Heathy Lunch Challenge: Lunch 1

I'm so excited to be part of Crunch a Color's Healthy Lunch Challenge!  Clara's lunches are usually pretty colorful, so it was no surprise that she enjoyed adding up her points.  The big surprise was my 13 year old son!  He's usually not much of a veggie person, but, being the video game player that he is, he couldn't let his sister get "high score" and decided to play too!  I'm so excited by his choices and his branching out away from his norm!  More on that tomorrow though, when I post his lunch.

In case you can't tell by recent posts, I am totally addicted to fixing dinners that have leftovers that work well in lunchboxes.  Monday night I tried another new recipe from skinnytaste.com, Easiest Crock Pot Salsa Verde Chicken.  I used the chicken to made the tostadas pictured in the recipe.  They were FANTASTIC (and super easy too)!!!  My plan was to have Clara take the leftovers cold as lettuce wraps, but she vetoed that and asked for chicken nachos like her brother had packed.

So, here is her lunch...

Salsa Verde Chicken topped with a little Mexican blend cheese, purple cabbage slaw and Soy & Flaxseed tortilla chips.  Carrots and cucumbers in ranch.  And finally, some strawberries.

I let her have the "x2 try a new food" card for the purple cabbage slaw.  She has had it before as little bits in other things, but this was her first time to eat a slaw made of only purple cabbage.  She really liked it and the extra crunch it gave to her nachos!

a colorful friday lunch...

We're finally getting bright sunny days here, so why not have a bright sunny looking lunch!

My main grocery run this week was to Trader Joe's, so quite a few TJ products make an appearance in this lunch...

A Trader Joe's Banana Protein Power Muffin, TJ's pretzel thins and carrots with TJ's Mediterranean Greek Yogurt Dip (very addicted to this stuff!),  a mini caprese salad (Bel Gioioso Fresh Mozzarella Pearls, diced tomato, chopped fresh basil, salt, pepper and TJ's balsamic vinaigrette dressing) and fruit (mango, pineapple and pomegranate seeds).

fast and easy five layer dip...

This is a favorite lunch of both kids!  And it is so easy too!  I know it looks like it might take a while to put together, but what makes this lunch so fast and easy, is that I put the dip part together while cleaning up the leftovers from dinner!  We had build your own bean burritos for dinner the other night.  After everyone was fed, I started cleaning up the little bits that were left over.  Instead of putting them into various storage containers, I layered them in the larger of the two smaller compartments in our EasyLunchboxes.  I had to package everything for the fridge anyway... so why not save a step for the morning and put it straight into our lunch boxes!

Here's Clara's lunch (and Alex had the same thing)...

Five layer dip (beans on the bottom, guacamole, sour cream, fresh tomato salsa and cheddar cheese), Trader Joe's Soy and Flax Seed chips, strawberries, and Trader Joe's Yogurt Stars (I went to TJ's hungry this week and I have a major weakness for these things!!).

I just realized that I have a similar lunch just a few posts down!  Two totally different dinners ended up with similar leftover lunches... just a reminder to get creative when thinking about planning leftover lunches.  You don't have to make the exact same dinner as I did to come out with a similar lunch.  This one came from a bean burrito dinner night, the other one from fajitas... leftovers from taco night would make an excellent layer dip lunch too!  Make what your family likes and then layer it up for lunch!  :-)

snack box...

This was lunch, not a snack... but "snack box" is the term Clara uses when she wants one of those "a little of this, a little of that" types of lunches.  I love these lunches as well... not only are they fast to put together, but they help me use up some odds and ends in my fridge!

So, here's what she ended up with...

Red bell pepper pieces (leftover from a HUGE pepper I had cut up for the picadillo earlier in the week), Applegate Farms ham, sun dried tomato hummus, black pepper triscuits, and a spinach and strawberry mini salad with cherry vinaigrette dressing in a mini dipper.

we've started something here...

Now that Clara has discovered that lettuce wraps make a nice alternative to rice, she asks for them all of the time.  Last night I tried another new recipe that said to serve over rice... Alex and I had rice, Clara had lettuce wraps!

Here's Clara's lunch today...

Leftover picadillo (from skinnytaste.com... loved it, but will chop up the green olives next time), lettuce leaves (which were slightly out of control in this photo!), cucumbers, sun dried tomato hummus and strawberries

She said that she really liked the meat cold, just as much as she liked it hot the night before.  So, it's another keeper... I so love recipes that make great dinners at night and also great lunches the next day!

nothing fancy...

I almost didn't post this.  There's really nothing to this lunch... but I have decided to post it anyway.  Sometimes lunches, are just lunches.  And sometimes they aren't as healthy as we would like.  BUT... by packing her lunch, I got to counter some of the bad with some good.  Plus, she had something she wanted for lunch and it was a lunch that went together in a flash!  And getting out the door in a hurry is even more important now that my poor girl is in a boot and takes longer to get around. 

Right now, we don't know whether it's actually fractured or not (she's my "grey area" child and the abnormality only showed up on one of three x-ray views).  We go next week for another round of x-rays to see if they can figure out what is going on.  Until then, no dance, the boot... and one very unhappy girl.

Here's her no-frills leftover lunch...

Leftover take-out pizza, veggies (carrots and cucumbers) with ranch, and grapes.  Nice and easy.

chicken dinner...

Detecting a leftovers theme yet?  My kids LOVE having leftovers in the their lunches and often try to beat each other in calling "dibs" on the leftovers while we're eating dinner if it starts to look like there may only be enough for one.  This time, Clara got the leftovers from our roast chicken dinner. 

Here's her lunch....

... leftover roast chicken, baby bell peppers and sugar snap peas with ranch, grape tomatoes, wheat crackers and fruit (blueberries, strawberries and pineapple).

*** SPOILER ALERT  ***

My next lunch to post has leftovers too!  :-)