Lunchtime, in a galaxy not so far away...

STAR WARS 

(cue really loud, awesome John Williams music)...

Episode I

PSEUDO-MUFFIN TIN MEAL: STAR WARS STYLE

One of my favorite young Jedi in the whole galaxy sure did love his lunch today!

We just had to try some of the fun birthday presents we got Daddy this week! And try out some of Mommy's Christmas presents! Here's some close-ups of what we had:

Star Wars sandwiches, french fries light-sabers, and blueberry yogurt Yoda's Dagobah swamp slime.

For the sandwiches, I used the Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma (which are on-sale right now) to stamp & cut the bread.

Then, I used one of my new Christmas presents: Americolor Food Marker Writers- 10 Color Pack

 These pens are SO awesome and were perfect for making the Star Wars sammies look a little more fun!!
The little Yoda pick & muffin tin cup are also courtesy of a Williams-Sonoma sale!

And, today, I put the muffin tin yogurt and everything else in one of our new Easy Lunch Boxes! A very fun lunch to be sure! I'm Lovin' It!

As always, head over to Muffin Tin Mom to get lots of additional fun food ideas! 

Christmas Muffin Tin Meal

We kicked off Christmas week this morning with a special muffin tin breakfast! 

There was cheesy Christmas stars (cheese cut out with a star cookie cutter), snow (shredded coconut & a few "snow balls"-cream cheese with coconut), yogurt with snowflake sprinkles, an apple Christmas tree with sprinkle ornaments, and the feature of this breakfast was of course, Rudolph the Red-Nose Waffle Reindeer!  

To make Rudolph, I used about 1 and 1/2 waffles.  The cuttings from the face were used for ears and I cut his antlers from the second waffle.  Eyes are cream cheese dots with chocolate chips and his nose is the end cut off of a Mike & Ike candy. Syrup for dipping was in the muffin cup underneath.

For the tree, I just cut a thick slice off an apple and carved the tree shape (the apple wasn't big enough to use my tree cookie cutter).  Then, just put on some fun Christmas sprinkles.

Rudolph has been of great interest to Big Brother this year, so his muffin tin was a HUGE hit! :)

  

I so love making these special meals for him!  This one only took about 5 extra minutes and was so worth that extra time!

As always, for lots more fun food inspiration for your kiddos, check out Muffin Tin Mom!

Mini Pies

I'm so excited about my newest muffin tin discovery....

...mini pies!

I was in charge of making the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving this year.  This berry pie was the first pie I had ever made--and that was only about 6 months ago.  Needless to say then, I don't have a lot of pie making experience.

After getting out all my ingredients and whipping up my filling, I discovered that I only have 1 pie plate (did I mention, I don't have a lot of experience)--kind of presents a problem when needing to bake two pumpkin pies.   I had no idea what to do and did not have time to head out to buy a pie plate.  So, I thought, why couldn't I make individual pies in a muffin tin?!  So, I tried it...and it worked!!

Here's what I did:

-Cut the pie crust dough with large biscuit cutters.  I managed to get enough for ten from one pie crust.

- Place the cut pie crust circles into a greased muffin tin (I sprayed with Pam for Baking). 

- Fill each "well" almost completely full

-Bake (the cooking time will be about 10-20minutes shorter--I recommend just watching after a while to make sure they aren't getting overdone. (For pumpkin, I still did the normal thing of baking for about 15 minutes at the higher temperature and then lowered to 350).  

- Cool on a rack for a few minutes (about 10) before trying to remove from muffin tins.  Once slightly cooled, remove--and enjoy your cute little creations!

I can't wait to try this with berry pies!  These will definitely be making a reappearance for Christmas!!  How fun would a whole assortment of different mini pies be?!  And, I think these would make adorable little treats to wrap up in some cute packaging & give to others--a little different than cookies this time of year! 

Let me know if you try to make/have made other mini pies!!

Thanksgiving Themed Muffin Tin Meal

We kicked off Thanksgiving week with a little themed muffin tin meal tonight.  

As usual, Big Brother loved it! It was a rather blustery day around here and I was making chicken soup and sandwiches for dinner.  So, I thought this would make Big Brother have a little more fun with with it.

Here's what dinner included (starting top left, continuing clockwise):

-cheese pumpkins & pumpkin pretzels, a turkey sandwich, craisins, triscuits, chicken soup, and a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.

The star of the meal was of course Mr. Turkey Sandwich...

