Excuse me while I cough up this lung.

Well, I've caught the cold everyone at school has been flinging around. What's my prize? Being sick.

However, there's no better time than when you're sitting in bed crying out 'woe is me' to update tha blog. ;)

Here's a lunch from...Monday. I think.

I'd been feeling icky since last Thursday, thus the abundance of turkey wraps/sandwiches and pasta (comfort fooooddddd) plus a chocolate chip cookie just for kicks.

• turkey wrap
• grocery store-bought pasta salad
• grapes and strawberries
• goldfish, red beet egg, cookie.

Not too shabby, I suppose.

Getting whacked with the sick stick did not throw off my sense of time, so since it is wednesday, this can be my What's For Lunch Wednesday post.

Go see all the other lunches here!

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TGIF lunch

Friday's lunch

Used up the last of the turkey to make the wrap - and it was gooood! red beet egg, carrot sticks, goldfish, macaroni from the freezer stash, and salad.

Quick and easy!

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It's one of those days.

It's one of those days where you keep trying to talk to your Chinese teacher in French, but then you can't remember how to say anything in French 3. Pre-calculus makes no sense, Chemistry is frustrating, and Global Studies makes you want to pull your hair out. (Thank you for teaching me what a mountain is in a 10th grade college prep class, I had forgotten they were pointy.)

deep breaths.... :}

Needless to say, lunch was a welcome distraction.

Turkey sandwiches with little heart cookies on top (cut like that, scraps went into my dad's mouth), carrot sticks, red beet egg, grapes, pasta salad from the grocery store.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

XX

Speaking of tomorrow - hey, this is my What's for lunch Wednesday post :) Check out all the others here!

Ahhh, pizza. Greasy, delicious, pizza.

I wish I was one of those people who look at all junk food/fast food and go ew, why would you put that in your body? There are certain things I could genuinely say that about, but for the most part, I was raised on chicken nuggets and delivery pizza twice a month ;)

So we got pizza this weekend, and I just had to take the extra piece for lunch. Yum!

Really simple lunch. I've had next to no time for planning this week, so everything is going in my green-lidded sandwich box, all simple, quicky and easy things.

leftover pizza (cut in strips and stacked), salad with broccoli, grapes, turkey roll-ups/flowers?

Now, onto Chemistry homework :) Factor labeling, anyone?

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Fruit, fruit, fruit

Late post! I haven't been home since I left for school this morning about 14 hours ago because there was a football game tonight! We lost 31 to 8. Ugh. And on top of that, the band was playing like a hot mess, so the color guard looked like a hot mess...it wasn't a good night! But we did get walking tacos at the snack bar, because you basically have to eat junk at a football game ;)

Anyway, since that has nothing to do with bento, here's my lunch from today:

pancakes leftover from dinner, turkey roll ups, broccoli with some cheddar

grapes, apple, strawberries

We were surprised the strawberries stayed this good so long...we normally get fruit from the market, and it gets ruined within the first 4-5 days, but since I'm in school we don't go to the market anymore and the strawberries from the grocery store have been perfect since last Sunday....Even if they are more expensive.

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Lunch

Ah! I woke up later than usual this morning, so this is a quick, on the go, one shoe on one shoe off lunch :)

Top: Strawberry jam/bread rolls, apple, broccoli, red beet egg
Bottom: Grapes, salad, goldfish

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My Faux School Lunch Bento

In response to the '...why do you eat so healthy?' questions from friends, I decided to make some typical school lunch type foods. Of course, school would never get the budget for chickenless 'chicken' nuggets, but still. A girl can dream.

So this is my 'let's cheat and have chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, and tater tots all in one meal!' bento.

Top: Salad with tater tots (HOLY COW TATER TOTS!)

Bottom: 'Chicken' Nuggets (Morningstar), carrot sticks, broccoli and red beet egg, mac n cheese

I was SO excited when Ore-Ida frozen food was on sale this week at the store, because I have been dying to get my hands on these 'ABC' tater tots. I had dreams of spelling out my name, making an ABC school-themed bento.... But there was only one letter A in the whole bag. Just one. I had to use an upside down V for the other A in my name.

And THEN, I got my tots out of the fridge this morning to put my lunch together (after baking all five letters last night) and found that my R was missing. I was flabbergasted, but had plenty of time to make another....Except there were no more letter Rs in the bag! So I made a B quickly and cut it into 'R' shape.

There are about three Qs, some Zs and Xs...but only one A and one R?

Now I have no clue what words I'm going to make...I could do XYZ instead of ABC :P

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Ah! I almost forgot about What's For Lunch Wednesday! Check out all the lunches here.

The Giraffe with the Broken Neck

Only semi-literally.

Lately I've seen a couple of cute bentos with shapes...but I'm not much for decorating, or free-handing the shapes I don't have in cookie cutters.

But giraffes kept popping up (is that how you make giraffe plural?) so I just thought, what the heck? even if it's not great.

And it wasn't! I wish I would have decorated it better, and between cutting the shapes last night and putting my lunch together this morning the giraffe's neck broke! Ouch. Anyway, final result:

Excuse the bad picture!

Top: Grilled Chicken/lettuce wrap with the cheese giraffe on top, broccoli, red beet egg, checkered apple.

Middle: grapes

Bottom: the other half of the wrap with a slice of strawberry, sliced grapes, salad

A little up close of the giraffe:

So. I don't think shapes are 'my thing.' Maybe I'll just practice! (or get more cookie cutters ;) )

My friends think it's weird that I eat 'healthy' (most of them were having the school offered Domino's pizza today, and trying to dab off the extra grease with napkins. no thanks.) so tomorrow I'm taking morningstar 'chicken' nuggets and a little surprise, for me :)

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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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