Author name: amy

Hey there, hope your having a wonderful start to your day. I was asked by a reader to post some of the things that we make for lunches and I paused for a moment……..hmmmmm   we don’t make anything pinterest worthy or incredible, we stick to the basics.

I was hoping this past week to have these wonderful photos of what we eat for lunch, but when lunch time rolled around, there wasn’t anything exciting to snap:)

I think us as Mothers, think that we need to have these photo-perfect looking meals so that we can show how great that we eat all of the time.  But the reality is, we only eat that way once in a while.  It is a rarity that we have fresh fruit and vegetables at our home every single day.  Yes, at the beginning of our shopping weeks, we have an abundance and the first few days lunches will be “special” but that food gets eaten up and we go back to a simple meal.

For our family, we aren’t out doing hard, heavy work so I don’t prepare an elaborate meal.  If we are home, most of the time it is leftovers.  I almost always make a large quantity of food for dinner and we eat a lot of it for lunch.  What we do when we don’t have leftovers and we are home during the day is to make a large batch of black beans and rice or lentil rice casserole.  

These two meals are super easy to make and can sit in the refrigerator and be heated as needed. Some of the children like them on tortillas with lettuce, cheese, salsa, and sour cream/ranch.  They are an inexpensive, hearty filler meal.

For the days that it is nice, our goal around here is to get out the door and be to the lake at lunch time.  My children are older now and we don’t have to have lunch at 11:30 everyday anymore.  We typically have a later breakfast, because they sleep in during the summer and then we pack up our lunches and head to the lake for the afternoon.

What we have been making this past week for lunch is:

Lunchmeat on bread, watermelon, cucumbers, snack crackers–we did that for two days.

Then we ran out of lunch meat so we went with peanut butter and jelly on bread:) , bananas, cucumbers, and some pretzels—then we ran out of bread:)

I am a firm believer in NOT running to the store for every single thing. I don’t want my husband who is working all day long to have to stop and pick up a loaf of bread(even though he would willingly, the point is that it is a waste) If you have some alternative then use that.  That is exactly what we did.

The next day we mixed up some canned chicken and miracle whip and made chicken salad on crackers.  We took bananas, cucumbers, and pretzels.

Then we had no pretzels or snack type things so we popped some popcorn in the morning and made two huge batches of white cheddar popcorn and caramel corn.  I made my caramel corn homemade like we do during the holidays but I made more popcorn so that the pieces weren’t coated as well. This stretched the caramel and it was a perfect mix. We took three ice cream buckets to the lake this day and every single one was empty when we came home.  BINGO! I found another low cost, simple snack to take.   We also did chicken salad and crackers and some did peanut butter and crackers.  We have a lot of canned chicken so this is working.  I also took some homemade popsicles and stuck them down in the bottom of the cooler.  That was a nice treat.

One child made her own salad each day and took that with some chick peas for her protein.

For myself, I eat a hearty breakfast–granola or oatmeal so my lunches are small. If I don’t have anything ” fun” to take, I almost always grab one of my seed bars from the freezer to eat.  Again, I have large batches of this in the freezer, I need to utilize what I have and eat it! If I am still hungry, I snack on the fresh fruit or vegetables that I brought.

We keep it simple.  I believe in gathering up your fragments.  Our pantry almost always has canned chicken, saltine crackers, peanut butter & jelly, and chick peas.  If we were completely out of everything else we could have any of the above for lunch. Myself, I eat the chickpeas.  My favorite is pita bread, chick peas, feta cheese, cucumbers, and some sweet chili sauce.  I keep my pita in the freezer and pull one out each day.  If we were out of all of that and could not get more groceries then I would be making one of the rice recipes and putting them in plastic containers to take to the lake.  We have buckets full of dried beans, lentils, and rice.

The popcorn is something we are going to make more regularly this summer.  We have 50lbs in buckets and we haven’t really made much this past year, so now it is time to use it up.  Aldis sells the  popcorn flavorings –we like ranch and white cheddar.  The caramel corn is very easy to make and tastes delicious.