To make: cut two slices of bread into a large circle for the body.  With the scraps, cut an oblong shape for the head.  Make a sandwich of your choice with the large circles.  Then, using butter, attach the head to the body.  Make eyes (I carved them from black olives), a beak (cut triangle of cheese stuck on with a little butter), and a wattle (I cut up the pimento out of a green olive).
For the feathers, cut three baby carrots into thin slices (I got 3-4 from each carrot) and stick in the middle of the sandwich.  One pretzel stick cut in half will give you the legs! 


A fun start to Thanksgiving week in which there are sure to be some more terrific turkey activities completed!  Thinking that serving up leftover Thanksgiving foods like this and  making these with leftover turkey would be pretty cute too!!


*You can always finds LOADS of great muffin tin meal inspiration at the Muffin Tin Mom.

Leaf Theme Lunch

To go along with our fall leaf theme this past week, I made Big Brother a leaf/tree themed muffin tin lunch! 

Included (starting top left going clockwise) were leaf shape pickles, a leaf shaped sandwich, salad leaves, little broken tree branches (as Big Brother called them), leaf shaped pears, and ants (raisins) on fallen tree logs. 

Big Brother was quite excited by all of it and loved telling me what everything was (like the little broken branches)...until we got to the "ants on a log".  He wasn't sure what it was so when I told him it was "ants on a long", he said, "oh no Mommy, I don't want to eat ants".  LOL!  Too funny.  After I explained they were just pretend ants and are really raisins, that's what he ate first! 

I really enjoy coming up with these theme lunches as it is really an exercise in creativity for me trying to come up with foods that fit the theme or foods that I can "shape" to fit it. In this one, I was most pleased with the pear leaves!  To do it, I just cut the pear into sections (like with an apple). Then, cut the wedges into leaf shapes and made some slices in the skin to resemble leaves.  Simple and effective! 

As always, for more muffin tin meal ideas, head over to Muffin Tin Mom.

Halloween Muffin Tin Meal

 Kicking off Halloween week with a spooky muffin tin meal! :)  

Big Brother is much more interested in and excited about Halloween this year--he's loving all the fun crafts, decorations, and foods.  He thinks it's all pretty fun and was super excited about his Halloween muffin tin lunch! :) 

 

He even enjoyed slurping up some "muddy worms".  Mmmmm!

 So, here's what our Halloween tin consisted of (clockwise starting upper left):

Cheese pumpkin, fruity bat, ghost banana, worms in the mud, monster eyeballs, and witch fingers! 
 Here's what I did:

• pumpkin: sliced a piece of cheese a little thick; then carved a pumpkin from the slice
• bat: took a grape fruit leather (any dark color would work) and carved out the shape of a bat; used a couple of large circle sprinkles for eyes
• ghost:  see directions in this post (this one turned out much better than the first go 'round)
• worms in mud: one hot dog cut into long strips; then boiled in a little water in the microwave until the strips started to curl; placed in baked beans (mud) 
• monster eyeballs: green olives
• witch fingers: use a little cream cheese to stick an almond slice to a baby carrot 

The lunch was such a hit and I was quite pleased with how it turned out!  Usually when I think of fun Halloween foods, only sugary ones come to mind.  So, I was especially pleased that I managed it with no candy or desserty treats, as I think there will be plenty of those this week anyway! 


What fun foods do you make for Halloween?

Muffin Tin Meals

So, I've recently discovered the easiest and cutest little idea for changing up mealtime with the kiddos--Muffin Tin Meals!  At Muffin Tin Mom, every Monday is "Muffin Tin Monday"--where other moms link up their muffin tin meals from the week.  Some weeks are themes, though it certainly doesn't have to be.  (You can read all about Muffin Tin Mondays here).  Creativity abounds and I've seen so many cute ideas for serving food.  I definitely need to get my hands on some cute cutters! :)

So, needless to say, I just had to try muffin tin meals with Big Brother.  Although this week is technically no-theme week, I decided to do different shapes (something we're working on anyway). 

He was so excited when I set his tin down and then we went over what all the shapes were. 

Clockwise (starting top left): Triscuit Thin Crisps triangles, string cheese circles, heartbeet cookie, peach squares, olive ovals (Big Brother deemed them ovals instead of circles), and  ham squares.

It was fun finding foods that already had their own shapes.  Then, I just cut the string cheese into circles and the lunch meat ham into squares.  Easy peasy and he ate every single thing!!   
So, if you're looking for a fun way to change up meal time, definitely check out Muffin Tin Mondays!!