Muffin Tin Monday–Red, White, and Blue?–July 3rd

So, I realize it’s been a loooong time since we did Muffin Tin Monday, but I have a few reasons.

Meet Liam. Because adding a third kid to my pile wasn’t enough fun, I thought I’d add a fourth. Liam’s mommy works half time in the mornings, so Liam comes to play with us. He just turned two in March, and he’s going to be a big brother in November, at which point I’ll stop watching him.

Now say hi to Shane. Shane thinks that our lunch time should be his lunch time too.

Add these two characters and lunch becomes a little crazy.

Right, Muffin Tin Monday. So this morning (yes, I know it’s Tuesday), Nate was very very tired, as occasionally happens, and took a morning nap (Yep, aren’t you jealous? My three-year-old still takes two naps sometimes) AND Shane was sleeping AND Liam and Kahlen were happily zoning out to Caillou AND I was in the kitchen anyway making myself an Almond Joy Latte, so I decided that we should break out the muffin tins and see how it went. Liam tends to be, shall we say, a very picky eater, so I was hopeful that this might help. Kahlen and Nate always love MTM too. With no forethought or plan, I started making our lunch. Here’s what I ended up with:

Top: Red Noosa Raspberry Yoghurt, White Cheese Stick, Blue Fruit Leather cut into stars (ok, it was more purple…)
Bottom: Red Katsup, White Pita Chips, and Hot Dogs

I was trying to go with a red, white, and blue theme, but the blue was escaping me. The kids didn’t seem to care too much, although it did nothing to improve Liam’s intake of food. Ah well, maybe next time…

~S

Muffin Tin Monday–March 19th

I thought it would maybe help with our mealtime foolishness to bring back Muffin Tin Monday, so here we are.

We’ve been talking about Ancient Maya civilization as part of our Tapestry of Grace curriculum, so I loosely based our lunch around that today.

We had quesadillas, southwest chicken, corn, sour cream, and apples (because that’s what I had)

The kids enjoyed it and ate everything in record time. For dessert, we had a tortilla with butter, cinnamon, and sugar on it, yum!

~S

Muffin Tin Monday–May 23rd

 

I haven’t done Muffin Tin Monday in awhile, and my kids definitely miss it. I pulled out the tins today and they cheered :) I didn’t have a theme, but we had fun anyway.

 

Noodles and sauce, peas, cojack cheese (for the boy) / string cheese (for the girl), and katsup.

It was demolished in a record amount of time! Must remember to do MTM more often…

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – School Review

  
This week and last week in preschool, we are reviewing the last six weeks. So, our theme for Muffin Tin Monday this week was the letters we are reviewing. It was a little bit of a stretch, but it was better than just eating leftovers :) Our letters are K M W D P B

 

Katsup, fries for the katsup, Mac’n’cheese

Water, Peanut Butter on ritz, Baby goldfish, and my favorite (because this was all her idea):

Delicious Dessert for Dad (daddy’s favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies and we reviewed the letter D today)

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Valentine’s Day

  
Our theme for Muffin Tin Monday this week was, of course, pink for Valentine’s Day. Couldn’t resist :)

Turkey Ham, Strawberry Danimals, Red applesauce
Strawberry Jam for the waffles, Pink Waffles of Insane Greatness

And she ate it all (it did take her close to an hour, though!)

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – P is for Pumpkin

  
Our theme for Muffin Tin Monday this week was P is for Pumpkin because that’s our theme for school this week.

 

Peanut butter toast, Peas, Pretzels, Lunch Meat P’s, Pumpkins from Peach fruit leather

It was all devoured (except for a few peas), and more lunch meat and pretzels were added :)

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Things that are long

 
There was no official theme for Muffin Tin Monday this week, so I went with things that are long (why? because that’s what I had at home!)

Green beans, fish sticks, bananas cut lengthwise, and ramen noodles

Join us next week for Big and Little, Short and Tall theme at Muffin Tin Mom!

