Adult Lunch Round-up!

If there is one thing I find a lack of when I'm browsing the web for ideas, it's adult lunches. Because of that I started documenting the lunches I pack my husband as well as the lunches I do for my daughter (Even snuck a couple lunches that were mine in here). If any of you are struggling to find new ideas for lunch, I hope you find some sort of inspiration here!

My husband's lunch is on the left. Pizza bagels (do we ever really get too old for them?), salad, popcorn, and a Larabar. He also had snacks on the side for his two breaks and of course drinks. He usually takes flavored waters, vitamin waters, and occasionally soda. All packed in our Easy Lunchboxes.

Turkey and Swiss sandwich on a Pretzel bun, grapes, pickles, and carrots.

Two clementines, Nitrate Free Turkey wrapped around asparagus with a little cream cheese inside. Salad, Clif Bar, and pretzels in our Goodbyn Bynto.

Chicken, Couscous, Carrots, Bell Pepper Strips, and Hummas. This lunchbox is discontinued but the Easy Lunchbox has the same three compartment set-up and is awesome for lunch packing.

Breakfast lunch: Sausage Links, Biscuit, Hardboiled Egg, Tillamoo (cheese), Greek Yogurt, Banana Chips in our Easy Lunchbox.

Two slices of Leftover Pizza, Pumpkin seeds/Dried Cranberries, Cucumber Slices, Larabar, and a string cheese.

Sandwich, Salad w/ feta and pepper rings, pretzels, and a Larabar. This box has been discontinued but you can use Easy Lunchboxes for quick 3-compartment lunch packing.

Bagel Sandwich, Kiwi, String Cheese, Tillamook Yogurt with Almonds, Brownie with Coconut Oil Frosting. This box has been discontinued but you can pick up Easy Lunchboxes for quick 3-compartment lunch packing!

2 Clementines, Meatballs, Pretzels, Sweet Peppers, Greek Dip (Feta, Greek Yogurt, Cucumber, Tomatoes) served with Pita (not pictured).

Salad, Salami/Cheese pretzel skewers, Tomatoes/carrots, Hummas, and Pita Pieces in our Easy Lunchboxes

Salad, Sandwich, Pears, Cottage Cheese, Jungle Animal Cookies, and a Vitamin Water.

Penne Pasta Salad (Penna, ground turkey, parmesan cheese, spinach, pesto, tomatoes), Greek Yogurt, Avocado, and a Vitamin Water.  Check out Easy Lunchboxes for a great 3-compartment option.

Pizza Cresents, Salad, Blueberries, Clementine Segments, and Tomato Sauce for dipping. Check out Easy Lunchboxes for a great 3-compartment lunchbox option.










The two following lunches are actually lunches I packed for my daughter that I think would translate well to an adult lunch!

Chicken Parmesan Cupcakes, Salad, Cherries, and Carrots in our Easy Lunchbox.

Salad -- Spring Salad Mix, Shrimp, Peppers, Tomatoes, and Feta.

Halved Grapes

Pistachio Pudding












Thanks so much for checking out all my lunches. I hope you got at least and idea or two for your own boxes. Feel free to share the lunches you're making!!

Happy Packing!

Trying New Ideas

Today's lunch has a couple new tricks that I haven't used before. I was pretty pleased with them and Monkey thought they were pretty neat when she got to peak in the box this morning.

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Carrots
• Grapes
• Aussie Bites
• Chicken Apple Nitrate Free Lunch Meat
• Devilled Eggs
• Yogurt

So devilled eggs are pretty standard around here during the holidays. We LOVE them and I am a bit of a purist when it comes to them. However today I added a little food coloring and a piece of celery to make a fun little pumpkin.

The second new thing was freezing of yogurt for fun shapes. What we have is strawberry yogurt that I colored purple... I layered a little in the bottom of the compartment as well as made frozen bats with it. Then added a layer of plain full fat Greek Yogurt. Topped with some Halloween sprinkles and of course one of those strawberry yogurt bats. Hopefully by lunch it'll be mostly melted and she can swirl the little bit of strawberry in with the plain and sprinkles and enjoy!

