I dropped my kid off for his first morning of before care at school, and he hardly noticed I was on my way out the door. The aide stopped me: was it ok if he had a snack? She rattled the box at me. Little Debby Oatmeal Cookie Sandwiches filled with some sort of marshmallow creme.

Erm. No. Really. You’re too kind.

So this evening, I made up a muffin. Want the recipe?

School Morning Muffins, by Inside Motherhood

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together

• 3 cups light, whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups quick cook oats
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt

Stir in:

• 1 cup dried currants

In another bowl, whisk together:

• 3/4 cups orange juice concentrate, defrosted
• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cups vegetable oil
• 2 cups very ripe, mashed bananas
• 1 1/5 tsp. Vanilla extract

With a spatula or wooden spoon, mix wet ingredients into dry until just combined. Don’t over do it! Pour batter into greased muffin tin. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.

Let your kid eat a muffin without feeling too guilty!

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Kate over at Babylune has done it again. She has issued a challenge to us all to eat healthy by sampling our way through the alphabet’s fruits and vegetables.

She has some great ideas on how to turn this into an exciting learning opportunity for your kids, too. Veggie charts! Food pyramids! And perhaps a reduction in Blogger Butt. I’d like some of that, please?

*runs off to do a bellydance excersise DVD*

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Having a hard time getting your kid to eat vegetables? I have a secret for you: soup.

Here’s a very simple, delicious way to get some of the good stuff into your child every day. As we say in Corsica and Paris every year, ‘Mange ta soupe!’

Leek Soup

• 4 leeks, washed and coarsely cut, just to the pale green
• 4 medium potatoes (I’m particularly fond of Yukon Golds for this recipe)
• 1 butternut, acorn or other winter squash
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ lengths
• Vegetable or chicken broth to cover (about 48 oz)

In large soup pot, combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until vegetables are tender (30 – 45 minutes). With immersion blender, puree all ingredients. Serve with sour cream, creme fraiche, or half and half, salt and pepper to taste.

 

Tada! Serve with some wedges of cheese and a good bread and you’ve got a meal in and of itself. If you start with leeks and potatoes, you can experiment with basically anything. Our current favorite is a few bunches of watercress.

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I used to have imagination when it came to food. Really I did. I used to be a pro! But I must have given my kid all my smarts, cause when I stare at that refrigerator every night, I can’t come up with much in the way of inspiration for my kid’s school lunch. I wish I were as dedicated a lunchbox mama as Vegan Lunchbox. Ah, well. She rocks. I am merely trying to keep food in my kid’s football-shaped box that will make him a happy, healthy boy.

Unfortunately, anything I pack him from my ‘fridge will be a thousand times more healthy than the public school lunches… read The School Lunch Test from the New York Times and you might never let your kid eat at school again. There is something wrong with our eating habits when a company thinks its worth the money to produce and market an antacid for kids, designed specifically to ease discomfort brought on by ‘an overindulgence in food and drink’. ICK. So I perservere. What are your kids’ favorite packed lunches, beyond PBnJ’s or turkey sandwiches?

The King of Everything loves:

• The Middle Eastern lunch, with baba ganoush (what we called moutabel when we lived over there) and hummous and a variety of mini pitas and veggies to dip. A bottle of drinkable yogurt and some dates for dessert.
• Cheese and veggie filled tortellinis with a white or red sauce. They are tasty enough room temperature, though I do send it over in a thermos from time to time.
• Pancakes. Yes, breakfast for lunch is a special treat around our house. I make them from scratch, keep a batch of the dried ingredients mixed up and waiting just for the eggs, butter and milk. Pancakes are easily frozen, so I usually have some on hand for a quick fix. I add oatmeal or wheat germ to our pancakes, and make them with white, whole wheat flour, millet flour, and other high protein grains. When he has them for lunch, he gets pancake sandwiches, with blueberry preserves in between.
• mini hors d’oeuvres. Itty bitty burritos and taquitos, or mini quiches. If your kid eats seafood and no one in his class is going to keel over because of it… mini crabcakes!!
• falafel. Yup, falafel. The mixes are pretty good, and the kid loves them.
• Fritattas. A rich, egg pizza concoction with as many vegetables as I can sneak in there.
• A hollowed-out apple with tuna salad stuffed in the middle is a fun lunch, though hard to eat for little ones.
• Beans and rice. Why not? It’s easy! It’s good, and it’s good at room temperature.
• Build your own snack/sandwiches — cheaper than Lunchables, you just slice up cheese and deli meats into bite-sized pieces, add some whole grain crackers, a yogurt, some fruit, some carrot sticks, and you’ve got lunch.

Remember, snacks shouldn’t be something that gives kids the Three O’Clock Crazies. We do apples with a dip, either peanut butter or vanilla yogurt, or some other, healthy snack that isn’t full of refined sugars.

And if you’re ever stuck when you get home, there’s no reason you can’t eat breakfast for dinner (another secret: when I was a kid, my mom would sometimes let me eat apple pie for breakfast, in a bowl full of milk, and I loved it…. so relax a little and have some fun).

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