Muffin Tin Monday, in an actual muffin tin...on a Tuesday

You just can't serve Halloween-themed foods in pretty pink silicone baking cups, so I unearthed my muffin tins and actually served one up - in the tin.  Orange is the theme today - with a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter to trim up the grilled cheese & ham sandwich into something nifty.  The kids never noticed.  Do I try too hard??  I think they were distracted by the M&Ms.  Unsolicited chocolate always catches them off guard...

Muffin Tin Monday on a Sunday

This was my sad attempt at a Muffin Tin last Monday.  My heart just wasn't in it...  The Dirt-in-a-cup took every ounce of creative juice I had (that's a stretch), so I visited the Family Fun website for inspiration.  I was looking for something other than a dessert.  I had virtually no food in the fridge, despite visiting the grocery store four times over the weekend.  It was a miracle that I had potatoes and cream cheese on hand, so this is what I could dish out on the fly...

Left-over chili from dinner last Sunday night, with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.  I LOVE chili.  The little kids do not.  Today they had to suffer.  Because it was all I had.  I sliced the smallish-sized Yukon Gold potatoes in half, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled with Mrs. Dash and baked them at 350 F for 25 min.  They looked good and smelled good.  I let them cool for about 10-15 min., spread some cream cheese on them and then went out the garden to pick some chives.  Arranging them into two eyes and a mouth was a major pain-in-the-ass.  But they looked nice!  They didn't taste nice though.  I forgot to check to see if the potatoes were done.  They were still crunchy.  I H-A-T-E crunchy potatoes.  Yuck.  They only nibbled and so did I.  I had some lovely, old, dried out baby carrots in the bottom of the produce drawer.    The only winner here was the caramel apples.  I haven't had these since I was a kid myself - and you still make them the same way!  For Rylan's and Owen's apple, I cored it and then covered it in the caramel sheet (no stick).  I cut it in half after I pulled it from the oven.  A whole one would have been too much.  I gave Colin some plain apple slices because you never ever ever ever give a toddler caramel.  Unless you are prepared for some intense scrubbing.  Of every surface in your house.  Owen did marginally well with this lunch.  Rylan ate the caramel off of her apple.  And maybe one bean out of her chili.

The sad thing is that they didn't even recognize that the potatoes were ghosts.   Fail.

Muffin Tin Monday

You're lucky I'm lazy... I've got two tins to post!

This first one is my ambitious attempt to launch a series and get five of these buggers made this month.  Each will have a different Halloween-themed treat.  Because I'm a sucker for disgusting looking food?  No.  I just need an excuse to make fun desserts!  Today's (well, yesterday's because, as I said earlier, I'm lazy about posting) tin contains the ever-popular Dirt-in-a-cup.  Complete with two worms.

Clockwise from the top, peanut butter sandwich triangles, vanilla yogurt, green peas, fruit salad with apples, cantaloupe and grapes, alphabet cheddar crackers and Dirt-in-a-cup in the center.

Dirt-in-a-cup is very simple to make.  I purchased some chocolate pudding (Kozy shack), Oreos with chocolate filling and gummy worms.  Mash the Oreos in a closed baggie.  Fill a cup with pudding, push in a worm halfway with a fork and sprinkle with mashed Oreo.  Done.  You could also use the Jello pudding snack cups as well.  If you really want to go all out, you could serve it in a small terracotta pots - just plug the hole in the bottom.  That would be a fun birthday treat or summer garden party thing to do.

The meal went over fairly well.  Colin pulled out his worm, covered in pudding, and had a look of pure disgust on his face.  I wish I had taken a picture.  He would not touch his worm until I had washed the pudding off.  Even then I am not sure he ate it.  The kids are so sick of peanut butter.  I think we had it for lunch at least 20 times in the last month.  Hard times calls for lots of peanut butter.  I had better think of something else.

Here is my second tin to share - I did this back in mid-September.  I was craving some hummus, so I used a muffin tin meal as a good excuse to get some.  I served the hummus with veggies and pita wedges.  I completely forgot about getting some flatbread (which I usually use with hummus), so I improvised with tortillas.  I arranged them on a cookie sheet, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled with seasoned salt ( I make my own - I mix equal amounts of chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, white pepper, black pepper, oregano, and salt and store it in a little shaker jar) baked them for around 8-10 min at 350F.  Cut into wedges and serve.

Clockwise from the top: baked tortilla wedges, cucumber and carrot stix, tuna salad sandwich, cantaloupe stars with grapes, tuna salad sandwich, chocolate pudding with chocolate jimmies and mini marshmallows.

