Muffin Tin Meal Archives

Valentine’s Day Ideas for a Kid’s Lunch

February 11, 2013 By Deirdre

On Monday JDaniel came home from school and asked if I had made him a muffin tin lunch. For a long time he had a special muffin tin lunch with a theme a couple times a week. I have moved on to bento style lunches this past fall and I guess he has been missing them. I told him that I hadn’t made him a muffin tin lunch, but I would dig around in the refrigerator for some foods we could have to create one. You want to try come up with Valentine’s Day ideas for kids lunch they will enjoy.

Valentine’s Day Ideas for a Kid’s Lunch

Once I assembled a wide variety of foods, we used some heart shaped cookie cutters to transform a few of them into hearts. Others were red in color and were just placed into a heart shaped muffin tin that we have.

JDaniel ended up with cornbread hearts. (I tried to get rid of all the breadcrumbs, but as soon as I got rid of some others fell of the bread.) Red grapes also ended up in the top row. The second row contains a pumpkin bar cookie cut into a heart shape and strawberry yogurt with sprinkles. The bottom row has leftover chili and a slice of American cheese cut into a heart.

As I mentioned, I have started to make themed bento lunches for JDaniel to have when he stays for Lunch Bunch at school one day a week. Below is the lunch he took to school last week. It too has a heart theme.The bento lunch contains a slice of ham, a corn tortilla, and a chunk of Laughing Cow cheese all cut into heart shapes in the main compartment. The top compartments contain dried cranberries and a heart shaped apple along with a heart shaped tomato.

I have to confess that JDaniel did a much better job on the muffin tin lunch then the bento lunch. The bento lunch returned home with the cranberries, tomato, and ham still in the box. JDaniel likes tomatoes, dried fruit, and ham usually. I guess they just weren’t foods in loved on that day.What are some of your Valentine’s Day Ideas for kids meals?

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday!

My Posts From Other Blogs – Fall Crafts and Actvities

November 22, 2012 By Deirdre

Today I am taking the day to enjoy time with members of my extended family. The Smith clan is in South Carolina this year for a family reunion and a time give thanks. I hope you enjoy looking for this wonderful collection of fall crafts and activities.

I am giving thanks that they everyone from out of town is staying at the amazing Embassy Suites hotel and that almost all the food is catered. Our Cape Cod house would have been filled to its rafters if everyone had tried to dine at our house.

If you have stopped by for a moment or two of your Thanksgiving downtime, here are some of the posts I have shared on other blogs and websites this month as well as some of my old favorite from this blog.

The other blogs and websites represented are Kiwi Crate’s The Studio and Kids’s Activities Blog this month.

Here are the Fall Crafts and Activities:

A yummy Turkey Bento Lunch with apple feathers and frozen yogurt Thanksgiving molds was served to JDaniel two weeks ago for lunch.

JDaniel and I made a delicious Pumpkin Smoothie. It was smooth and just a tad spicy according to the JDaniel.

One morning for breakfast JDaniel had Apple Cider Pancakes. My husband keeps asking for me to make more the ones I made for him disappeared too quickly he claims.

The final picture in this collage isn’t food related, but we did have fun with the owls in it. They were for a post called Owl Craft for Skip Counting. We counted by ones as we counted their beaks, we counted by twos when we counted their eyes, and we counted by threes when we counted their claws.

A turkey activity for preschoolers and others to work on spatial terms like above, below, and over was created with feeling. JDaniel was told to place the small red feather on the large green one. Then we were asked to place it beside the large red feather. We had a great time making various turkeys with this activity.

Beside it is a turkey JDaniel created. His feathers were created by painting in a salad spinner.

JDaniel and I did our November shopping for our local food bank using a word and picture guide I created that displays food the food bank really needs.

We worked on symmetry while creating a found art object or centerpiece. JDaniel loved collecting the objects to create the project with.A paper boat was used to create a really simple Mayflower craft! I love how the ruffled edge of the plate looks on the sails.

