She’s outgrown her toddler size 8 shoes and is now in an 8 1/2.  Her friend who is only 6 weeks younger wears a 6 1/2.  She has to be in the midst of a growth spurt because she’s actually been eating everything on her plate and asking for seconds.  This doesn’t happen often.  She’s also a tofu fiend.  Let’s start with today’s lunch before moving on to other random meals that I have photos of.

Lunch:

Tofu with soy sauce; rice ball; animal cookies; banana, mango and kiwi

Not pictured, 1/2 a carton of blueberry coconut milk yogurt.  She ate everything (including a second rice ball), except for her cookies and a few bites of mango.

Lunch:

Orange and blueberries; tofu ranchero and beans; peas, plain tortilla

Snack Pack:

Edamame; pineapple; mini muffin; FruitaBu; pretzels

Lunch:

Edamame; tofu ranchero; green bean and cucumber; pineapple; slice of multigrain bread

Lunch:

Plain ABC noodles; multigrain crackers; hummus; salad with Annie's Goddess dressing; mandarin

Snack Pack:

Mini banana-beet-carrot-zucchini muffin; pineapple guava (feijoa); dried apricots; cracker sticks

Lunch:

Peas; persimmon; plain noodles; edamame; tofu

Breakfast:

Chocolate chip waffle; blueberries; syrup for dipping; Earth Balance (she likes to eat it with a spoon-- gross!)

And because I can’t stand it, here’s a photo of her and Santa.  Look, she’s actually smiling and not freaked out (so unlike last year)!

Last on my list of things to update the blog with are the things Emma has been eating lately.  Sad to say that it hasn’t been many veggies.  She just has had no interest, so I’ve been sneaking them in whenever possible.

Lunch & Snack:

Mini kale pizza; cucumbers; marshmallow treat; mini-muffin; apple; dried apricots; whole grain crackers; fruit snacks

Dinner:

Hummus; veggies to dip; pears; PB&J; basmati rice and bulgur

Dinner:

Salad dressing for dipping; cucumber; banana; blueberries; grilled soy cheese sammie

Lunch:

Mini kale pizza; cucumbers; grapes

Here’s a quick rundown of what my Emma has been eating these days.

Snack Pack

Multigrain crackers; fruit snacks; dried apples and apricots

Lunch

Hummus, cucumber and pickle sandwich; extra pickles; pear

Snack Pack

Fruit snacks; raspberries; pumpkin chocolate chip mini-muffin; pretzels

Dinner

Tofu ranchero (sauce rinsed off); cup of rice milk; white beans; pineapple, apple and raspberries; plain tortilla

Dinner

Kale pizza; salad

Since I haven’t been diligent about posting this week, I thought I’d put up some of the meals that Emma has been eating recently.  Earlier in the week, we went to Ichiban Kan in San Mateo for more “snack pack” (aka bento) supplies.  Emma is a little Dora and Diego obsessed and since Diego carries around snack packs for all of his animal friends, we have started calling hers a snack pack too.  Anyway, I love that store.  Lots of cute (and dirt cheap) snack pack supplies.

Snack Pack:

Dried apricots; Boo Chips; fruit snacks

Lunch:

Pear; Strawberry; Ian's Supertots; PB&J on a tortilla

Snack Pack:

Dried apricots; blueberries; grape Fruitabu; Mini Munchies (brand: Hain)

Lunch:

Edamame; ABC noodles; straberries, blueberries, pear

Since I haven’t been blogging much, my camera was full of Emma’s meals and snacks from the past several days.  In no particular order, here they are:

After gymnastics snack/lunch:

Strawberry/Banana Fruit Crisps; fruit leather; kale pizza

These kale pizzas are such a hit with her and are so handy if you keep a few spares in the freezer.  Whenever I’m stumped for meals or snacks for her, this is usually what she gets.

Park Snack/Lunch:

PB&J sammies; fruit snacks; watermelon & honeydew stars

What she didn’t eat at the park ended up becoming her lunch.

Lunch

Plain alphabet noodles; PB&J; honeydew; salad

Her leftover PB&J’s from the park and some more honeydew.  She ate all of her salad and most of mine too and then some of my watermelon.  She was hungry!

Breakfast

Maple syrup; waffles; blueberries

She requested waffles for breakfast yesterday.  They turned out great (recipe coming soon).  Sadly, these blueberries are not sweet at all.  They are destined for smoothies.

Lunch

Peas; apples; miso with udon noodles

And, yes, she does insist on trying out the chopsticks.

Breakfast

Pears; pancakes; maple syrup

Another of Emma’s requests– pancakes!

Since Emma is going to be spending almost two weeks with my parents and I hope that they use this as a guide for planning her meals, I need to step it up with posting her meals and snacks.  Here are some random bits and pieces from the last couple of days.

