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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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!

A Trip to the Market

I have to say, the Market at 11 AM is a lot busier than at 3PM when we normally go. It took us almost five minutes just to find a parking space, whereas we can usually find one or find someone pulling out almost as soon as we get there.
What we got this week:

• Celery
• 2 heads of broccoli
• Cauliflower
• A dozen red beet eggs
• Butcher Bologna
• A block of Cheddar cheese
• Organic Strawberries
• Half a watermelon
• Blueberries
• Organic red grapes for 99 cents a pound! For us, this is cheap even for grapes that aren't organic. We were shocked, but they look good and taste great.

We're having sort of an 'end-of-the-summer' cookout this weekend with family, which is why we got the bologna and cheese and some extra eggs, along with the watermelon.

The strawberries are just for me! We only got a little box :( some of the boxes didn't look so good. They were either very over-ripe or growing some of that fuzz strawberries can get. I guess we have to expect that since they come all the way across the country (Strawberries are only in season here in June, I think).

It was a good trip - but we have a ton of fruit now! The next couple bentos might be fruit-heavy.

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6 days till school starts!

Last Day of Band Camp

Today's our official 'last day' of camp - we take pictures this morning, practice all afternoon, and have our first real performance tonight at 7, so it will be a longggg day.

Half of a sub, that was part of a band fundraiser, 2 red beet eggs both cut in half and stacked, salad, broccoli, and half a peach.

I'm also taking some apple...

We don't get red apples very often, and the checkered pattern doesn't really show up on the yellow ones, so I thought I would take advantage of this!

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The No-Name Bento

It has been a long day, my brain is on the frits (fritz? Is this even a word? That's how bad it is) and so today is a no-name bento.

My lunch, on top of a department store ad (woops. I woke up later than usual.)

Top: Turkey/Romaine/Cheddar scraps roll-ups. Note to self: More romaine next time. We've been testing out different brands of turkey, and I don't particularly like this one! Peach, Broccoli, Red Beet Egg
Bottom: Leftover pasta that wouldn't fit in yesterday's lunch, salad.
Spaghetti sauce and dressing on the side.

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8 days till school starts! Where did this summer go?!?

Another Meatless Lunch

I'm out of baguette bread, and the idea of eating a wrap wasn't floating my boat for today, so I decided to have pasta as a main course instead.


Top: Penne (with spaghetti sauce on the side)
Bottom: Carrots and broccoli, the last of the bisquick biscuits, a red beet egg wrapped with mini cupcake liners, a quarter of a peach (ate the rest for breakfast) and the leftover pieces of cheese from shapes that I've cut out over the past week or two.

HOT MESS.

^^ That is what our guard instructor teasingly yells when we fail.

Today's lunch was a HOT MESS. It was the first lunch that I tried to use my new teensy weensy box from Jlist. Needless to say, it was a fail. The girls at lunch thought the box was cute, but it's obvious to me that I'm going to have to adapt a lot of my 'lunch staples' in order to make things fit better aesthetically.

And without any more stalling....



Inside the hot mess:

• the usual turkey/romaine/mayo on the last baguette bread in the freezer
• three cherries
• salad with broccoli
• red beet egg and part of a leftover cheese stick. We've been eating junk for dinner lately...I try to make up for it with my lunches, but every now and again, some leftovers find their way in.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better looking.

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New Bento Box!

No food in this post, sorry.

Today the bento box that I ordered from Jlist came, all wrapped up in Japanese newspaper! I wasn't expecting to get it until sometime next week, as their site says shipping can take 2-5 weeks, but it arrived 12 days after they shipped it all the way from Japan, 16 days total from the day I ordered it.

Of course I snapped some pictures, and I'm actually holding the items in a few of them just to show size and proportion.

First impression: WHOA. It's tiny. I know it holds 510 ml, which is basically the same as the tupperware I started with originally...but WOW. I guess the trick is just to pack tightly, and take dense foods. I can see a lot more pasta/rice in my future (not hard for the girl who loves carbs). Any similar experiences?

I also got 3 cute little snack boxes, which will come in handy. I recently found out that while I have to leave my house around 7:15 in order to get to school, I don't eat lunch until 12:45, and I'm definitely not used to going that long between meals!

The next week or so will give me just enough time to play around with these before the start of the school year :)

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Chick'n Nugget Meatless Bento

The main attraction: 4 Morningstar 'Chick'n' nuggets. I was eating them cold here, and I have to say I think they're better cold than they are warm (I had to test one the night before to make sure I liked them before packing in a band camp bento)

Other treats:

• bisquick biscuits
• the last frozen mac n cheese cup (on my to do list this weekend!)
• mashed potato balls? not sure what else to call them, just fried mashed potatoes
• red beet egg, salad, broccoli, carrots

This is my meatless bento for the week :) and also my What's For Lunch Wednesday entry! Check out the other lunches here!

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