Happy Packing!

Taquitos!

For today's lunch Monkey had a request. Since I was able to, I was happy to oblige. I believe any time that she makes reasonable requests that I can fulfill then I probably should. If she picks out her lunch then she'll be delighted to eat it! Plus I have found that she always seems to like helping me piece together a lunch when I'm going off plan!

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Mixed Greens Salad w/ Queso Fresco and Taco Dressing
• Taquitos
• Guacamole
• Tomatoes

What kinds of things do your children request for their lunches?

Happy Packing!

118

Boo!

So after a delightfully batty lunch ghosts were ready to make their way into the box!

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Nitrate free turkey lunch meat wrapped around pear slices
• Pumpkin Yogurt Treat topped with Ghost sprinkles
• Pretzels

Pumpkin Yogurt Treat

Full Fat Plain Greek Yogurt

Pumpkin Puree

Pumpkin Pie Space

Vanilla

Tad Maple Syrup for sweetener

Grub for the Hub

So today is Monday for my Hubby and so I gotta send him off with a lunch for his middle of the night meal. I like to try to give Monkey and the Hubs similar meals but of course sometimes it just doesn't happen. Today, they have a similar premise with the meat wraps. I'm excited to share. I'm also really glad that I have a husband that doesn't mind ''cute'' lunches. Haha

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Jack-O-Oranges
• Pretzels
• Crunchy Peanut Butter Clif Bar
• Salad (under the wraps) w/ Taco Dressing
• Meat Wraps (Nitrate Free Turkey Breast Slices, Laughing Cow Swiss, and Asparagus)

Happy Packing!

Halloween Lunches!

Halloween

Halloween is here and I don't know about all of you but I am definitely starting to feel the spirit. I've dug out my Halloween lunch decorations, put up our skeleton on the front door, and bought Monkey some window clings to put up (one of her fav things to do at any holiday). I hope you'll enjoy these first few Halloween lunches and that you'll feel free to share your own Halloween lunches! 

One of my favorite things to do at Halloween is draw little faces onto oranges to make them look like pumpkins. It's easy, it's inexpensive, and it really works well for adding some Halloween fun! If you haven't done it before, give it a shot, I bet your kiddos will love it. 

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Leftover Smoked Turkey
• Snap Pea Crisps
• Cheddar Cheese Cubes
• Jack-O-Orange
• Carrots
• Grapes

I was excited to use this bento box again! I haven't gotten to use it much so I am striving to use it more. I really love it, it just packs a lot of food! Yes, I have some inedible decorations in this box, but my daughter is old enough to know to just enjoy them and leave them in the box till the end of the day. Of course keep in mind your child's age and maturity when using inedible decorations.

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Mixed Greens Salad w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette (and tomatoes)
• Cheddar Cheese Skull & Crossbones (used a cookie cutter) 
• Skewers: Nitrate free Salami, Marinated Mozzarella, and Tomato half (Got Halloween Skewers at Dollar Tree)
• Sliced Plum (Little spider I got it from Dollar Tree in a bag of mixed Halloween Decorations)

This is a new box and the first time I have used it. I LOVE it. It's a Sistema sandwich box with a divided sides. I picked up the trick-or-treat napkins, the bat picks, and the bat rings from Dollar Tree. I have a sandwich press I used to make the bat pocket sandwich. Again take into consideration age and maturity before using inedible decoration.

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Jam sandwich
• Grapes
• String Cheese 
• Nitrate free Salami
• Salad w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette

Here are some old lunches of mine for more Halloween inspiration.

