One: My kitchen is full of really, really great food. I have a rainbow of tomatoes. I have three gorgeous, shining eggplants, one of which looks just like Cyrano de Bergerac.
Two: Just naming this eggplant Cyrano made me look for the scene from Roxanne in which C.D. tells all the nose jokes in the bar. After watching it, I remember exactly how I felt the first time I watched it: sad that he had heard it all before, and that that scene wasn’t nearly as funny as the rest of the movie.
Three: Anyway, as I was saying, my kitchen is full of all this incredible food, but my children can’t find a single thing to eat. Seriously. Jonah went to pack a lunch the other day and said he couldn’t make a sandwich because there was no cheese. (We did have turkey, bread, bagels, peanut butter and four kinds of jam (seriously:4!), tomatoes, pesto, pears, grapes, and leftover pasta with homemade sauce. Not that all of that could have gone on one sandwich…)
Four: On my run the other day I listened to a great podcast from Another Mother Runner, in which Sarah and Allison interviewed a registered dietician about healthy snacks for families. It was good inspiration to come home and prep for a bunch of easy-to-eat snacks. I instapotted (verb, past tense) several pounds of beets to freeze for future beet smoothies and Can’t Be Beet Hummus (recipe from Eat Slow, Run Fast), hardboiled a bunch of eggs, and peeled five pounds of carrots (which I store in jars of water to keep them from getting dry and ashy), and froze about twenty pounds of peach halves, also for smoothies. Then the children proceeded to eat all of my hummus and carrots in about seven minutes. (Seriously?)
Five: On the AMR podcast, the R.D. guest mentioned she had a free downloadable chart to hang in your cupboard to help your kids pack their own lunches, to encourage them to select foods from more than one food groups. What a great idea! I envisioned a list of proteins one might keep in the cupboard or fridge: hard boiled eggs, cheese sticks, beef jerky, and individual packs of hummus and PB. I thought this amazing printable might have a list of quick-to-grab fruits and veggies, and a selection of grains. I have to have that list!, I thought. It will save me hours of pain and hassle every week, if my kids will just look at it and make themselves a balanced snack out of all the amazing food in our kitchen!
Six: So I looked up the name of the RD, found her blog, signed up for her mailing list and opened the email with the Free! Downloadable! [insert unicorn glitter emoji here] Magic Cupboard Printable to Teach Your Kids How To Pack Their Own Lunches!
Seven: Guess what? It’s blank. It’s just a piece a paper with the different food groups on it, and you have to write your own list of foods. Back to square one. Who wants some fried eggplant noses with purple hummus?
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Learning As We Go 