Cherry Lime Slush

It's been super hot here in Michigan and I've been making tons of frozen drinks and smoothies. I use my Vitamix more than any other appliance in my kitchen. My family loves smoothies and there is no better way to get  kids to eat healthy than whipping it up into a fun smoothie. I won't lie though, we do enjoy a cherry limeade from Sonic from time to time and that is what inspired this healthy version on these hot days. We all loved them!! Here is a picture of mine:

It's so simple to do. Just add frozen cherries, fresh cherries, organic limeade, water and ice and blend. The amounts you use will depend on how many you are making and whether you prefer more cherry flavor or more tart lime flavor. I would start out with a small amount of the limeade as it has a very strong flavor you can always go back and some more.  You can also throw any leftover mix into a popsicle mold for some future treats. And if you are having a party for the adults you could add some vodka too ;)

Hope where ever you live you are staying cool!!

~Jen

Allergy Friendly Food For Families Giveaway!!

As many of you know I am a Moms Meet Ambassador and I often get asked to try different products and let you know what I think about them. This time I was asked to review a  new cookbook from the editors of  Kiwi. The cookbook is called Allergy-Friendly Food For Families and it's filled with 120 gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and soy-free recipes your whole family can enjoy!

First I have to say that I do not have an allergy in our household, however we have other friends and family that do and I found this cookbook to be loaded with lots of great information I can use to make things that everyone that comes over can enjoy! Besides the recipes it has information on allergies as well as a guide to building a natural allergy-free pantry. And they have a great website you should check out as well!

One of the recipes I made was chocolate cinnamon crisps. These were so fast and easy and as you can tell from the picture my daughter and her cousin really liked them. In fact they liked them so much that they ate them all before I could make a dip to go with them,lol! I also liked that I could cut them into cute shapes to put in lunches and will definitely be making them during the school year.

Another recipe we tried was the Polenta Mini Pizzas. First let me tell you that these are a piece of cake to make and something you can easily have the kids help make. In fact alot of the recipes in the book are geared to having the kids help in the kitchen. Which I think is great and really makes them want to try what they worked so hard on. Anyway back to the pizzas. After having my daughter help me put them together (literally about 10 minutes!!) we put them in the oven and waited not so patiently to try them. My daughter deemed them just okay, but said if she couldn't eat "real" pizza these would definitely be a good substitute. I on the other hand really liked them and on top of being allergy friendly they are super low in calories and fat making them figure friendly too! I will be making them again and trying some different toppings. Kiwi has given me permission to pass the recipe on to you so here you go:

                                                        Polenta Mini Pizzas
 Canola oil for coating the pan
1 (18 oz) tube of prepared polenta, sliced into 12 rounds
3/4 cup of you favorite tomato sauce ( they also have a great recipe for one in the book )
3/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly coat a rimmed baking sheet with canola oil.

2. Place the 12 polenta rounds on the prepared baking sheet. Top each with 1 scant tablespoon of sauce,1 tablespoon of mozzarella and 1 teaspoon Pecorino Romano cheese.

3. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cheese is bubbly.

Per Mini pizza:
66 calories
2g fat
3g protein
8g carbohydrates
1g dietary fiber

This recipe is gluten-free,nut-free,egg-free and soy-free.

** You could also add any other toppings that you want such as veggies, herbs or pepperoni.**

There are many other recipes in the cookbook and they are all nicely organized by category and clearly labeled as to which allergy they are for. A majority of the recipes are safe for all the allergies listed. To purchase this cookbook please go here and they will also throw in a free subscription to Kiwi magazine as well.

Now for the best part Moms Meet and Kiwi are allowing me to give away a copy of this great cookbook to one lucky reader!

To enter to win please comment on why you would love to win this book. Please make sure you leave an email so that I can contact you if you win.

Contest is open to residents of the USA and ends on August 6th at 10am. Winner will be chosen by random.org. CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED!!

                                                                      Good Luck!!

Disclaimer: I received this product for free from the sponsor of

the Moms Meet SM program, May Media Group LLC, who received

it directly from the manufacturer. As a Moms Meet SM blogger, I

agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My

opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media

Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.

Time on My Hands

One of the comments I get most is "you must have lots of time on your hands". While the comment really bugs me, I understand where it's coming from. I will start off by saying like most moms I do not have enough hours in the day to get everything I would like to get done accomplished.You can tell this by my blog slacking lately ;) So like most of you I have to decide what's a priority for me and my family. One of my top priorities is making sure my daughter eats healthy foods.  Her lunches are a part of that and so I make the time to do them.

With that said most of her lunches take me less than 15 minutes from start to finish. That includes the mad scramble to find the right cutter or pik or any last minute requests! I make them in the morning before school while I enjoy my latte. I suppose I could do them the night before but that's family time as my hubby works alot so for us the morning works best.

