Uncle Bill's lunch

One of my mom's sisters, Aunt Susan, sent me a picture when I first started making treats for Brian's lunch. She surprised my Uncle Bill one day with this awesome lunch! I wish I could have seen the look on his face! :o)

Susan, and my mom's other sister, Aunt Jayne, have so many of the same mannerisms that my mom had. I've only seen Aunt Jayne once since mom's funeral because we haven't made it back down to that part of Florida lately, but I've seen Aunt Susan on several occasions. Every time I see her, I see glimpses of my mom and it's like parts of her are still alive. I wonder what my mom would think if she saw Brian's lunches.....She'd probably think I had lost my marbles.....but I imagine she'd come up with a few of her own ideas as well to share. :o)

Nemo Chocolate Transfer

Yes, I went a little crazy today! :o) It's pajama day so I had some extra time. My friend's sister was selling some of her son's clothes that he had grown out of and I bought quite a few things, one of which was a Nemo Halloween costume. :o)

I decided to made a Nemo treat for Brian's lunch. I've done a few chocolate transfers for my cakes and I thought this would be the best way to get something that actually looked like Nemo. In case there are any other crazy people out there and you want to give this a try, here's how I do it. You'll need wax or parchment paper, the picture you're copying, tape, something to tape the wax paper to (I use a cake board circle), paintbrushes, toothpicks, chocolate candy melts (I use Wilton's because they sell the different color chocolate and it makes life that much easier), something to melt your chocolate in (I use ceramic melting cups but small microwavable bowls will work just fine), a microwave, and some patience. :o)

Tape your picture to your cake board (or other flat surface) and cut a piece of wax paper bigger than your picture to lay on top. Tape the wax paper down, making sure it's flat and secure.








Place your chocolate candy melts in your melting cup. Make sure to work with one color at a time because I found the chocolate solidifies pretty quickly. I started with the black (I'm not sure if you can always find black.....They were carrying it since it's about to be Halloween). Place 4 chocolate discs in your cup and melt in the microwave at 30% power at 10 second intervals. This is what the directions calls for....I'll be honest, it was taking forever so I microwaved for 30 seconds at a time. Keep stirring every time you take the cup out and once you have a somewhat fluid consistency, you're ready to start painting. I used Wilton paintbrushes as well but found the tips were small enough. I'll have to go in search of some really fine pointed paintbrushes.

I started with the pupils of the eyes (remember you are flipping your image over once it is dry, so you want to start with the details) and I put a few black stripes on the tail. Next I melted the white, chocolate discs. After the black dried (it's very important to make sure one color dries before applying the next or you will have blending) I colored the rest of the eyes with the white and painted the white stripes and mouth. That dried and I went back with the black (I had to reheat mine because it had solidified too much) and filled in around the stripes and mouth.

Next I melted the orange and painted the rest of Nemo, making sure to paint orange over the back of the entire thing so all of the chocolate stayed in one piece.


















I melted some green and painted some plant life on the wax paper to add to the treat.











Once the chocolate is dry, slowly (very slowly...that was a LOT of work!) peel the wax paper off the chocolate and flip it over. :o)













I can't quite figure out how to turn my picture. :o( My husband has been gone for a year....Once he returns he can make my blog look pretty. :o)

I melted blue chocolate and painted a graham cracker with it and carefully pressed my Nemo and seaweed chocolate transfers into the blue water. I crushed up graham crackers (ahead of time) and gently pressed that along the bottom for sand.

It took a while to make....but I enjoyed doing it. :o)

Cereal ring

As hard as it is to admit, Brian usually doesn't eat my creations. :o( That doesn't stop me from creating because on some days he LOVES what I make him.....This just happens to be one of those creations. :o) Brian has been somewhat sensitive to food textures since he was a baby, and still is to a degree. When he was a baby, any type of baby food with chunks in it would come right back out of his mouth. He also had a huge aversion to chicken which is getting much better as he gets older. Rice was another one of those texture foods and is still hit or miss.

Brian started preschool this past summer and we began to realize that his favorite food is anything crunchy. We refer to them as "crunchies" now. They hide Brian's crunchies from him during lunch until he tries everything else, or else he wouldn't eat anything besides them. I was looking around my kitchen trying to come up with a lunchbox treat for Brian and noticed all the extra cereal I had in the cupboard. I decided to make him a cereal necklace but by the time it was complete it looked more like a cereal bracelet. Whatever you want to call this treat, it has been Brian's absolute favorite so far. He saw it before they could hide it and they said he was trying to rip it apart to get to all the tasty cereal. :o) FINALLY a treat he loves!

I used pull-apart strawberry twizzlers. I pulled one long string section and used that to hold all of the cereal, pretzels and vanilla wafers. I used a toothpick to put holes in the centers of the vanilla wafers, and chex cereal. It was a bit difficult getting the cheerios on the rope but I found the ones with the largest centers and they seemed to work well. The vanilla wafers I used were the mini ones that are 3 or 4 different colors. A definite hit with my sweet little man! :o)

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Pumpkins

This idea is from the Halloween Pillsbury magazine. I only made about a third of the recipe since I only needed a few pumpkins for Brian's lunch. I'll type the directions below in case any one else wants to try them out....They are really tasty!

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Start to Finish: 2 Hours 30 Minutes
Servings: 36 candies

1 Bag (10 oz) peanut butter chips (1 2/3 cups)
1 Container (1lb) vanilla ready-to-spread frosting
1/4 teaspoon orange paste icing color (not liquid food color)
12 small pretzel twists or thin pretzel sticks, broken into 1/2-inch pieces

1. Line cookie sheet with waxed paper. In 2-quart saucepan, melt peanut butter chips over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in frosting and icing color until well blended. Refrigerate until cool enough to handle, about 1 hour.

2. Shape mixture into 1 1/4-inch balls; flatten slightly. Use edge of rubber spatula to make grooves in each ball to look like lines on pumpkin. Press 1 pretzel piece into top of each for stem; place on cookie sheet. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving. Store in covered container in refrigerator.

* I used my Wilton orange icing color. When rolling into balls some of them got a bit tacky so I just put them down, washed and dried my hands, and then finished rolling them so they weren't as tacky. I also colored a bit of coconut with green icing color for my picture. :o)

Website for fruit sushi

A friend sent me the sushi recipe and in case you can't read the recipe below.....Here is a website with the same recipe. http://www.chex.com/Recipes/RecipeView.aspx?RecipeId=45872&CategoryId=447

Fruit Sushi

Here is a fun treat from General Mills... :o)

Sandwich fun

Sometimes you have to go the easy route in order to get some much needed sleep! :o)



That is supposed to be some mice and a piece of swiss cheese. :o)

I love Brian with all of my heart! I'm one lucky mama!