New lunch ideas

One of the things I struggle with most is ideas for meals.  Lunch is usually pretty low key - buns, sandwiches, muffins, pancakes, veggies, fruit.  I try to make sure there are some veggies eaten and the girls all like carrots and cucumbers, so that goes alright.  

I usually make muffins when the bananas are getting over ripe, but yesterday I tried something different - banana pancakes.  I found a recipe online and all the girls wanted to help.  So CeCe was stirring, Ginny was adding things and Jorja was mashing bananas.  We did make one modification to the recipe - Jorja insisted that if there were bananas, there had to be chocolate chips as well.  It's hard to argue with that logic.  So we mixed and fried, and even sprinkled some icing sugar on like the picture on the website.  Needless to say, they were a hit, even with our fussiest child, Ginny.  However, I'm not sure if she's going through a growth spurt or what, but she has been inhaling her food lately.  This was no exception.  She was the first one done.  

Today was a different story.  We had chicken, rice and peas yesterday for supper.  When I was putting the leftovers away, I cut the chicken up and put it all everything in one container.  There wasn't a whole lot left, so I thought we would eat it for lunch.  I decided to try chicken fried rice.  I've eaten plenty of chicken fried rice - it was part of my favorite combo #3 from the Granite curling club lunch counter across the street from the brewery.  But I've never actually made it before, let alone for the kids.  They have had it on a couple of occasions before though and it went over reasonably well.  

The girls walked into the kitchen this morning and asked if it was lunch time just as I was dumping everything into the frying pan.  I said it would be ready in a couple of minutes.  Then I was greeted with a chorus of 'What is that?!' and 'Leftovers are for supper!'  and 'We want buns!' and finally, 'I'm not very hungry.'  I didn't let this slight lack of enthusiasm deter me.  I fried on.

And it turned out really good.  I made sure I sampled it before I turned it over to the eager mouths just to make sure their whining was unfounded.  CeCe asked for ketchup (before she tasted it) and ate it all with no issues.  Jorja rolled it around with her fork for a bit and then gave in and tried it.  'This is actually really good Dad!'  See, I said, sometimes you just have to trust me.  She said, 'There's one thing I won't trust you with though - music.'  That hurts.  But she was now eating lunch with no issues.  Ginny was still saying she wasn't hungry and pushing her lunch around with her fork.  I said that was ok, she could have it for snack when she was ready.  She didn't like that idea either, so she eventually gave in.  She had to separate out all the chicken and put some ranch on it (don't ask - she eats ranch on all meat) but she eventually ate her plate.  It was long after the other two were finished, but she made it.  Maybe the growth spurt is over.  Later.