I have found serving tuna salad in a hot dog bun a convenient way to use left-over buns.  The bread doesn't get as soggy as fast, and it is actually a little easier for the kids to eat it this way.  My kids LOVE tuna salad.  I know I am very very lucky in that respect.  This time around I made the pudding from Jello pudding mix a couple of hours before lunch.  I must be a snobby purist or something, but I just don't like boxed pudding.  It tastes nothing like pudding should taste like.  I think from now I will stick to pudding snack cups or better yet make my own.

Colin liked it though...



If you would like to see what other moms did for Muffin Tin Monday, look here...

Muffin Tin Monday

The kids have been eating absolutely nothing lately (I would swear they survive on air), so it was time to do another MTM meal.  At least that way they actually eat something.



Clockwise from the top: cherries, grilled ham & cheese sandwich slices, cinnamon Teddy Grahams, peas and strawberry yogurt with mini marshmallows in the center.

 I looked at some of the other meals that are featured on the Muffin Tin Mom site today, and I inwardly groaned at my lack of creativity, but here you go.  And it only took me five minutes to do, so I guess that would be a plus!  Owen generously gave Colin his bears and cherries, so I had to fish the cherries out of Colin's mouth before he bit down on a pit or even worse, choked on it...  So it was a moderate success as far as Owen was concerned.  He didn't finish his peas, and he asked if he could take them to bed when it was time to go down for a nap.  Nope!

Muffin Tin Monday and Mayhem

It's Monday... time to put the peanut butter away and feed the kids something different!  Owen is proudly showing off his plate.  We've got chicken nuggets, ketchup, Colby cheese stars with mini multi-grain Club crackers, vanilla yogurt with star sprinkles, baby carrots and cucumber slices and diced cantaloupe.  Cantaloupe has become a recent love of Owen's - he can't get enough of it.

Last Monday, our June calendar looked pristine.  Lots of empty, white boxes.  Only a few routine things were listed there, like school days, karate and boy scout camp.  By Wednesday, June 1st, our calendar looked like this:

WTF?

I am a firm believer in not over-scheduling kids.  One sports activity.  ONE.  (In our case, that would be karate).  But I am also a firm believer that kids need to know how to swim.  Lessons are completely out of the question during any other season than in the summer.  It is disgusting how much private swim lessons cost these days, and the 'small' group is more like LARGE group.  Summertime small-group swim lessons at the neighborhood pools are the only way to go for us.  So, unfortunately, the entire summer schedule is at the mercy of the lessons.  For Jordan, it means swim team.  He is beyond lessons, but his swimming skills are less-than-stellar, so for him, this is the answer.  Luckily, swim practice begins at 6:50 am and is over at 8:30... which is just in time for Rylan's lesson, at the same pool. 

What I am a sucker for is those one-day or short-session classes.  Archery.  Cooking.  Gardening.   I initially think - "Hey, it's just for six weeks.  That's not so bad!".  Oh, but it is bad.  In an already busy day, it is very, very bad.  It means that we will be lucky if we get in even an hour's worth of lessons - which will mean mostly workbook stuff and reading in the car.  Nothing 'meaty'.  It means living on whatever is in the snack box in the diaper bag.  I would love to be the uber-mom and have a cooler all packed and ready to go - just swing by a park as we are out and about.  Let's get real - I have no shame!  We're living off of the pretzel pieces we find on the floor of the minivan!

School schedule.  I schedule our school year to run from June1st through May 31st.  It has just kind of morphed into that.  You may have noticed that I now have tabs at the top of the page, one for Rylan and one for Jordan, that lists their subjects, the curriculum we use, and their schedule.  I have been tinkering with the schedule a lot lately because I suck at accountability.  I have to find a way to keep myself honest.  So, I came up with a spreadsheet to count up our hours.  I've looked at Homeschool Skedtrack, but I think it is more than we need - and honestly, I just need a way to count up the minutes.  Do I really think some person in a suit is going to come knocking at the door, asking for proof that we did the requisite time (694 hours)?  No, but I just know that in the past four years of homeschooling, we have not hit that mark as of yet.  And we need to.  So to make that happen, over that past year we've adopted a year-round schedule, a daily schedule that ensures that I've allotted time towards every curriculum element that I feel we need to, and that every child has a chance for some one-on-one time.

Now, if I could just figure out the 'me' time....

It's Muffin Tin Monday again (part doux)

Here is my second effort with Muffin Tin Monday.  With the exception of making the jello earlier this morning, total time to put together lunch was 12 minutes.  *nice*!  Owen and Rylan are still eating (25 min. so far), and Colin is napping, so that gave me time to share it here.

I began by making the jello earlier this morning...