As I'm sure you can tell from my lunches some are more detailed than others. And I don't make a "cool" lunch everyday and some days are more healthy than others. The point is you don't need to spend a ton of time to make it fun and healthy and get you kids to eat better lunches. For example, the other day I packed a snack of apple slices and a baby cuke for my daughter in a small bento box. At first it looked like this:

As I was packing it my daughter walked by, picked up a pink dog pik from the counter and stuck it in. It then looked like this:

I don't know about you, but given the choice I'd pick the snack with the doggy in it :)

So it doesn't really matter how much time you have or don't have even something as small as a dog pik can make a big difference. So start small but think big!!

                                                            Have a Great Weekend!!

                                                                     ~Jen

Disposable Lunch

On Tuesday my daughter and her 3rd grade class made a trip to our local zoo. So of course she needed a lunch that could be thrown away when she was done. Since I never use paper bags or plastic baggies, I needed an alternative solution. I decided to use the plastic strawberry container that was about to make it's way to our recycle bin. You probably have these in your fridge or recycle bin right now too. The best thing is you can find them in all shapes and sizes and unlike paper bags, they keep the lunch from being crushed as well! We also used one of our Menchie's fro yo spoons. Menchie's is a great frozen yogurt place and the spoons are just too cute and nice to throw away,lol! To wrap her sandwich I used wax paper. Of course for a zoo trip we had to have animal crackers and I just put those in an animal themed cupcake liner.

For her sandwich she requested a tiger. Which was good because it is super easy! I used a cat face cutter and then some small candies for the eyes and a choc chip for his nose. I then used my food color markers to fill in the features and that's it!

I was also a chaperon for this trip and I did the same for my lunch but I made a salad in mine. I will also tell you that by lunch the kids with paper bags were trying to hold the bags together because the sweat from their cold drinks had made a hole in the bags and things were starting to fall out so the plastic container prevented that as well. As a bonus our zoo has recycling bins and we were still able to recycle the container and spoon too!

Oh the Thinks You Can Think!!

Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and what better way to celebrate than with a fun Dr. Seuss themed lunch and blog hop!!  I think the possibilities are endless with Dr. Seuss as a lunch theme. I hope you follow the link at the end of this post to the next awesome blogger who has created a Dr. Seuss lunch of their own! If you follow all the links you will see over 20 different lunch ideas, Oh the Thinks you can Think with all those amazing ideas!! I know I am excited to follow and see what everyone has thought up!

For my daughter's lunch I chose to make the sandwich into the Lorax and the meat stick and cheese are the Truffula trees. I had to have red fish of course( swedish fish are a staple in our house,lol) and the cucumber stars are for the Star-bellied Sneetches ,which is one of her favorite stories! I packed it all up in our new PlanetBox, which so far we like very much ;)  She loved it!! It was also a great way to get ready for The Lorax movie that opens up today too! We are very excited to see it!

If you liked what you saw and want to see more, please follow this link to the blogger next door, I'm sure Keitha's Chaos has great things in store! ( Blog Hop officially goes live March 2nd)

Happy March is Reading month to you all!!

Are you ready for some football?

I had planned a really cute Super Bowl themed lunch, but then my daughter came home with the worst news: she ordered hot lunch!!! What?! Apparently they started using these really cute baskets to serve the lunch at school and she just had to try it,lol!! See, even the school knows it's all about the presentation ;)

So instead all I have for you are my Super Bowl Strawberries. Due to the colors of this years teams,these would also be great for 4th of July and Memorial Day! So file this away for those summer parties!

As you probably have noticed, I like strawberries. I think it's the fact that they are easily manipulated into different things and they are so sweet, it's like eating a dessert. You know, a dessert that is actually good for you! And well most kids love them! Now these are not as healthy but they are better than a slice cake! And they are a piece of cake to make!

Wash and dry your strawberries, the bigger the better for these.

Put some blue sanding sugar( you could use jimmies too) in a bowl

Put out a piece of wax paper for cooling

Melt white chocolate candy pieces in your double boiler. Once the chocolate is melted, dip the strawberry part way in, you want to see the red so you get the red, white and blue effect. Make sure the excess drips off and then dip the bottom tip into the sugar. Allow to cool and harden on wax paper.

And that's it!!

These are best made day of or night before as the sugar can get weird if it's stored too long in the fridge.

Hope you have a great weekend and don't indulge in too much bad Super Bowl foods and I hope your team wins!

Strawberry-orange Jello Bites!

