Lunchables from Home

It was in February when I last posted photos of my little girl’s school lunches, my version of lunchables.  Preparing lunches from home  need not be time consuming and stressful.  A lot of times, I set aside a portion of the dish we’re having for dinner for the following day’s school lunch, specially if it’s a dish that my daughter really likes.  When that’s taken cared of, I need just 5 to 10 minutes to put a decent packed lunch together, which includes filling her water bottle, grabbing a snack for the afternoon from the pantry, slicing fruits and putting them in a container.  We can very well find 5-10 minutes to spare, whether we’re SAHMs or working moms juggling 3 jobs in Philadelphia or wherever.

Sometimes, however, I find myself summoning my inner iron chef to come up with a lunch that’s healthy yet satisfying but take only a fraction of time to prepare.  That usually happens when we get carried away during dinner and have no leftovers to speak of.  Hee hee.  There are very rare times when I let my daughter “enjoy” cafeteria food, but these days, specially after Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution started airing, I am more determined, now more than ever, to just pack lunches for my daughter.  I really have no excuse not to.  I’m a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) and it’s not like there’s another child in the house who need my attention.

Here are four of her most recent school lunches I managed to take photos of:

#1 Penne Arrabiatta with Shrimps

Pasta lunches I usually cook fresh.  It’s easy to multi task when cooking pasta dishes.  So long as I have my favorite jars of pasta sauces and thawed pealed and deveined shrimps, I am good to go. :)

#2 (Chinese) Barbecue Pork with Rice

My daughter’s favorite food to eat at a Chinese restaurant is Barbecue Pork.  Any leftovers always end up in her lunch bag the following day.  These days, our rice is a mixture of white and brown, as in the photo.  And pretty soon, we’ll be consuming purely brown rice as my daughter has already gotten used to it.  By the way, the rice in the photo above was sprinkled with the Barbecue Pork sauce. :)   My lunchables always have a fruit component, which I sometimes have to put in a separate container.

#3 Ground Turkey and Potatoes in Tomato Sauce with Rice

This is one of my “go to” ground meat dishes.  I first fry diced potatoes just until they are almost fully cooked and then set it aside.  Then, I saute chopped onions and minced garlic, add the ground meat, season with salt, pepper, dried basil and rosemary.  I then add the tomato sauce and potatoes and let it all simmer until the potatoes are fully cooked.  Quick and simple.  My daughter loves dishes that are saucy or anything with soup.

#4 Spinach-Stuffed Mushrooms

This has got to be one of the dullest looking lunchables ever to make their way to my daughter’s school. It obviously needs a splash of color.  Haha!  My daughter didn’t seem to mind though.  I posted an entry about these stuffed mushrooms very recently.  You can find it HERE.

That’s all the lunchables I have for you…for now.

Y’all have a great weekend!  Cheers!