Here are some of our fall crafts and activities :

JDaniel and I made two paper plate turkeys. They were a part of a post called Read.Explore.Learn.- Trouble at the Tappleton’s.

I made the turkey bowling pins for JDaniel when he was two and a half. The turkey’s bodies were made of his hand prints. The post was simply calledRead.Explore.Learn.- Thanksgiving

We made the turkey treat bag to take to our local fire station. We filled the bag with cookies. The post the bag was featured in was called Read.Explore.Learn.- The Firefighter’s Thanksgiving.

Our thankfulness tree spent last Thanksgiving on our kitchen table. It is filled with leaves that list things we are thankful for. The post that featured the tree is called Thanksgiving for Kids: Being Thankful.

The muffin tin meal on the top of this collage features a turkey and all different foods a turkey would eat. The post was called Muffin Tin Monday- Turkey’s Food Pyramid Meal.

The muffin tin meal on the bottom features a stuffing turkey, the best sweet potato casserole, and turkey divan with a turkey biscuit on top. The recipe for the sweet potato casserole is included in the post. It really is wonderful. The post is called Muffin Tin Monday- Thanksgiving with Sweet Potato Casserole and More.

I made my guys a Breakfast Turkey last year. They loved the pumpkin spice pancakes, bacon, and sausage.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

14 Halloween Meals for Kids

October 28, 2012 By Deirdre

We have been having lunch creations at our house for three years. I though I would share with you some of the Halloween themed lunches and snacks that JDaniel has enjoyed. I have called this post Halloween meals for kids.

Halloween Meals for Kids

If you see one that you like, please click on its link below and you will be taken to the meals’ original post.

We have just started having bento meals this fall. JDaniel takes them to school once a week when he has late stay.

The first bento lunch in the collage is one he took to school just a few weeks ago it appeared in a post called Pumpkins Galore. Ham and cheese pumpkins were served without bread and pumpkin cream cheese rolls were served in a tortilla.

The second lunch in the top row is one that never had its own post. JDaniel took it to school two weeks ago. It was filled with a batwich, apple bats, and chow mein noodles (JDaniel loves to snack on them.) with cranberries.

The bento in the bottom row has various symbols of Halloween. There are cheese and cracker spiders, neon green pickle cats and spooky sections of a Full Moon Brownie from Clif Kids. It was created for a Clif Kids Giveaway I hosted.

We had the best time making the food creation in the upped left hand corner of the Halloween Food Creation Meal collage. JDaniel and I visited the salad bar at Whole foods and he picked out of the food elements he used for crafting a pumpkin salad.

I just made this owl sandwich for JDaniel to have when he came home from preschool for lunch. It is a simple cheese sandwich, but I think it ended up looking pretty cute.

The lunch in the bottom row is supposed to be a scarecrow’s harvest lunch. The scarecrow came out pretty scary looking. I guess that it he would really scarecrows. JDaniel love the french fry corn stalk bundle in this lunch.

We started out our creative lunch journey by having muffin tin lunches. We linked them up to the Muffin Mom. As you can see a simple light blue muffin tin appeared in several Halloween meals.

The first lunch in the upper left hand corner is from a post called Muffin Tin Monday- Halloween. It was filled with wonderful fall foods. There was pumpkin chili served in a cornbread muffin, apple shaped pumpkins, pumpkin dip, carrots, cheese shaped pumpkins and sweet potato tater tots.

Two Spiders Have Lunch was one of my first muffin tin meal attempts. There was a web of sour cream nachos, spider biscuits, an aging apple slice pumpkin and some carrots. The web was so hard for me to create. The noodles seemed to have a mind of their own. This was one of those Halloween meals for kids that I thought would be easier to make that it turned out to b.

The meal on the middle row was featured in the Pumpkins Galore post. JDaniel had it for breakfast one morning a few weeks ago. He loves tortillas and cheese for breakfast so, I made him a pumpkin tortilla with cheese. He also had sweet potato french fries, pumpkin marshmallows, grapes, Raisin Bran, and a frozen yogurt pumpkin in this meal.