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Muffin Cups & Liners

 
The theme for Muffin Tin Monday today is muffin cups and liners, meaning use only muffin cups and/or liners. I had extra kiddos for the morning and, as usual, didn’t plan ahead for this one. SO, here’s what I came up with:

Peas, Quesadilla (which didn’t really fit in the muffin cup, oh well), Apple Slices, Chicken Nuggets, and of course, Katsup (can’t have chicken nuggets without katsup!). I also ended up adding another of sour cream for the quesadilla, but it was devoured before I could get a picture.

All enjoying their lunch

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Christmas parts 2 & 3

The theme for Muffin Tin Monday for three weeks is Holidays. I completely forgot to post last week, been a little busy :P So you get pictures from both weeks. I did not make a plan for either, so there’s some similarities.

Last week, we joined friends at the mall for a play date, so I made our muffin tin food to go. We had crackers and meat rollups, apples, cheese, meat, and fruit leather cut into trees.

 Today she wanted to be in the picture. I was going to crop this picture, but it amused me. You see Nate’s head. “Safe” things on the counter like a cheese knife and scissors, and a bottle of glue from a craft project earlier in the day. You can also sort of see my huge bucket of cookie cutters in the back right and the mess from making muffin tin food on the back counter on the left.

  Anyway, I made tree branches (carrot sticks), snow (ranch dressing), snowballs (Kix), pine needles (green beans), a Christmas tree (bread pizza with corn for ornaments), and a marshmallow snowman. She ate everything and asked for more!!

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Christmas Part 1

  
The theme for Muffin Tin Monday for the next three weeks is Holidays. I had no plan this time, I just rummaged up some leftovers and threw them in a tin ;) I ended up with a white, red, and green theme. Not too bad for zero planning!

Noodles, Vanilla Yogurt, Edamame, Red Apple, Turkey Ham

Kahlen has been on an eating strike for the last week or so, I don’t know how she survives. She ate some of the noodles, all the yogurt, a piece of apple, and all the edamame (because I bribed her with a chocolate chip cookie). I’m not too stressed about it, she’ll eat if she’s hungry. I just try to give her reasonable snacks instead of junky ones and figure it will all even out in the end :)

~S

Muffin Tin Tuesday

There was no theme at Muffin Tin Monday. I’m still recovering from sickness, new floors, and Thanksgiving busyness, so I just took our regular lunch and put it in muffin cups :)

Mac’n’Cheese, Corn, Corn Dogs, Katsup. (But, mommy, what goes in the middle??) And twizzlers :)

Mommy, can I be in the picture too? ~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Nutrition

The theme at Muffin Tin Monday this week is Nutrition/Eating Better, so I went with eating a rainbow:

Top row: Strawberries, Carrots, Scrambled Eggs

Middle row: Edamame, Blueberries, Ranch dressing, Beans

Bottom row: Tortillas, Turkey Ham

Kahlen did not like the strawberries, but she did take a bite. She ate most of the rest of the food. Nate thought the strawberries were the best thing ever, but now I’m wondering if he’s having a slight reaction to them because he has a little rash on his belly. He’s had them before but not for awhile. Ah well, that’s the benefit of doing a muffin tin, he didn’t eat very many :)

Join us next week for Thanksgiving theme at Muffin Tin Mom!

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Y is for Yarn (and a little randomness)

There was no theme at Muffin Tin Monday this week, so I went with our school theme for the week. We are doing a unit on Y is for Yarn, so here’s what I came up with:

Carrot sticks, ranch to dip, Yellow skittles, Y cheese cutouts, Y fruit leather cutouts, grapes, and a pile of “yarn” dyed red with sauce in the middle. I know, not all themed, but it’s what I had in the house :)
We watched Charlie Needs a Cloak on YouTube for school, so I thought the red dye was an awesome idea. She just gave me a look like “yea, okay, whatever mom”. Ah well, it was probably because I was making her eat yucky grapes ;)
Join us next week for The Food Pyramid/Nutrition at Muffin Tin Mom!
~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Trees, Leaves, and Seeds

The theme at Muffin Tin Monday today is Trees, Leaves and Seeds! So glad that there are  people that post before me because I was without inspiration until I looked at what others had already done, so thanks!