IN THIS LUNCH: Halloween Lunchable

• Crackers, Turkey Pepperoni, Pumpkin Shaped Cheese
• Carrots
• Cottage Cheese (With Gummy Spider)
• "Witches Brew" (Pumpkin Egg Nog w/ a little food Coloring)

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Haunted House Sandwich
• Cheese Ghost
• Eerie Carrot Chip Clouds
• Blood Moon (Babybel)
• Salad Grass
• Apple Starry Sky
• Chocolate Chip Chobani Champions yogurt w/ little food coloring and Halloween sprinkles

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Ghost Sandwich (Used a cookie cutter and put the cheese on top instead of inside)
• Tomatoes
• Frozen Fruit
• Sweet Potato Chips

Easy ways to spookify lunches

  Fun Halloween sprinkles on yogurt

Candy Corn Parfait

Vanilla Yogurt

Mandarin Orange Slices

Peach Segments

You can also use cupcake picks, rings, Halloween themed baggies (I get them at Dollar Tree), Cookie Cutters, or use the traditional colors, I'll use candy occasionally like the gummy spiders, chocolate eyeballs, etc.. Hope these helped get you into the Halloween spirit! 

Happy Packing!

Lunch Round Up 111-115 & Grub for the Hub

111 

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Sandwich Skewers
• Salad w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Raisins
• Pumpkin Fluff (Extra Creamy Cool Whip, Pumpkin Puree, and Pumpkin Spice) 

113

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Carrots/Tomatoes w/ hummas
• Small salad w/ taco dressing
• Pretzel skewers that have uncured salami, colby jack and swiss cheese
• Pita Pieces

114

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Leftover Vegetarian Pizza 
• Carrots
• Tomatoes
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Almond Milk

115

IN THIS LUNCH: "Make your own Burritos"

• Tortillas
• Tomatoes
• Pepper Rings
• Cucumbers
• Mix of beans, meat, olives, rotel, and sour cream

Grub for the Hub

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Biscuit
• Tillamook Marionberry Greek Yogurt
• Banana Chips
• Hardboiled egg
• Tillamoo Cheese
• Breakfast sausage. 
• Not Pictured (snacks for work): Cheese, Extra Biscuit, and a LaraBar

Grub for the Hub

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Leftover Vegetarian Pizza
• Cucumbers 
• Dried Cranberries & Pumpkin Seeds
• Larabar
• String Cheese

Happy Packing!

110 + Grub for the Hub -- Daddy & Me Lunch

Okay, so...sorry for the long title but I feel like this lunch is different than just the other lunches where I had Monkey's lunch and my Husband's lunch. This lunch I made them (roughly) the same thing. When I use the same ingredients I sorta like thinking of them as "Daddy & Me" lunches. I hope they highlight for you that you can really pack the same things for more than one person despite appetite size!

IN THESE LUNCHES:

• Pizza Bagels -- Mini Bagel, tomato sauce, turkey pepperoni, olives, shredded cheddar
• Mixed Greens Salad w/ Balsamic Dressing
• Popcorn (First time using coconut oil to pop, it's pretty tasty)
• HE got a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Lara Bar and SHE got a handful of grape tomatoes. 

[These are packed in our Easy Lunchboxes]

One of the goals when packing lunches for me is to make sure that Monkey doesn't feel alienated from the other kids. I don't want her to be the weird kid who's mom packs her lunch (thank goodness there's like 4 other kids in her class this year that bring lunches). I don't want her to feel excluded from the goodies they get like Pizza or Popcorn. Her school has Popcorn Friday where you can pay .50 for a bag of popcorn. Well, sometimes I do this because it raises money for the school, but OTHER weeks I just pop my own and send it with her and she seems happy with it. She just wants to feel like she is like the other kids most of the time and this is a small way I can make her feel included. 

As a side note, she thinks Daddy getting packed lunches too is the coolest. :-P

Happy Packing! 

