Back-to-School Snacks (Part 2)

One more day and the first week back to school will already be over--and we haven't run out of snacks or lunch ideas yet. We've had chicken salad sandwiches, leftover pasta, cucumber/cheese sandwiches, peaches, strawberries, apples, yogurt with blueberries, broccoli, red pepper slices, and of course, granola bars. Tomorrow is Friday. This means that my daughter will have a special treat in her lunch. This week's treat is pudding.

Here's the thing though....I was going to make some homemade pudding...and I did! However, it didn't turn out quite like I had expected. When I made it there wasn't much chocolate flavour and the consistency was jelly-like rather than smooth and creamy. It ended up in the garbage, sadly. Unfortunately my daughter had her heart set on getting some pudding this week so I broke down and bought a boxed version at the grocery store today. Oh well,...it's Friday tomorrow so this will be her treat for the week. I'll have to find a new pudding recipe and give it another shot later. Does anyone have any tried and true recipes?

A recipe that did turn out well though were my canned pears. In fact, it would be really hard to screw this one up. Last year I had made some canned peaches and they were a huge hit. I made more again this year but thought it would be nice to make some canned pears as well. My daughter is always eyeing all of the canned fruits at the grocery store so I'm trying to make some homemade versions.
To make the pears you simply have to peel and dice the pears (preferably Ontario pears) and then add the pears to a mixture of sugar and water (light simple syrup--mine is about 1/4 cup of sugar to 2 cups of water or so). Bring the mixture to a boil and then put the pears/syrup into sterilized jars. Seal the jars and then boil them for 10-20 minutes. Once done, let the cans sit for 24 hours. The lids usually seal in the first few minutes of sitting out--you'll hear a loud pop. Canned pears will be a nice treat come Winter when we're sick and tired of eating apples. Yum!

For my next post (and last part of the back-to-school snack saga) I will try a banana cracker recipe that I got from another blog that I follow. Bananas aren't local, obviously, but it's on my list of non-local foods that I do buy. And, I'd rather make my own crackers as opposed to buying them. Okay...time to stop so that I'll have something to write about for that post.

What have you guys sent in your child's lunch bags this week?