Snack/Lunch

Fruit Snacks; heart and star cucumbers; blueberries; Eco-Planet crackers; raspberries; peanuts; tofu

We were headed to the park and I wanted to pack a snack that could pass for a lunch in case she fell asleep in the car on the way home.  At the park, she only munched on a few things, but ate the rest when she got home.  She has been eating non-stop lately, so she must be fixing to grow.  She’s been enjoying the mini-muffins that are stockpiled in our freezer for snacks.  She’s also been a big fan of “to-food”lately.

Apple-carrot-raisin mini-muffin; half pear; half banana; vitamin; banana mini-muffin

A breakfast constucted of random stuff.

Emma’s meals haven’t been too spectacular lately.  She’s been eating well, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been posted here before.  Snack today was the same, but different.  I had photos of it, so why not post it, right?!

Half of an EnviroKidz bar; Eco-Planet crackers; dry roasted unsalted almonds; apricot fruit leather; apple slices

Not so wild about the almonds.  I think it’s the texture.  I thought she may enjoy them more if they were smaller, but I was wrong.

OH NO!  I just realized that her EnviroKidz Koala Chocolate Crispy Bar is NOT vegan.  Yikes!  That’ll teach me to skip reading the labels when I’m rushing.  Besides that, these products are so ridiculously simple- I could probably make them myself.  In fact, I’ve made a version of them that she wasn’t into at all.  I don’t get it– she’ll eat these, but not my homemade ones; she loves Jamba Juice smoothies, but won’t touch my homemade ones.  Kids!

Note to self: leave out the peanut butter the next time you make Crispy Bars– they may go over better that way.

I randomly bought a tub of miso at the store the other day.  I’ve never, ever tried to make miso soup before and was totally surprised by how easy it is!  All you do is boil some water, add miso to taste and maybe a little soy sauce to give it a little zing.  That’s it!  Since I was making it as a main course for lunch, I added in some tofu, green onions, edamame and udon noodles.  Emma LOVED it.

Here’s what my Emma has been eating.  This is lunch from today and dinner from yesterday.

Lunch

Tofu with soy sauce; Udon noodles with soy sauce; cucumber stars; apple chunks

She really enjoyed this meal.  All of it was gone!

Dinner

Rasberries stuffed with blueberries; broccoli; lasagna spiral (cut up); vegan mozzarella stars; cucumber stars

She ate the scraps from the cheese (after cutting out the stars), but didn’t eat the stars.  Incidentally, it was the Follow Your Heart vegan cheese, not homemade.  For vegan cheeses, it’s the better one that I’ve had.  I don’t care for most vegan cheeses and could live without this one, but Emma seems to like it.  Besides that, it’s really hard to explain to a 2-year-old the difference between our cheese and the cheese sticks that her friends eat.  Letting her have some sort of cheese product makes her feel like part of the crowd, I think.  She saw a little girl eating a cheese stick right before we were headed to the grocery store and she reminded me the whole time inside the store that she wanted cheese.  It’s weird.  She has a great memory.

Dinner

Kidz Dream smoothie; blueberry & strawberry flower; tofu & edamame; broccoli; soba ramen noodles

She ate all of this food here and even asked for seconds of the “to-food.”  The only thing left untouched was the broccoli, which didn’t surprise me much.  After she was done eating this, which happens over the course of about an hour, by the way (she sort of grazes until it’s all gone), she had the equivalent of a container and a half of coconut milk yogurt.  I had several in the fridge that were half eaten and she managed to polish some of them off.  Made me glad that I kept them.

Lunch

It was a nice day for a picnic at the park.  I packed Emma’s lunch in the new Laptop Lunchbox that her Nana gave her.  It is such a great feeling knowing that we won’t be throwing away a bunch of little bags afterward.  According to the manufacturers of the Laptop Lunchboxes, one child using a disposable lunch produces 67 pounds of waste per school year.  Yikes!

Eco-Planet "cheese" crackers & pretzels; lemonade; fruit snacks; white beans; apple; cashew butter & blueberry jam sandwich

She ate everything except for one piece of her sandwich.  She even ate another quarter of the apple on the way home.

Because I couldn’t resist, here are some photos of her at the park.

"Wait! Come back!"

Breakfast

Half slice of oat bread; vanilla coconut milk yogurt; berries; banana

She cons me into buying bananas every time I go to the grocery store, but she will never eat them.  The only time she’ll eat them is at the store while we are shopping.  (This is fine to do at TJ’s, where you pay per banana not per pound, and at Whole Foods because when you join the kids club, the kids can pick a snack to eat in the store.  From the produce section, they can choose an apple or banana; from the dairy section a cheese stick; or from the customer service desk a juice box or dried fruit.)

Anyway, she didn’t touch the banana or the yogurt, but ate all of her berries and most of her bread.  She LOVES this oat bread.