This does not mean that I have to sacrifice their health and the taste of their food. There are plenty of healthy and delicious frozen dinners out there to feed your family.

1. Ian’s Natural Foods. Ian’s foods are all-natural and organic. We have had the chicken nuggets and the fish sticks. Both are very good and my kids love them. You can usually find them at your local grocery store.

2. Kids Organic. Kids Organic has your usual kid favorites: mac-n-cheese, pizza, and chicken nuggets. They also have spaghetti and meatballs, quesadillas, and tacos. You can find them at Target or your local Wholefoods, Trader Joes, etc.

3. Kashi Pizzas are a favorite of my kids. Kashi has a lot of other food products as well. Found at local grocery store or health food stores everywhere.

4. Amy’s Kitchen has a large variety of frozen dinners. A lot of the items might be for a more advanced palate than your typical kid, but you never know. The burritos are a big hit at my house. The pizzas and bowls are also very good. We have Amy’s products at our local grocery store, but if they are not at yours, check Target or your local health food store.

In fact, just take a browse through your local Whole Foods (or the like) and your local Target’s freezer section and you will find an array of natural and organic frozen dinners that are more than acceptable to feed your precious little ones! Remember to check the manufacturer’s website for coupons before you go.

Happy eating!

Here are some simple sandwich ideas

1. Peanut butter and jelly
2. Cream cheese and jelly
3. Peanut butter and nutella
4. Peanut butter and bananas (or grapes or strawberries)
5. Bologna and cheese
6. Turkey and cheese
7. Ham and cheese
8. Egg salad
9. Tuna salad
10. Chicken salad
11. Hummus and veggies
12. Apples and cheese
13. Cheese
14. Cream cheese and cucumbers

I LOVE Sandwich Cutters and So Do My Kids

Basically anything your kiddo likes can most likely be transformed into a sandwich. To make the sandwich even cooler, I always use sandwich cutters.

Next choose a fruit that your kid loves like apples, bananas, grapes, strawberries, blueberries or watermelon. Then pick one of your child’s favorite snacks such as a granola bar, pretzels, pirates booty, animals crackers or goldfish crackers. Lastly, throw in a drink (I prefer water, but occasionally give the kids juice or milk) and voila – you are done with lunch prep!

For more lunchbox ideas, you can check here and here.

So, I decided that I’m going to try to make healthy eating and just eating in general, more fun. I recently bought the book Silly Snacks from my son’s school book fair. I decided to surprise him when he got home from school yesterday with a special treat from the book. I made a caterpillar using a banana, peanut butter, a couple of raisins (for eyes), thin pretzel sticks, and marshmallows.

First, I peeled and sliced the banana into 1-inch pieces. I used peanut butter to adhere the banana back together. I used thin pretzel sticks for antennae and feet, raisins for eyes, and stuck a couple of marshmellows on top just for fun. See picture above for how it came out. My son loved it and really appreciated the surprise. It made us both happy, so it was definitely worth the little extra effort and time it took to make.

Have you ever made any silly or creative looking snacks or meals for your child? Tell me about it.

In the morning he has some cheerios, half a waffle, and a bowl of baby oatmeal with fruit.
Snack time consists of cheese, fruit, yogurt or veggie booty.
Lunch is often turkey slices or grilled cheese.
Dinner rarely even happens, but on occasion he gets some chicken, black beans, veggie and fruit pureed together. Veggies alone just don’t happen here yet.

I did some searching around for ideas on how to expand the choices. I got some great sample menus from this site that I wanted to share.

• Cheerios

• Toasted bread or bagels (spread with vegetable puree for extra vitamins), rice cakes or crackers broken into small pieces

• Small chunks of fruit such as banana, mango, plum, pear, peach, cantaloupe, or seedless watermelon

• Small cubes of tofu

• Well-cooked pasta spirals, cut into pieces

• Small chunks of cheese (although I give my baby an entire string cheese – he loves it for his teething gums)

• Chopped hard-boiled or scrambled egg

• Cut-up raisins, softened dried apricots, or stewed prunes

• Small pieces of well-cooked vegetables, like carrots, peas, squash, zucchini, potato, or sweet potato

• Small well-cooked broccoli or cauliflower “trees”

• Pea-size pieces of cooked chicken or other soft meat (deli slices)

• Beans with soft skins like lentils, split peas, pintos, black beans

I take out a piece of aluminum foil to make the sandwich on, so as to not unnecessarily dirty a plate. Then I first put the jelly onto one side of the bread.

spreading the jelly

Next comes the peanut butter:

spreading the peanut butter

This next step is probably the most important. Use the very special Dino Cutter to remove the crust and make the sandwich look like two dinosaurs!

using the dinosaur sandwich cutter

Voila! The perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich for your child:

Then I wrap it up in the foil and it is ready to go in my son’s lunchbox in the fridge for the night!

Jax loves Batman, so naturally I wanted to make him a Batman cake. For 4 years I’ve been wanting to make his cake myself. This year, I finally did it and I think it came out great. I loved seeing his eyes light up at the sight of his cake. It was so simple to make too.

First, I used two boxes of Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix. I would have made my own cake mix, I really wanted to, but it’s a bit hard with a 10 month old hanging onto my legs at all times. In fact, I made it super easy by using store bought everything…….cake mix, brownie mix, frosting, and obviously M & M’s. .

yellow cake batter

After my extremely hard work (LOL) of adding some oil, water and eggs to the mix, I put the cakes in the oven to bake.

baking cakes

Meanwhile, I started on the brownie mix. (you will see why in a moment)

brownie mix

When the cakes were finished baking, I took them out of their baking pans and cut off one edge of both so they would fit together.

cutting cakes to fit together

When the cakes and brownies were cooled, the real fun began. We iced the cake.

icing the cake

We cut out the Batman logo from the brownie, which I baked as a very thin layer.

cutting out the bat logo

Then we carefully placed the bat onto the iced cake and started adding yellow M & M’s around it to make the Batman logo.

adding yellow M and M's

The finished Batman logo:

Batman logo

Then I wrote my son’s name out of M & M’s and tada……….

The Jaxman Cake

Instead of letting all of that food go to waste, I have a great idea for all of the unused veggie jars he won’t touch. I have been hiding them in my other son’s food. The almost 4 year old who won’t willingly touch a vegetable. Yeah, that one. I’ve put pureed peas in pizza sauce on a pizza. He actually said “oh mama, you know what my favorite part of the pizza is? The sauce!”. If only he knew. LOL! Tonight I used pureed butternut squash to coat chicken breasts with bread crumbs and wheat germ. He loved it! I wonder what other sneaky concoctions I can come up with?!?!