip to the butterfly house, I packed an easy lunch of honey wheat braid pretzels, some cucumber, red pepper and pear slices, and some Weelicious avocado honey dip. That is a really good new recipe!... but mostly with pretzels. I didn't try dipping much fruit in it, but it's a sweeter dip so I think it would be better with fruit than vegetables. But definitely good with pretzels!

I also did some more baking over the weekend. I'll have to look up the web page and link it back here some time 'cause I can't remember where these are from, but a college friend made them in one of our food science class labs. Nice lab, huh? We got to learn the science and properties of certain foods and ingredients... and then eat the results! :)

Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

(I want to say they're a Martha Stewart recipe, I think?)

On Sunday, I made my favorite homemade chunky tomato soup (recipe listed somewhere back in my dinner archives)...

...and some zucchini corn bread to go with it.

Kid's plate.

I just love this Sweet Autumn Chicken recipe from Family Fun. I've made it several times before and the chicken is so versatile! But I do love it paired with this cider-glazed, roasted squash and apples. Mmm!

Glaze ingredients:

Holy cow! I tried an amazing new recipe that was suggested by my friend Melissa... who I think got the idea from her friend, Casey. :) Melissa's got all kinds of yummy recipes on her blog and is also the one that inspired me to try the One-Ingredient (Banana) Ice Cream awhile back. This recipe is a Greek food/feta cheese lovers dream! It's so simple and sooooo delicious! I loved it!!
Mediterranean Chicken Skewers with Feta Dipping Sauce

I actually just put my kabobs under the broiler and turned them once and they cooked so simply that way! To prepare, I cut everything up the night before and left the chicken to marinate overnight. I also made the dip the night before and then just had to skewer everything and broil it when I came home from work. Easy peasy!

Don't laugh at my dip container. LOL It's a lid. Thanks, Melissa, for sharing this recipe! It's a new fave!!!

Lots of tomato soup leftovers followed for the week and we did grilled cheese with it one night too.

Special Helper Day

Monday, September 26th was Will's first Special Helper Day at school and I got to spend the morning with him! As always, I loved getting to be a part of his school day.

The students recently finished up a unit called "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" (learning about the body - parts, muscles, skin & skeleton) and were just beginning a new unit on "Taking Good Care of Yourself". So I also got to talk to them about healthy eating for strong and healthy bodies.

To prepare, I organized our snack around my mini presentation. I was focusing on food groups and the new My Plate teaching tool because it's a great visual aid to adults and children alike. I purchased small paper plates and (really roughly) drew in the break down of food groups, per My Plate.
There are no peanut allergies in Will's class, so I brought dry roasted, unsalted peanuts, some wheat crackers, grapes, baby carrots and some green pepper strips. To drink, I brought milk to complete the "My Plate" and because the kids were focusing on the color white this day (or week?).

Will's Special Helper responsibilities included: introducing me :), counting the classmates that were present that day (Duck Duck Goose style) and determining how many (if any) were missing (P.S. - it cracked me up that Will knew exactly who was missing and why... "Austin is missing! He went to visit his uncle Ray!" LOL), leading calendar time...

...playing weather man and dressing the weather bear...

...and holding the flag (ultra seriously) during the Pledge of Allegiance and My Country Tis of Thee song.

He also got to be the line leader for bathroom runs and room changes and make a few special decisions throughout the day such as what prayer to say before snack and which good morning song to sing. It's a very special honor to these kids. :)

After our morning rituals with calendar, weather and chatting in circle time, we went up to the church hall for some active time (since it was raining this day and we wouldn't be going outside to play later). Colors are a big focus right now so we did a couple of color games with dancing/twirling colored scarves...

...and a following directions game where we walked in a circle holding hands (each child had a red, yellow or blue star on their shirt) and walked to the center when our color was called to do some specified motion - wiggling, shaking, tapping foot and clapping, etc.

Then it was bathroom break and my turn to talk to the kids! Will named himself my assistant and stood up front with me, interjecting his own tidbits, pointing to things and holding papers. He answered almost every question I asked before anyone got a chance :) so I had to whisper to him to give the other kids a chance to answer and Mrs. Skees helped me call on the kids with raised hands. We talked about food groups and which foods belong to which groups. (This poster board was the one Will and I made last summer out of grocery ad clippings and construction paper.)

Then we talked about how each of these food groups belong on our plates each day and how half of our plate should be fruits and vegetables!

I brought in a small stack of food-related children's books and read a couple of them and left the rest out to share. I was only planning to read this first one (which I sort of skimmed for my favorite parts), but we ended up reading a second one, which was more of a story than an information book.

Notice Will's position. I had to scooch him around to the bench I was sitting on so everyone could see.

The main reason I chose this book was for this part. It's an absolutely perfect concept for people to consider when thinking about the foods they eat, and it's simple enough for children.

"Everyday foods" and "sometimes foods" - and we discussed many examples of each.

Following that, I was finished with what I had planned, but was requested to read one more book - Handa's Surprise - before closing. This is one of Will's favorite books and the kids seemed to really enjoy it too. It involves fruit and animals... what's not to love?!?!