109 & Grub for the Hub

109

So folks are are getting down to the bottom of the barrel here as far as what we have for lunch fixins. I know it's something we all go through at the end of the month (especially those that only get paid once at the beginning of the month like we do). So, the lunches might start seeming a bit...hodge-podge. Luckily, Monkey isn't picky and will eat whatever is in the box. So, if the lunches start seeming a bit...odd or less cohesive, you'll know why. 

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Whole Wheat Crackers
• Pepper Rings
• Banana Chips
• Peas
• Shrimp
• Cottage Cheese
• Brownie with Peanut Butter Coconut Frosting (hers also had a couple chocolate chips, that's the bumps)

That's right today's special treat is some homemade brownies with my special icing. Let me tell you, it's soooo yummy! You can get the recipe by clicking the link above or the photo below! 

Grub for the Hub

So this is what REAL looks like. HAHA. I didn't get to finish his lunch until right before I went to bed last night and it was too dark to take a picture. Well, he leaves before the sun is up, so it was too dark THEN to take a picture. So I asked my husband to take a picture of it at work and send it to me. This is what it looked like. Of course when I packed it the kiwi were in a nice little line kept over by their lettuce separator....so here what it really looked like after he got it to work. :P

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Tillamook Marionberry Yogurt w/ Almonds
• Sliced Kiwi
• String Cheese
• Mini Bagel Sandwich -- Mayo, Swiss, and Pepperoni
• Brownie with Peanut Butter Coconut Frosting.

108 & Grub for the Hub

108

Monkey has been very enthusiastic about her lunches lately and now that I am making lunches for Dad she's pretty interested in those too. The sad part, we're getting to the end of the month so we are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on lunch fixins. Usually I plan out lunches for the whole month, but this month with her birthday party well, things went a bit off course and I never got around to it! But, hopefully these lunches will be up to par.

IN THIS LUNCH: 

• Apple Slices
• Mini Ravioli (tomato sauce in green container)
• Halved Tomatoes
• Turkey Pepperoni
• String Cheese (cut into rounds)

Initially, I wanted these to be skewers...but the string cheeses weren't cooperating! So I gave up and she got all the pieces I had ready for the skewers. Hooray for lunch fails! 

Grub for the Hub

So my bento blog friends all helped me come up with this segment name and my husband liked it too, so all the posts with lunches for my husband will have the Grub for the Hub title. :) I hope this will make finding them easier when you search. 

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Garlic Hummas
• Carrots & Pepper Strips
• Parmesan Cous Cous
• Chicken Tenderloins

Color wise this lunch IS a bit drab, but it's full of flavor and I think he'll enjoy it. He LOVES chicken so that's always an easy go to when thinking about what to cook for him. 

Happy Packing!

106, 107, & Grub for the Hub!

Okay so this morning was definitely feeling like a Monday! This meant I would have rather been sleeping than getting up to face the day. Which also means that I wasn't feeling too inspired to make lunch. Who hasn't had that morning? With that in mind I needed something simple, fast, and no busting out bento tools! Here's what I came up with.

Definitely not the belle of the ball but it'll hit the spot for lunch! 

IN THIS LUNCH:

• Meat and Cheese Rolls ups (No tools today so I used a pretzel to skewer!)
• Pretzel Rods
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Apple Sauce w/ Cinnamon 

There you have it! Lunch number 106 is a no muss and no fuss sort of deal. 

------

After I after I had a chance to wake up and got home from dropping Monkey off at school I was feeling....a tad inspired! So I decided to make lunch for tomorrow. This of course has something new added to it. My husband got a new job and will be needing me to pack his lunches too! I'm really excited about this and look forward to sharing the journey of packing lunches for both of them with you!! 

Here's what we got for our lunches tomorrow! 

So, for packing both their lunches I wanted to make this as streamlined as possible! So, I used most of the same ingredients to pack both with a few unique twists for each of them. 

