Disposable Lunch

How are your holidays shaping up? Any exciting travels or day trips planned? Here's some of the 'disposable' lunches I've packed but haven't gotten around blogging yet.

This is the lunch we took to the show with us. All in a throw out Chinese container.

Biscuits, Le Snack, cheese stick & vegemite sandwich squares.

This one was for Honey, a sandwich and some grapes in paper muffin cases.

And the same day Miss M had this sandwich, grapes & some My Little Pony fruit tails treats.

Sometimes you quick easy disposable lunches are just what you need :-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Flowers Flowers Everywhere

 Did you see the flower lunch I created for Wendolonia yesterday? It got me thinking about all the flower cutter lunches I haven't posted yet, so I'm doing them all in one big hit to finish off the school term. It's funny to see them all together like this - ames me realise how much I do actually repeat myself :-)

This first one is from October last year. Vegemite and sprinkles with cookie-cutter scraps.

Then in November I finally tried out these ham & cheese cutters.

I must have thought they looked good because I made some more a week later.

And if I turn it upside down that counts as new, right?

And guess what I made in April this year?

Not much has changed has it?

Although the snack and yoghurt are packaged slightly different in this year's lunchbox.

I must admit I'm loving these easy ham & cheese flower snacks.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Pumpkin & Passionfruit Soup

Excuse me? Read again? Well, that's what I thought when I first saw this on a menu a few years ago. I had to try it & although it wasn't worth the wait (long story about service and a hungry toddler there) it was really quite nice!

This is my go to pumpkin soup recipe, but here's an update. . .

Toss 750g chopped pumpkin, 2 chopped onions, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, 2 cups chicken stock into the Kambrook Soup Simple and set to 'smooth'.

Come back to a lovely soup that can be enjoyed as is. . . or

For a lovely twist simply add half a passionfruit to each serve.

For a full family conversion, thicken with rice cereal or bread for baby, serve with bread crust croutons (aka dipping sticks) for toddler or thick crusty bread for the grown ups.





Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Flowers for Wendolonia

Have you been following the 3 Tools challenges over at Wendolonia? A few weeks ago I joined in  with this cute owl lunch and I had such a hoot (pun intended) that I lined up again!

I had grand plans of filling the large space of the EasyLunchBox with ham & cheese sandwich roses like those I made for this Paint the Roses Red lunch last year. You can see the sad remains of them as the 'rolling hills' at the bottom here. I ended up making a flower pocket sandwich 'cloud' with some ham & cheese flowers atop a bed of lettuce. By using a Tupperware square round I was able to pack a small Sinchies of yoghurt in this compartment too.

I'd planned to make rockmelon/watermelon layered flowers but the rockmelon proved too popular with Miss M & Honey and didn't quite make it. Lucky there were some strawberries and grapes in the fridge to make this mini salad. I kind of like how it gives the whole lunch a reddish feel :-)

Those puff pastry bites were also a slight change of plan. I first thought to make some pizza-puffs but ended up piping some strawberry cheesecake mixture into these two. Cream cheese counts as dairy right?

So why all the change of plans? Have a look behind the scenes with me. . .

Cutting & imprinting some store bought puff pastry

Wondering if they would make nice pie shells

In different sizes

And different moulds

Should I weight them? Nah, they won't rise that much, I only want a little filling.

This was after I'd thought to change to a sweet option. Can you see my attempt at clouds on the top left? How good would they look puffed up?

Nutella - can't go wrong, right?

Strawberry jam - a must!

Lots of Nutella surely must equal lots of yum?

A smaller jam flower

And cooked. Those clouds didn't quite work how I wanted :-(

A lot of detail lost

And not as pretty as imagined

Note to self - it's called 'puff' pastry for a reason

This one looked nice

So try the savoury version

Might try doing pocket pizzas

Same size flower pastry on top, imprinted & spread with pizza sauce

Sealed with the next size down cutter

And left a little too long in the oven *sigh*

But the pizza parcels worked!

Albeit a little burnt. They still tasted good

Ok, ditch plan C, back to plan B.

Cream cheese, cream & a little strawberry jam piped into some sweet puffs. Worked well in the end.

This is how I folded the ham before rolling into the rosettes. A little different from a traditional ham flower.

What do you think? Worth the change?

Did you notice I even changed my mind on the lid colour beneath the box? 

Ah, I used to be indecisive. . . 

And this is what it looks like with a Sinchies yoghurt in the main compartment and a popper strapped to the box.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Quickie Quick Quick

I wasn't going to photograph this lunch and then decided to just snap a few quickies with all intentions of popping them on Instagram. Only a two day week at Kindy and quite busy with other things so a super quick lunch it was!

A new favourite snack - ham & cheese flower. This one is made form one cheese slice quartered into triangles, one slice of ham laid in whole and then a ham flower in the middle.

Miss M requested a tiger sandwich so out came my trusty CuteZCute cutters. I used the kitty important & cut some extra crust whiskers for the tiger stripes. Spinning the main cutter upside down created the body, and a crust for the tail. I didn't even bother trying to include the scraps, I just popped the sandwich into a jumbo silicon cup. 

Not pictured are the snack tub of yoghurt and milk in her ice melt bottle with sock (below the sandwich) and fruit for group morning tea. All served in Nude Food Movers.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.