I saw the pumpkin face craved in a orange online and decided to fill it with fruit in this lunch from a post called A Great Pumpkin? Beyond the fruit salad pumpkin this lunch was filled with foods JDaniel loved as a two year old.

The last muffin tin is from a lunch called Boo! for Lunch. The title didn’t come from the ghost shaped bagel. It came from the fact that the tuna and cucumbers were booed by JDaniel. He loved the mac and cheese, marshmallows and bagel though.

I hope you have enjoyed visiting our Halloween meals for kids from long ago and just a few days ago. I had a great time seeing what JDaniel has been served in the past.

Starfish Muffin Tin Meal for Kids

September 27, 2012 By Deirdre

Yes, I know I am a day behind. I usually share a food creation with you on Monday, but this week I am running a little behind. I did make a fun starfish muffin tin meal for kids to share with you.We were at the beach most of last week and I am a still trying to get back on course. We had a wonderful time away, but now I am trying to get back to our regular routine. I have been doing laundry, grocery shopping and housekeeping like crazy to get on top of things.

That said I hope you will enjoy my starfish and beach themed muffin tin. It is filled with some of JDaniel’s favorite foods.

Starfish Muffin Tin Meal for Kids

He loves all kinds of cheese and cheese flavored products. Cheese crackers were his snack request for the beach trip. I try to bring a bag or a box of everyone’s favorite snack to the beach. Amazingly enough we had leftover cheese crackers in the box to use for this lunch when we got back from the beach. The cheese cracker sun is surrounded by strips of dried apricots.

The starfish is a piece of toast covered in blackberry ham, red grapes, an apricot smile and Oreo eyes. I peeled the filling out of an Oreo and cut it into quarters. Two of the quarter are the whites of the Starfish’s eyes and cookie pieces are his pupils.

The starfish is dipping his toes or lower arms. (Starfish don’t really have toes.) into blueberry yogurt with blue sprinkles in it. Blue is JDaniel’s favorite color right now. Blue foods make him really happy.

Beside the starfish is the sandy shore or beach. The beach is made of homemade applesauce sprinkled with granola and cinnamon. When the starfish steps onto the beach, he may complain of the roughness of the sand. JDaniel on the other hand loved all the components of the beach and ate them all without a fuss.

More Meal for Kids Ideas

Apple Chicken Salad Bento Lunch

Lunch Ideas with LEGO

Minion Lunch with Blueberry Overalls

Particularly Loves Microorganisms Lunch for Kids

September 5, 2012 By Deirdre

On the first day of school I stopped by and picked up lunch at McDonald’s to have with JDaniel and my husband. Yes, my husband came home for lunch on the first day. He might have otherwise, but he wanted to check out the work of the men power washing our house.

When we got home JDaniel was so upset, he didn’t want McDonald’s for lunch! “I was supposed to get a muffin tin lunch!” he declared. We hadn’t talked about having a muffin tin lunch this year on the first day, but we did have one last year and I guess he thought it had become a tradition. ( Love to make come up with lunch for kids ideas so I didn’t mind.

“What kind of muffin tin lunch were you expecting ?” I asked him.

“It should have been a microorganism lunch! You know I love them!” he stated.

Well, I do know that he loves microorganisms. He discovered a book about them in the juvenile non-fiction section of the library and he had to have me read it to him. I kind of wish I had kept him in the children’s fiction departments instead of bringing him over to section that would introduce him to lice, bed bugs, and all their relatives.

We have been picture walking through books on this subject all summer. I read mostly the captions that are under the pictures of these interesting creatures. The text about them is very detailed ( JDaniel says that it is boring if there are too many words in a book.) and nightmare causing. (JDaniel thought his bed was covered with them in the middle of one night this summer. He was probably right, but I didn’t tell him that.)

He talks endlessly about microorganisms with anyone who will listen. Most his friends just shake their heads when he starts spouting the details about these tiny creatures. Adults are so impressed he knows about such a unique topic.