Daddy's Lunch [On the Left]: 

• 1/2 Sandwich -- Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese, Turkey Pepperoni, Sliced Turkey, and Swiss. 
• Salad -- Mixed baby greens, pepper rings, and feta [As my husband says, "Feta makes it bettah!"] w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette. 
• Pretzel Rods
• Banana Bread Larabar 
• I packed the other half of his sandwich in a plastic baggy on the side for his break. 

Monkey's Lunch [On the Right]: 

• Pinwheels [Swiss Laughing Cow, Mixed Baby Greens, Pepper Rings, Turkey Pepperoni, and Sliced Turkey lunch meat]. 
• Scooby Snacks Graham Crackers
• Celery with Garden Veggie Cream Cheese
• Pear halves with cinnamon

Essentially, I took Daddy's salad and sandwich and put it in a wrap for Monkey! Then with the leftover pears, I pulsed them in the baby bullet a few times and made chunky pear sauce [Like applesauce] and gave the baby half for lunch and the other half is saved in the fridge.

Happy Packing! 

105 -- Breakfast-ish?

So this morning was one off those ''Oh geez, I gotta pack a lunch" days. So, hopefully you can all relate to that feeling when you look around your kitchen hopelessly and just start grabbing things and hoping for the best. This is one of those lunches! Hope you enjoy!

IN THIS LUNCH: 

Two hard boiled eggs

Sweet Pepper Strips w/ Hummas (in blue container) 

Babybel 

Mandarin Orange Segments

Cinnamon Streussel Muffin

Happy Packing!!

ROUND UP 9/10-9/17

I'm a bit behind on my blog so if you aren't following on Facebook then you haven't been getting the latest lunches. On the up side, now you get six lunches all in one round up! Plus we get to celebrate my 100th lunch together!

99 -- Happy Caterpillar Pancakes

IN THIS LUNCH:

Six Mini Pancakes (w/ syrup)
Applesauce
Banana Chips
Almond Slices
Tillamoo

100 -- Beary Good Lunch

IN THIS LUNCH:

Peanut Butter & Jelly Bear Sandwich
Bear Shaped Cheese
Kiwi
Pepper Slices & Halved Tomatoes
Clif Kids Z bar -- Chocolate Brownie

I got the fantastic idea for this bear from a lunch packing group I'm in on Facebook called Eats Amazing Lunch Packing Community. If you looking for more lunches and great ideas it's a good place for you to check out!

So I got the idea for this bear there. You take your egg mold (in this case the bear) and smoosh your babybel cheese into it. I never thought of that and it works really well! Here's a close up so you can see the details. :)

101 -- Supreme Salad

IN THIS LUNCH:

Mixed Greens Salad with Celery, Carrots, Tomatoes, Feta, Shrimp, Pepper Rings, and with Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Halved Grapes

Pistachio Pudding

102 -- Super Star

IN THIS LUCH:

Fairy Bread Sandwich (Peanut Butter & Jelly)
Kiwi Slices
Cheddar Stars

Ever wonder what "Fairy Bread" is?

It's just the fun name that was given to the sandwiches with a window cut out and filled with sprinkles, like this sandwich is!








103 -- Tuna Twist

I always make Monkey's Tuna the same way. With Mayo and celery and grated carrot. Today I decided to try something a little different.

IN THIS LUNCH:

Tuna w/ mashed Avocado and lemon juice
Whole Wheat Crackers
Celery Sticks
String Cheese Rounds
Grapes
Iced Oatmeal Cookie Kids Z Bar









And for today's lunch!!

104 -- Sandwich Skewers

IN THIS LUNCH: 

Sandwich Skewers -- Sourdough Bread, Mayo, Sliced Turkey, Turkey Pepperoni, and Mozzarella Cheese

Mixed Greens Salad w/ Balsamic Dressing

Tomatoes

Fruit Parfait -- Layers of Kiwi, Whipped Cream, Grapes, Sliced Almonds, and the top is Graham Cracker Crumbs. 

-- Monkey had a lot of fun getting to crunch up the Graham Crackers and top the Parfait herself! --