Afterwards, Will helped me set out the snack while the other kids had some play time and clean up time.

I started with this... and LOTS of kids asked for seconds (& thirds) of various things. It just amazes me how so many kids immediately start with "I don't liiiike _____" (mostly the green pepper). ;-)

Following snack, the kids worked on a couple of different organized crafts related to nutrition... and the color WHITE! They painted "milk" onto cups:

And they created their own "My Plate" on large pieces of card stock paper with paper plates (marked with My Plate divisions) and a plastic fork taped on top. ;-) The kids used grocery store ads to cut and glue foods from different groups onto their plates.

Will with one of his closest pals, Jacob, working on their My Plate craft:

And finally, our school day closed with circle time and the goodbye song. Will and I ate our packed lunches together and then I drove him to the sitters for nap before heading off to work for the second half of the day.

Craig will be doing our next two helper days in December (Will's half-birthday) and January, but I'm planning/hoping to be there for the Thanksgiving celebration where the kids help prepare a lunch and the families all eat together in the church hall. And I'm already looking forward to my next helper day in February.

Let's Pack Lunch!

I LOVE reading lunch packing blog posts! :)

I love new ideas and I love seeing pictures of cute food organized so neat and tidy in a lunch box. So I'm back to share two more weeks of lunch packing with you, and hopefully not bore you to tears. If so, feel free to skip! ;-)

A couple new pieces of lunch packing gear have been added to the mix: a stainless steel "food jar" (thermal for hot meals or soups, which probably won't get used all that often this year... but I like the option) and a stainless steel water bottle - both by Crocodile Creek through Amazon. This was another lengthy researching task just to find a good beverage container that won't leak all over his backpack but still safely keep beverages cold. When I first started researching, I was looking at Klean Kanteen brand, but those got terrible reviews for leaking. (Bummer. They have really cute ones at Pottery Barn Kids.) I read tons of reviews on lots of different brands, paying particular attention to ease of use for a young child, leakiness and materials it was made of... and finally settled on Crocodile Creek as well as Sigg brands. I selected the Crocodile Creek brand for Will because of the outer space print that was offered and the only complaints on it were that the picture wears off in the dishwasher. But he's only ever taking water anyway, so I don't mind hand washing the steel bottle and I can just throw the black and white lid in the dishwasher. I ordered Sophie a cute, purple, Sigg bottle, but that hasn't come in yet. The food jar has a screw top lid, which isn't all the way on in this picture so it looks kind of open on one side. We haven't used it yet and probably won't use it a ton because it would require forfeiting the convenience of the Planet Box and substituting some other containers/cloth baggies of supplemental food items. But I like having the option for when Will's a little bit older and less... um... clumsy. The water bottle has a flip-top plastic cover over a screw-on lid and pull-up/push-down sipper spout. So far, absolutely no leaking or picture peeling. It's 13.5 oz (hard to find anything smaller that's not a sippy cup) and keeps his beverage cold all the way till the evening when I empty his back pack.

Plus, it tucks perfectly into the elastic pouch on the front of his lunch bag.
So here is a look at the past two weeks of lunch packing.
Monday, September 19th:

Contents: cucumbers, yellow tomatoes and snap peas, cheese cubes and sesame sticks, ants on a log with natural pb, strawberries, homemade rice pudding for dessert. Okay, okay. He doesn't like snap peas anymore - I'll give those a rest. ;-) And he didn't eat the sesame sticks (but later ate them at home) or much of the ants on a log (which he usually loves at home??).

I really think he is just not as hungry as he normally is for lunch because of the snack they get less than an hour before he eats these lunches. He is just consuming less than is typical for him.

Wednesday, September 21:

Contents: apple slices, banana chips and almonds, Weelicious mini sweet potato muffins, broccoli, yellow tomatoes and carrot "coins", chocolate covered raisins.

Friday, September 23:

Contents: pitted cherries, baby dill pickles, red pepper slices, carrots and cucumber, whole wheat tortilla smeared thin with pb, a drizzle of honey and rolled up around a banana, Weelicious homemade graham crackers (hearts and stars).

Monday, September 26:

Contents: banana chips and Weelicious roasted honey and cinnamon chick peas, wheat braid pretzels to dip into Weelicious avocado honey dip, red pepper and cucumber "strips", pitted cherries.

This lunch was eaten the day I came to school for Special Helper, so I got to sit with him and eat a lunch I packed for myself too. It was cool to watch him handling everything (zippers, latches and spouts) with ease and knowing that all my efforts of carefully selecting the right gear were successful. He actually didn't eat much of this lunch but probably because he had 2nd helpings of the snack I brought, which was also pretty substantial and healthy.

Wednesday, September 28th:

Contents: nectarine chunks and grapes, pretzel rods, pb&j stars on wheat bread with homemade strawberry jam, yellow tomatoes and peas (weird combo but he doesn't care), chocolate covered raisins.

Friday, September 30:

Contents: apple chunks, pecans & almonds, sesame sticks, grape & cheese cube kabobs, green pepper strips, Weelicious mini sweet potato muffins, 2 Hershey Kisses.

Can you tell I love Weelicious?