Last week we went to a baseball game with my husband’s division at work. My husband’s boss asked him what he wants to be when he grows up. JDaniel told him he wanted to be a microbiologist. Later my husband’s boss commented that it sounds like the times have changed since kids wanted to be firemen and policemen. I think there are still a lot of kids that want to be those things just not my guy.

On JDaniel’s second day of school he came home to a microorganism lunch. This lunch really could have used a microscope instead magnifying glass, but I couldn’t figure out how to make one. Thankfully he was very pleased.

Making This Lunch for Kids

The most microorganisms are really Halloween shapes cut out with cookie cutters from cheese and honeydew. I think they create wonderful creatures for this lunch for kids along with microscopic peas in mac and cheese and granola bits in cinnamon flavored applesauce. Oh! There is shredded turkey too.

Particularly Loves Microorganisms Lunch for Kids

This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday on Mrs. Matlock.

What is one of your favorite lunch for kids ideas?

Olympics for Kids- A Gold Medal Lunch for Kids

July 30, 2012 By Deirdre

It feel like I haven’t done a muffin tin lunch in ages. After creating Olympic related meals and snacks in the past few weeks, it was time for one a muffin tin. If you like this lunch idea, please take a few minutes to visit some of my other Olympic food creations. There was an Olympic symbols bento and fruit filled snack Olympic rings.

Gold Medal Meal

All in all this is a gold medal meal. It is filled with lots of healthy things and a few treats. The top row has carrots, cheese popcorn in a cone, and cherries. Just below you will find pizza that we added black olives to, a vanilla wafer cookie with a healthy fruit strip ribbon and more pizza.

Hint: You could use broken pieces of cheese cover rice cakes or a small pile of goldfish instead of popcorn. Although stacking fish might be tricky in the long fun popcorn is easier to pile up.

Olympic athletes need to have a little sugar and some carbs to give them energy to compete. The ingredients in this meal would given them sugar and carbs as well as fruits and veggies. I am not saying that they would make the same choices I did when creating this gold medal meal. Maybe I am just trying to make myself feel less guilty. The ingredients were added to this meal to make it feel cute.

Warning: If you try to recreate the torch like effect in a cone with cheese popcorn, place each kernel carefully. One false move could cause the whole thing to fall over! Then you will have to start it all over again.

If you like this gold medal, here are some more Olympic related ideas for kids:

Painted Olympic Torch

Kids Printable Olympic Passport

Winter Olympic Themed Graphs and Diagrams

Exploring the Olympic Value of Friendship

Exploring the Olympic Value of Respect

Exploring the Olympic Value of Excellence Citizenship

Earth Day Meal for Muffin Tin Monday

April 22, 2012 By Deirdre

I need to confess that this in not one of my best muffin tin meals. Things just didn’t come together the way I pictured them in my head. That happens sometimes.

An Earth made of blueberries and green grapes looked amazing in my head. My husband tried to guess what this creation was and couldn’t. Even after pointing out the Florida he was unsure. Telling him it was the Earth seemed to help, but it was still too abstract for him.

So what do you do when your Earth does work, you deconstruct it. The fruit salad Earth became fruit in a muffin tin. Some of the fruit was used to top blueberry yogurt which isn’t really blue by the way. Some went into its own cups and some was used to make blueberry jelly. (I am just kidding.) The jam came right from a jar and was spread on English muffin earthlings. I guess without eyes, a nose and a mouth the Earthlings may look a little abstract too.

I placed homemade granola in the cup between the Earthlings. It was placed there mostly because JDaniel helped me to make it. He is loves to snack on it or have it appear in a meal.

JDaniel didn’t seem to care about how the meal looked. He just dug right in and enjoyed it. Maybe on Earth Day Earthlings really want to eat their favorite foods. It doesn’t matter if they are in abstract or deconstructed forms. It seems to work that way at my house.

Here are some other Earth Day ideas I think you will like:

Recycled Planter on a String

Earth Day Crafts for Kids- Coffee Filter Earths

You will find more Earth Day ideas on my Earth Day and Crafts from Recycled Materials. Please take a few moments and look over the wonderful crafts, food creation and activities I have saved on them.