That is all you need. Simple, basic foods.  Don’t stress out over lunches.  Look around in your pantry and see what types of foods you have and what you can make.

I hope this inspires you to gather up your fragments.  Have a blessed day!

 

 

Hello everyone, hope your having a great end of the week.  I wanted to write something about what we have been doing lately.  I don’t have pictures, not anything exciting to write about just that life has been disconnected from digital and it is nice.  I recommend you do that as well.

It has been busy at the end of the school year, we finished up and took our state required tests.  Some of those questions, I am like what?!?!!?!?  Poor children these days, to measure a child’s success at how they answer a standardized test question is beyond me. I had to do a lot of mom encouraging during that time and say, “Hey, we don’t measure how well you do by what your results are on this test. Everyone learns differently. You can do poorly on this test and then become a genius in a certain area of life.  This is just what the government says, everyone should be at.  The masses.”  Hmmmmm…the masses……well I think our family has already gone over the line of what the “masses” should be like.  So we are good:)  But still tough on a child.  We did it, and they passed just fine. I hold onto the test for any inquiries by the state, if ever.  Just disappointed that we even have to go through that.

Then I finished up writing and looking through hundreds of book recommendations for the children next year.  So much, I am thankful to be able to do it and then I will have an easier time during the school year when it is busier.  After I get over my “feeling like I need to disconnect,” I will go get a ream of paper and start printing off everything and do a post on how I homeschooled everyone for FREE again this year.  I am just not ready to do that yet.

I have two older children that have been working at a local Christian children’s camp.  They love it!  It is one of those elite camps where it is privatized and very expensive to attend.  Think The Parent Trap type camp.  It is pretty awesome, we got to walk through and see everything.  It will be a fun summer for them.  Our daughter worked their last year and loved it and this is her second year doing it. My son is working most everyday as well and loving that.  Always good to make some income, especially at 16.  So my days are driving him there everyday and picking him up.  It is only five minutes away which is nice, he is saving up for a scooter to buy so he can be on his own.

Then I have been busy helping my husband with our sign business. That is getting busier and where it is requiring me to do more computerized things, so I have been devoting my extra time to that, not to blogging:)

Then we got a red boned coon dog a couple of months ago and she is ………..let’s just say busy.  She likes to chew. She has destroyed four dog beds and countless other blanket options.  We also have adopted 6 kittens.  Am I crazy?!?! Ummmmm…..well living down south I have heard that cats like to keep away snakes and rodents. So I am okay with 6 cats:) But trying to train the dog that a kitten is NOT FOOD, has been fun.  She is learning and they all now can sleep together without worrying that she is going to take a bite out of one.

Our weather has finally gotten nice here in western North Carolina.  We had a rainy spring and it was much cooler than usually.  We live by a private lake and since we live here, we get the benefits of being able to swim there.  Which is so nice.  That is our go-to everyday place.  We pack our lunch, and head to the lake everyday for 3-4 hours depending upon when the children want to go home.  This makes me get up in the morning, take care of chores, make dinner, and then we are gone.  It is a nice change from having to be doing something everyday.  This is the reason for being disconnected.  Something nice about just going, sitting in the sunshine, watching the children play like children should be playing, and swimming in the cool water.  It is like a dream. I think back to my days of being stuck inside all day long with little ones and my life was so busy back then just with the daily routine of life.  It is nice that everyone is older, and we can just go to the lake everyday without much planning and have a great time. For you momma’s out there still “stuck at home”  there is HOPE!

That is my update, not a whole lot of exciting, but it is exciting to me to be able to say, lets just disconnect and have fun.  No phones, no laptops, no internet, just us. Try it today…………………………….it will make you feel like a dream….don’t worry reality is still there and it will still be there when you are ready to go back at it:)  Enjoy and be blessed!