Thursday, September 2, 2010

First EVER school bento

It also happens to be my 25th, which I think is a good number :)

I'm posting this tonight to make up for dropping the ball a bit this week with bentos....But since I'll be packing a lunch almost every day if not every single day, you will probably see most of them as long as it's not a lazy day where I just shove things into a box and take it to school.


Okay, first ever school bento contains:

  • three mini turkey/romaine baguette sandwiches
  • broccoli florets and grapes covering any and all space (and half the sandwiches...)
  • red beet egg and cheese hearts, the cheese scrapes around the bottom sandwich
  • cherries
  • goldfish and an oatmeal raisin cookie for desert

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Cafeteria Food.

It's not really that bad if you make the right choices. I mean sure, they sell greasy school pizza, cheese sticks, and fast food style french fries every day...but there's a salad bar. And the lettuce isn't that bad, even if it's all iceberg. It's the salad dressings I'm rather afraid of.

Tomorrow I'm starting my packing for the year, but today I bought, and my lunch was $2.05.

My choices were the cheapest lunch you can get, others starting at $2.95 or a la carte items that are seperate - 1.90 for those french fries, 2.10 for the cheese sticks, 55 cents for a cookie, not sure how much for a bag of chips/popcorn, I think it's 60 for a side of fruit or yogurt - hopefully the cheese sticks are expensive to deter people from buying them, but I still saw at least one person, a guy, who bought two of them today, plus french fries and the most expensive, sugary drink you can buy (We dont sell sodas, but flavored milk and pint drinks like lemonade, several kinds of tea, slushies, and other sugary choices are available).

How can people afford to pay five dollars a day to eat so unhealthy?

Then again...let me tell you what I got :)

Okay, so the platter today was 'Breakfast for Lunch.' This is one piece of 'french toast,' 4 'sausage' links, and a hash brown stick, with syrup. The sausage links aren't worth it, so we skipped platter and the mystery meat and opted for a breaded chicken sandwich.

This comes up often for lunch, and I usually get about halfway through the sandwich, and then it sort of starts to disgust me (maybe I'm being a snob, but a lot of the times our mantra about school meat is 'don't think about it, don't look at it, just aim for your mouth.') and I wrap it up and feel bad about tossing half of it away....

For sides (which come with the sandwich for no added cost) I got the hashbrown stick, because the tater tots/potato items at school are usually pretty good, and I was right. It was especially good since it was the first day of school, I think. They didn't have any fruit today, just pudding, a grape juice cup, and sugary yogurt, so I got the broccoli/cauliflower, and it was okay. A little mushy, but okay.

The kicker is that I went for the chocolate milk! I don't drink regular school milk, I always get the chocolate...it just tastes better! Probably because I drink 1% at home, and they don't have that at school. Most of the time I'll have water with me and just drink that, but today I sprung for the milk, since it was also included in the cost of the sandwich and the water would have been an extra 90 cents.

Anyway, that's my breakdown.
I was disappointed in the lack of fruit. The best time of year to get fruit is the very last week of school in June, because that's when strawberries are in season here and the school gets some really, really great ones. Like, better than anything else they serve all year.
Sometimes they'll have whole apples, too. But it's sporadic.

I haven't gotten a chance to plan my lunch for tomorrow, so I'll probably be doing that before bed. Right now I have to make dinner and eat before heading to color guard practice till 9 tonight.

The first day was pretty good. Tomorrow's picture day!

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Monday, August 30, 2010

Cookout Leftovers

Today I made a lunch with bits and pieces of what we had yesterday with the family. There are lots of leftovers!


Inside:

  • the unhealthiest mac and cheese you will ever find! It's so good though :)
  • bologna and cheese cubes on toothpicks
  • baby carrots, watermelon balls, strawberries, grapes, and some broccoli

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This is my post for this week's What's For Lunch Wednesday - check out everyone else's here!

Muffin Tin Monday: Numbers?

I will try and defend this as a numbers-themed muffin tin monday, I promise ;)


  • 1 leftover brownie bite from the cookout yesterday
  • 2 pieces of apple
  • 3 parts of a red beet egg
  • 4 pieces of graham cracker, plus 2 mini chocolate chips for eyes
  • a random cinnamon toast flower with pretzel stick stem and peach leaves (five parts altogether)

Check out other muffin tin meals here!

I'll be making bento lunches today, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday is back to school shopping day, and Thursday is the first day of school!

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3 days till school!