a peek inside the fishbowl

Have you found your way here from Babycenter? Welcome!

As for the rest of you, check out this sweet little article about simple ways to make your kids feel special. There are a lot of great ideas in there!

When September rolls along I feel a renewed interest in like I’m forced to revisit the concept of meal planning. If it were up to me I would eat chickpeas and good cheese and leafy salads all day long. But my family is not me.

Last year I hit a breaking point with my ever growing stack of Canadian Living magazines. I was saving the entire magazine – every month – because they each had a few good recipes in them.

I went through each issue and exacto-knifed the recipes I wanted and slid them into clear sleeves in a cheap binder that now lives in my kitchen with me.

I’ve divided my binder into sections: appetizers, soups/salads/sides, main dishes, desserts. It’s not the best system. I still do a lot of flipping, but when I’m looking for ideas it does the trick.

Here it is:

It ain’t much to look at, but the benefits are obvious. Unlike other cookbooks, this one only contains recipes that look good to me. If a recipe doesn’t work out I just pitch it. It’s made dinner planning a lot easier for me.

re: school lunches

Over the years I’ve tried to stress less about what to give the kids for lunch every day. Specifically, I’ve had an issue with the small variety of “mains” the girls are willing to eat. I have decided not to worry about it. If they want to eat pretty much the same thing day after day, so be it. The repetition is my problem, not theirs. As long as it’s healthy, right?

I made the girls sit down and write down what kinds of things they wanted for lunch. Here’s a sampling:

This gives me a great starting point. No longer would I (wrongly) assume Sarah would eat a tomato/cheese sandwich. Mummy logic assumes that if a child likes tomatoes, cheese, and bread, that this child would also appreciate a tomato cheese sandwich, right? WRONG.

The lists are fairly comprehensive, and if I play my cards right (i.e DO THE GROCERY SHOPPING) I can squeeze in all the food groups and make it a healthy well-rounded lunch.

Hooray for that!

I recommend you skip this post. It’s not that interesting. Feel free just to close this window and continue on to the next blog in your reader.

G’wan. Git.

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For the rest of you who decided to stick around – don’t say I didn’t warn you. Bob from Flacklife tagged me with the “six-things” meme ages ago, and these are the results. (This was So.Hard. Thanks A LOT BOB.)

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