While cruising around Pinterest the other day, a place I visit too many times in a day,I stumbled upon some really cool strawberry margarita jello shots. I knew that these would make a cool lunch or snack item, all I had to do was remove the alcohol !! Easy Peasy! I used orange jello for mine but I think lime, strawberry or really any flavor you have would work as well.

To start I washed and dried my strawberries. Then I cut the bottoms flat so they could stand on their own. You only need to cut a tiny bit on most of them. I put the bits  I cut off  on my salad for lunch since I hate wasting! Then I used  my strawberry huller to clean off the tops and insides. It works great for this. If you don't have a huller a small sharp knife will work too. Next I made the jello and used a straw to easily get the jello into the strawberries. The I put them in the fridge. Once they were done I used sour apple Laffy Taffy to make the  "stems". * Do not put the "stems" in until ready to serve, the Laffy Taffy can get weird in the fridge*

My daughter who does not like jello, I know it's hard to believe their is a kid who won't eat it, even liked them!  I think they make a cute party snack as well and are perfect size for lunches!

I still plan to make the margarita ones for a Mom's Night Out sometime because even moms want a cool treat ;)


Jen

Pumpkin Spice Treats

During the same stop at Wal-Mart that produced the dolphin cutter, my daughter found Pumpkin Spice marshmallows and had to have them. They are orange and pumpkin shaped, very cute. I instantly had thoughts of wonderful lunch box pumpkin patches! Of course my dreams were shattered when we got home and she declared that she did not like them :(  Too much spice she said.

So on the back of the bag they said to use them for rice cereal treats. So I was back in business for cute treats. The bag recipe said to make them in the microwave but I did them the old fashioned stove top way as I think they turn out better. I cut mine into Halloween shapes and added Halloween sprinkles to half the batch since not everyone in my family is a sprinkle fan. To do that I just pressed the sprinkles into the top of one half of the treats while still warm before I cut them.

Since my daughter didn't like them, I made them for my husband to take to work. However my daughter tried the treats and said they tasted pretty good so we kept a few at home for her ;)  They were a huge hit at work and I think they would make a great alternative to traditional cereal treats that always turn up at school parties. I also threw a few of the marshmallows in my latte and it was pretty tasty. I think they'd be great in hot cocoa too!

Have a relaxing Sunday!

Jen

Dolphin Tale

This weekend my daughter will be going to her BFF's b-day party. They will be going to the movies to see Dolphin Tale. So when I stumbled upon a dolphin sandwich cutter the other day, I knew I had to do a lunch to honor her b-day.

I used the Goodbyn Bynto for this one. We have dolphin ham sandwiches for which I used my food writers to add eyes and a mouth. Fish butter cookies that have chocolate on the back for a treat, and a beach umbrella in the red peppers. I think it turned out cute.  Here is what the cutter looks like:

I found the cutter by accident at my local Wal-Mart store when I ran in for a few things. As we waited in the 10 items or less line I noticed some things hanging behind the counter by the cigarettes and low and behold they were sandwich cutters. I have no idea why they were hanging there, it's not like they are high ticket theft items, it was only $1.98!! And I am not sure how they go with cigarettes either, but it just goes to show you always have to have your eyes open for cool stuff!

Mice

Yesterday I made this cat and mouse lunch for my daughter. The mice are one of her favorite fun things that I make.  And they are super easy!! 

You Need:

Strawberries

Mini Choc Chips

Choc. Chips

Red or Black licorice laces

First hull your strawberries and cut in half. Use mini chips for the eyes and nose and large chips for the ears. You can also use jumbo sprinkles in heart or confetti shapes. I used heart ones for the ears in the lunch above. Next cut  apiece of the licorice string and make a tail. I try to stick the licorice into the strawberry to keep it secure but you can also just simply sit the strawberry on top.  Strawberries and choc. chips also make great ladybugs as well. And since I know everyone will ask the lunchbox is a My Square Meal box .

Welcome!

Welcome to One Cool Lunch!!  My  actual lunch journey starts a few years ago when my daughter was in first grade. Like many of you I was not happy with what the school offered for hot lunches. They were not healthy and often not even appetizing. So each day I got up and began the chore of lunch making. I found that even when I packed her favorite things they weren't getting eaten and traditional lunches and boxes weren't working for us. There had to be a better and much more fun way of doing this.

The first step was to research and find the best lunch box out there. While I haven't found the perfect box yet , I have found some that come pretty close. You will see those in my daily lunches and I'll give more information as I use them.

The next thing was to make it fun, for us both! This is the easy part. All you need is a little creativity, imagination and some inspiration. I find inspiration everywhere and you and your child's unique interests and personalities will make it that much more fun. I am happy to report that lunch making is no longer a chore and they usually come home empty now!

I hope you enjoy the blog and I hope you can bear with me as I figure out how this whole blogging thing works,LOL!

Have a great day!!