the big one

Baby girl has been complaining lately that she's still hungry after lunch and that I need to make her a bigger lunch.  So I really tried to make this lunchbox substantial and filling.

Pasta salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing and peas, corn & broccoli, soda crackers filled with pupkin seed butter & strawberry jam, a few organic cookies, Sun Rype fruit bites, a juice box, celery matchsticks, strawberries sprinkled with ground flax, 2 pieces of gardein chick'n strips and ketchup for dipping, and a "bat" sandwich (multigrain bread with vegan cheese). It's her new favourite.  Apparently she ate the "bat" for breakfast and then cried because she wanted another one. Also no pictured is a packet of maple oatmeal. 


Baby girl ate the entire lunch except a few lone spirals of pasta and the celery sticks, which she never eats anyways.  And then she refused to eat dinner because she wasn't hungry.

The Green Lunch

There was no lunchbox yesterday because baby girl "skipped out" of daycare for her ballet lessons.  She ended up having lunch with abuelo (grandpa).

Today's lunch colour is green. I was overwhelmed with green produce in my fridge, so there was no shortage of choices, but it was tricky trying to balance protein and carbohydrates.  I didn't just want to make a lunchbox full of salad.

So here we've got soba noodles, which baby girl pointed out are not green.  True, but it's got a pretty decent amount of protein and, hey, buckwheat is green at some point before it's harvested. Next is a mixture of peas and lima beans. I'm fairly certain that each and every lima bean will still be in the lunchbox when she comes home, but it's worth a shot.  Moving along, there's some cucumber slices tucked into the side compartment with a fun green turtle fork, kiwi fruit and an ancient grain quesadilla stuffed with daiya cheese and cilantro.

And to quote another article from livestrong.com, "Green foods also serve as a source of vitamins A, C and K, and iron and calcium. Green vegetables contribute to your daily fiber intake, which can help reduce your cholesterol levels"

It's day two of "colours" week at baby girl's daycare.  Today's lunchbox celebrates one of nature's most beautiful hues, orange. According to dietitian Julie Garden-Robinson on livestrong.com, "orange and yellow produce is rich in carotenoids, which help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease, can improve immune system function and aid healthy vision"

Beginning in the top left corner, there's Gardein's Mandarin Orange crispy chick'n piled on a bed of organic brown rice and sprinkled with sesame seeds, Pete's organic mango tofu, pumpkin pancakes (mini-container of maple syrup not pictured), and a blood orange.

Have a colourful day!

Garden Lunchbox

Lately they've been celebrating different themes weeks at baby girl's daycare, and I try to incorporate the theme into her lunch.

For Garden week, I added some fun colored sushi grass along with the cinnamon-raisin bagel with tofutti cream cheese and watermelon balls.  There's a butterfly nestled into the chickpeas, and a "cheese" flower rests on a bed of spaghetti.  And a little packet of organic bunnies for a treat.

mission impossible: no eating out for 2 weeks

I've been seriously craving to get back to blogging for a while. It's been tugging at the back of my mind every time I put a meal together or order a great meal at a restaurant. So finally here I am, diving right back into it. 

Coinciding with my return to blogging is a diet of sorts, so there won't be a whole lot of sinful treats to be seen here for quite a while.  And I'm sure my pocketbook will thank me for not eating out once or twice a day anymore. I'm on lockdown!  I'm imposing a 2 week freeze from eating out.  Hopefully I'll manage to skip visits to my favourite restaurants for longer than that, but I'll re-evaluate once I get to the two-week mark.

This is gonna be painful because it's patio season in Yaletown, which means slushy drinks and tapas are everywhere  I seriously had the best gin infused peach lemonade last Friday on a rooftop patio lounge.  Somehow I'll go 2 weeks without going back for more, which may or may not involve me trying to recreate that lip-smacking good, lucious peach lemonade in my own kitchen.

Anyhoo, today is a sunny Monday that deserves a bright and cheerful bento box lunch for my 3-year-old girl to take to daycare.

A half sesame-seed bagel with tofutti cream cheese, fresh organic strawberries, rice crackers, chickpea & celery medley, hummus dip and matchstick carrots and yellow bell pepper slices. 

And mine is pretty similar:  For breakfast, I've got the other half of baby girl's bagel & strawberries, and for lunch, a Caramel Nut Brownie Luna bar and a herb salad with chickpeas, carrots & yellow bell peppers.

Watermelon bunnies & Cucumber bears

I love cutting fruit and veggies into little shapes for P's lunch.  This one has fun watermelon bunnies and  cucumber bear heads.  There's also some Kashi puffs, rice crackers, soy yogurt and brown rice pasta with a chopped up veggie dog.

Another lunchbox that came home empty!  I'm sure one of these days I'll strike out and P won't like what's in her lunch, but I'm really excited that she's eating all this good stuff.

Another soy-free lunch, bento style!

Can you tell I'm really digging these bento box lunches?  I went to Daiso on the weekend and stocked up on little bento gadgets so I can make fun things like the little army of bunny shaped pancakes in this vegan bento lunch box. I put blueberry syrup in the small container beside them.

A navel orange and kiwi fruit are next, followed by a 1/2 sprouted grain bagel with sunflower seed butter. I had to cut it in half again to make it fit.  The last section has black beans and green beans with a 1/2 corn on the cob left over from dinner tonight.

Oh, Canada...red white and GREEN lunch

I started with a red & white theme for Preciosa's lunch todayin keeping with her daycare's Canada Day theme...but I didn't feel right not putting something green in her lunch.  I couldn't do it.  So we've got vegan cream cheese and vegan "Canadian Bacon" on homemade bread, celery with sunflower seed butter and golden raisins, a white nectarine, salt & vinegar CheeCha puffs, and Glutenfrreda raisin flax oatmeal, with a little container of peas tucked under it.

Canada Day Lunch Box

Ever since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Preciosa has been randomly singing our national anthem  "Oh, Canada."  She's going to be very excited this week at daycare when she finds out the theme of the week is "Canada Day."

I thought it would be a fun suprise if her lunches this week were also inspired by this theme. I made her a Canadian flag sandwich with strawberries & vegan cream cheese on a slice of homemade bread. Next to the flag sandwich are some bright, juicy gem tomatoes, and above those are potato salad balls a la Vegan Lunch Box, and last but not least, soba noodles with a bunny filled with Bragg soy sauce.

Here's Preciosa's latest rendition of "Oh Canada":