Monday night's leftovers

So you made too much spaghetti for supper.  Oops!  Now what to do with it all?  Make "Spaghetti Pie" of course!  It is usually a big hit with kids.  All you need is your leftover spaghetti noodles, your leftover sauce, a couple of beaten eggs and some grated cheese.   I use a marble chedar but you could use whatever cheese you prefer. 

First off... preheat your oven to 375 and lightly grease your casserole dish or tarte plate.  Mix your leftover noodles and sauce together and let cool to room temperature.  Add a couple of beaten eggs and about half of the cheese (maybe 1/2 - 3/4 C) and mix to combine thoroughly.  Pour into your tarte plate or casserole dish and give it a firm push down with your spoon.  Top with remaining cheese and bake at 375 for about 25 minutes.  Let cool and slice into wedges or squares.  This is a yummy alternative to just having leftover spaghetti in your lunch! 

Recipe Share

Today's recipe is a fun one and may just be the incentive your kids (or adults) need to eat and ENJOY meatloaf.

What you will need for my Meatloaf Cupcakes:

Meatloaf  Ingredients

1 package of lean ground beef

1 tbsp of Dijon mustard

1 tbsp ketchup

1 small very finely minced onion

2 cloves of garlic finely minced or crushed

1 large egg

1/2 C bread crumbs (or more depending on how wet your mixture ends up from whatever veg you use)

salt and pepper

Here is where we sneak in veggies....

1 smallish carrot shredded
5 or so mushrooms minced
1/2 C shredded zucchini

Basically you just mix all of that together and fill muffin tins with the meat mixture.  Bake at 350 for about a half hour or until the meat is fully cooked through.  You can adjust the recipe to your liking, increase it for larger families or use your own meatloaf recipe. (Photo courtesy of Food Network Canada)

Topping:

Mashed potatoes

Cooked carrots

Cooked peas

sliced red pepper

shredded cheddar cheese

After the mini meatloaf cupcakes are cooked.  Remove from the pan and top with mashed potatoes (icing) and then let the kids decorate the tops with the other cooked veggies!  These are also very convenient for lunches. 

The change up for this recipe is that you can use the meatloaf recipe just to make meatballs for lunches as well.  Most kids like the dippable factor.  Here I used meatballs and served them with roasted potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing, snickerdoodle cookies, strawberries, orange slices and a couple of dill pickles. 

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Pizza Friday!

The Thanksgiving holiday is keeping my American friends very busy this week. So I am posting again :)

Today's restaurant inspired lunch is another kid friendly one and a very EASY one to prepare. If your family is anything like mine, they love pizza! Instead of ordering in, make these really quick and easy mini pizzas. All you need is some kind of flat bread (Greek fluffy pita, naan), english muffins or hamburger buns, cheese and pizza sauce (spaghetti sauce works in a pinch too). I find that the pitas that you use to stuff for sandwiches don't quite work as well as the more dense Greek pitas or naan (Asian and Indian flat bread). Here in this lunch I used naan.

I usually make mine up the night before so that in the morning all I have to do is throw them in the lunch box. Today's Goodbyn contains flat bread pizza, cheese string, dill pickles, carrots, cucumbers, cereal bar, couple of cookies and fruit salad (strawberries, watermelon, cantaloupe). Boy you can fit a lot in there!

Fun for Picky Eaters

I am sure there are many parents out there who have kids who are quite particular about what they eat. Fussy eaters can definitely be frustrating at times. I figured I would share a fun lunch that I think would agree with many of those particular kids and it is fun too!

We started off with a couple of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, sliced cucumber, sliced strawberries, cubed cantaloupe melon and a hand full of Doritos. Those are all pretty kid friendly foods that most children enjoy. The "fun" comes in with hot dog octopus (or is that octopi or octopusses? lol) resting on a bed of left over macaroni and cheese. I added ketchup because that is just the way my son prefers his but you can omit it if you like. It added an extra gross factor with my son who said it was bloody octopus. (boys are so weird lol)

To make the octopus, all you need to do is make some cuts lengthwise into the hot dog for the legs. Make sure you leave about an inch to an inch and a half at the top for the head. Boil your hot dogs as usual. As they cook, the legs curl up. Easy peasy and your kids will be the talk of the lunchroom!