Pancakes. Breakfast for lunch at its finest. My basic goal for this lunch was to make it a little fun, without making it a lot of extra work for me. And what's more fun than tiny pancakes?

I made pancakes last week, and I always make extra.  Making some mini pancakes is super easy. All you have to do is take your regular pancake batter and thin it with just a little extra milk, and put it in some kind of squirt bottle or icing bag, or really anything that you can squeeze equal amounts out of.  

If you're really paying attention, you might know that I usually pack breakfast for lunch on Wednesday. But I'm mixing it up a little this week, and I'll be packing the breakfast for lunch tomorrow.  Instead today's lunch is an easy snack box - or what some people call a homemade "lunchable". For this type of lunch I just try to focus on the basic groups - protein, vegetable, fruit - and make sure they get a little some of each. 

As I mentioned in yesterday's lunch post - my theme this week is about simple and easy. Quesadillas are one of my favorite fall back lunch ideas. They are easy to make and easy to eat. Personally I love quesadillas that are filled with all kinds of stuff.  But kids are simpletons by nature, so I keep theirs more basic. 

They are also easy to make ahead - I often have a bag of leftover quesadillas in my fridge, and my boy will go looking to grab a slice for an easy snack.  So if you are making one, why not make extra, and save them for snack. 

Schedule

If I have leftovers from the week I try to send leftovers for lunch on Friday. It helps me get the fridge cleaned out for the weekend, and makes for very easy lunch packing.  Last night I made a big pot of macaroni and cheese for the kids for dinner. They usually devour it, but we had been at a holiday party earlier and I think they all had too many snacks. So there was tons of mac & cheese leftover. Perfect for lunch! 

Schedule

I've done a lot of quesadillas lately, because they are quick and easy, so today I thought I would try to mix it up just a little. Tortilla pinwheels are super easy to make and you can put basically anything in them.  You just put a thin layer of your fillings on a flour tortilla, roll it up as tight as you can, and slice.  I like to put a little skewer through them to keep them from falling apart when my kids toss their lunches around. 

Schedule

It's "breakfast for lunch" Wednesday!  But it's been so dark and rainy in Seattle this week, that I felt like a nice hot lunch was needed.  So lunch was a nice hot bowl of oatmeal, with a few extra little snacky things on the side. 

Schedule

This is just simple snack box of little nibbles - like a homemade lunchable. But I realized that I hadn't been using any of my cutters in a long time, so I thought I'd break out a couple and just cut the cheese into some pretty flowers.  It doesn't take more than an extra minute or two, but it makes the lunch look just a little more fun.

Schedule

Schedule

Listen, I'm no sanctimommy. I'm not even going to pretend that we eat like this 365 days a year. I'm working hard to do the best I can, as much as I can.  But even I sometimes need to take a break. 

We're living in the real world over here.  I try to feed my kids the healthiest food I can get them to eat most of the time.  But when we are on vacation, we eat like we're on vacation. I mean hey, it's my vacation too, I'm not interested in being the food police. I want to enjoy myself, and I want them to have fun too. They get burgers and fries and milkshakes. We order off the kids menu and they get to choose. They've had goldfish crackers, and those little snack size bags of cheez-its, and chocolate covered packaged granola bars, and those sandwich crackers that may or may not have real cheese in them. There were even a couple bowls of Fruit Loops from the hotel breakfast buffet (which I'm happy to say they didn't actually much of). There's a lot of stuff that I won't buy at home, but when we are on vacation I think relaxing the rules is just fine - it's two weeks out of the entire year and I don't think it's going to kill them.