feeling a little like loving lunches

 

That's right!  It's a blog takeover!  I'm Erin from feeling a little lunchy and I will be making lunch for you all today.  I'm very excited and honored to be guest posting here. You can find me at www.feelingalittlelunchy.com and also on Facebook HERE. Loving Lunches will be back soon, I promise. She's just a little busy with that whole baby thing going on.  I wish she didn't live so far away...I'd offer to babysit for free.  She will have to settle for me hopefully keeping you guys entertained for a bit.

 

Just a quick background...I live in Atlanta, Georgia and have two daughters who are 10 and 12 years old. I make lunch for them nearly every day.  My 12 year old won't let me make it fun for her anymore if she has to take it to school but the 10 year old will. I hope that never ends!  I love making fun lunches because it allows me to exercise my creativity and keeps me sane. It's the one creative thing I do each day and it truly makes me happy. I'm happy because I got to make something...and even happier that I know exactly what my children are eating and most of the time, it's healthier for them.  I don't know about school lunches in Australia, but here in Georgia, they're full of rubber hot dogs, canned green beans and fried mystery meats.  I know they try to balance them, but sometimes I have a hard time counting ketchup as a vegetable.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes the girls do eat school lunch, but I try my best to keep that to a couple of times a month.

Using our great Lunchbots Trio lunchbox, I packed up a little tortilla roll up with lettuce, turkey and cheese.  Of course, I stuck a mustache in it.  I don't know where my love of mustaches came from, but they sure are fun.  Blueberries, carrots and ranch dressing fill the other two compartments.  As my girls are a little older, not surprisingly, they eat more...so today is a soup day as well. In the mustachioed Thermos jar is some chicken noodle soup leftover from last night. They love soup days! I love soup days, too...they're so easy! 

Some tips I have for packing soups and hot meals in stainless steel thermal jars:

• warm up the jar with some hot water from your sink prior to putting food in.
• heat the food hotter than you normally would if you were going to eat it right away.  I usually boil soup for a couple of minutes so it will be hot and delicious four hours later when my kids get to eat it.  This also prevents it from cooling off too much and inviting some nasty bacteria to grow in there. 
• If your kids have outgrown the princesses and characters that are printed on their food jars...go ahead and wrap it in duct tape.  As you can see, our jars are wrapped in mustache duct tape.  They used to have High School Musical characters all over them...my girls have moved on.  (Secretly, I love those movies...I even cry when they break up...every time.)
• When you have washed your jars, whether you wash by hand or in the dishwasher (I do the latter), do not seal the lids when storing them for your next use.  They get a little musty if you do.  Just set the lids beside the jars or loosely on top.  Nothing s worse than a musty jar mucking up your awesome foods.

I hope you've enjoyed our little lunch and that you have a great day!