I have about 101 ideas for ways to use little plastic baby food containers.  Using them to make jello cups is one of them.  First I add the fruit - in this case, chopped pear, fresh from the can.  :)

Then I add the jello and put on the lids.

I have a pull-out shelf in the fridge that is nice for just this size of container.  I made it at 9:30 this morning, and it was ready to go by 12:30.

Here is our lunch today:



Clockwise from top: steamed broccoli (leftovers), watermelon jello with pears, clementine with a Hershey's Kiss, beef stroganoff (leftovers), sliced red bell pepper, and vanilla yogurt with sprinkles in the center.



Owen was very pleased with his lunch.  He ate everything but the stroganoff...which he didn't eat last night either.  :(

Here is an idea that helps speed-up the lunch-making process.  I **try** to get the grocery shopping done on Saturdays.  On Sunday, my goal is to do all of the food prep for the week: food prep like chopping, dicing and so forth.  So yesterday, Dean sliced up the red pepper because he uses it for lunch and snack during the week. (Dean takes all of his lunches and snacks into work with him on Monday, and keeps it in the fridge/freezer outside his work area.)  He put some slices in a separate container for us to have this week. (thank you honey!)

I, however, did not get any food prep done yesterday, because I cleaned out our hallway closet instead.  I am going to stock it with our daily ingredient boxes, since we have no pantry to speak of.  (Post is forth-coming...)

The rest of the items for lunch today were easy left-over items to reheat, or spoon out of a container.  I like looking at all of the fancy cutwork that some moms do to their vegetables, meats, cheeses and so-forth.  Most of the time I am just looking for the quick, easy-to-slap-together option.

The Rabbit Hole...

This is an 'off' week (a week we don't "do school"), so I have been spending an obscene amount of time catching up with my favorite blogs.  In doing so, I added 15  (**15!!**) more blogs to my favorites list.  Geez.  No wonder I never get anything done.  Anyway... I got a lot of great ideas...

Muffin Tin Monday

Ever heard of this??  I had seen/heard of using a muffin tin to serve lunch to toddlers.  You filled all of the cups (using very small portion sizes) with foods from all of the different food groups, and then let your child 'graze' over the tin, sampling here and there.  The idea was that they ended up eating more than they likely would otherwise, and it would end up being a pretty balance meal.  Intriguing theory... 

Well, the over-achieving, too-much-time-on-their-hands Bento Box crowd got wind of this and just went nuts!  Now there are entire blogs DEVOTED to this little foodie art form.  Yeah for voyeurs like me who have run out of ideas on what to serve their kids.  Just take a look....  Muffin Tin Mom has the most amazing and creative ideas - and touts the creation of the idea, so this is where the credit is due.  I don't know if I can copy any of her pictures, so go take a look.  Now.  I'll wait!  Wow - see what I mean?  I feel so inadequate.  Sugary Flower has the prettiest web page I have ever seen!  Her ideas are amazing as well - and all of her other baked goods just make you swoon.  Bonus that she is an Aussie.

So here is my feeble attempt that I made on Monday...



Clockwise: Cinnamon applesauce, corn, dinosaur nuggets, grape jelly sandwiches, yellow bell pepper, ketchup

This is Owen's 'before' shot.  I picked up the silicone baking cups (6 yellow and 6 pink) at Hobby Lobby earlier in the morning.  They were on clearance for $3.99.  woo-hoo!

'After' shot.  Notice that they are in a stack.  As Owen finished with each cup (one at a time - he eats just like me!!), he added to the stack.  OCD I tell you....

Rylan's 'before'...

And her 'after'.  She had three helpings... which was kind of a pain because I had to keep refilling the cups, but she ate more than she ever typically does at lunch time, which is a very good thing.

The upside: the kids eat!!!  I don't waste any of the "extras" when I use the tiny cutters - Colin just gets the scraps, cut into smaller pieces.
The downside: add another half-hour to meal-prep time, and raise the expectation that we need to eat EVERY meal this way!  I think just doing it 2-3 times a week is fine with me!

Review Box

We use All About Spelling in these here parts.  Part of the system is the review box.  This homeschooling mom had an excellent alternative/extended use for this system.





Ohhh... this has my wheels turning... just think of the possibilities.  I wish I could make a beeline to Office Max right now.  The organizer in me says, "Yes!  Yes!"  The reality maven says 'What are you kidding me???  Review??  Why don't you actually COMPLETE a lesson and then we'll talk".  Sigh.

Just putting this post together and going through and linking everything took an additional hour of time (because I found even more stuff to look at) I don't really have.  See what I mean about a Rabbit Hole??  Happy wandering!