 

Nate’s tray is the white one and Kahlen had the bigger one. Sorry for the bad lighting, my kitchen is a complete disaster recovering from a busy weekend, so I had limited space in which to take the picture.

Kahlen’s top row: Raisins (seeds), PB&J cut into tree shape with apples (fruit leather), turkey cut into maple leaves.
Bottom row: Cashews (more seeds), Carrots (tree trunks) in hummus, cheese cut into holly leaves.

Kahlen made a “better” tree with most of her ingredients:

She thought the hummus was disgusting, but she gave it a good try, so I substituted ranch. Nate has just started being able to use a plate without dumping it first thing, so he thought it was great!

They both ate every little scrap of food (except for the hummus). Kahlen only did for halloween candy, of course. And Nate usually eats everything, at least for lunch.

Another successful Muffin Tin Monday! Join us next week, there’s no theme.

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Pumpkins

The theme at Muffin Tin Monday today is pumpkins! We are planning to go to a local pumpkin patch on Wednesday, so this just helped get us ready :)  Back: Pumpkin tortilla cut outs, Apricot fruit leather cut outs, ham lunch meat cut outs.
Front: Carrot coins, ranch, Provolone cut outs.

She actually wanted to be in the picture this time, usually she doesn’t. She loved loved the pumpkin pick I made her and ate every single scrap of food, amazing!

~S

Muffin Tin Monday - Circus

 
We started our school unit on the letter E and Elephants today, so the theme of Circus at Muffin Tin Monday was perfect! I was at Hobby Lobby a few days ago and found these great Silly Critter Silcone Baking Cups for really cheap, hooray! Since I got them, Kahlen’s been wanting it to be Monday :)

 

Cashews (because elephants like them); M&Ms (just because); Lion made of cheese, carrots, and dried blueberries (Thanks, Michelle!); Peas to feed to the elephant; Elephant made of an english muffin, ham for the tail, ear, and trunk, dried blueberry for the eye, and string cheese for the legs; Dried blueberries for elephant poo ;)

She ended up pretending that everything that she didn’t want to eat (the peas, cashews, some of the carrots, and dried blueberries) into animal poo of some kind, whether it was elephant, lion, or penguin (??) and carrying it around for awhile feeding it to her brother and I. That’s one way to get rid of the food you don’t want ;) “But mommy, poo is yucky! I don’t want to eat that!” Too smart for me, what could I say?

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Shapes

We had Muffin Tin Dinner today because we went to the park and the library for lunch. The theme this week is shapes over at Muffin Tin Monday. Kahlen had all things that were oval. As part of our school unit for the week, the number of the week is 4.
 

Four edamame in two cups, 2 ham rolls in two cups, 4 oval crackers, 1 oval ball of safe-to-eat cookie dough

It was gone in record time, except for the edamame of course, that took some coaxing. When I looked over, she was busy making letters with her toothpicks instead of eating her edamame. She told me she had to make her whole name first when I asked her to finish her dinner. Can’t say no to such a reasonable request ;)

~S

Muffin Tin Monday – Numbers and the letter L

The theme this week is numbers/counting over at Muffin Tin Monday. We also started preschool today and are covering the letter L and the color yellow this week. I combined all these for one great tin :)

1 lunch meat roll-up, 2 fruit leather Ls, 3 toast Ls, 4 yellow cheese Ls, 5 yellow jelly beans, 6 yellow bananas.

I actually thought about it and made a plan before lunch arrived, amazing!

My daughter amazes me. We have really just started talking about lower case letters, and here’s what she did with her toast and fruit leather:

“Look, mommy, I made little l’s!” That’s one smart cookie :) The other funny thing she said was that the cheese felt funny in her mouth (it was tilamook sharp cheddar), then she said she smelled something terrible that she didn’t like – cheese! Silly girl.

I also took a picture of Nate’s lunch, because I thought it was funny. He got all the leftover bits from cutting out all those L’s :)

He didn’t seem to mind, except where’s the milk, mom?!?

Join us next week for more Muffin Tin Meals!

~S