Muffin Tin Monday- Labor Day Picnic Tin

JDaniel has a picnic meal in a muffin tin. There were potato chips (We never have chip in the house. He was thrilled.), hot dogs, potato salad, cantaloupe in the shape of 6's since it is the 6th day of September, blueberries, and watermelon.

I don't think he got that it was a picnic meal. He ate while inside the house at the kitchen table. I do know he loved it.

Happy Labor Day!

Muffin Tin Monday- 1,2,3 More Pizza for Me!

I won two wonderful Kellogg’s Real Fruit Pizzas from Tammy’s Two Cents and thought I would surprise JDaniel with a few pieces from one of the pizzas along with his muffin tin breakfast. “This not pizza,” he said. “It is wonderful,” I said. That got him to take one bite and that was all. I think he thought pizza needed cheese and tomato sauce and not yogurt with fruit and granola. That left a lot of it for me. Hooray! I really liked it. I guess I won’t have to share the second pizza with JDaniel.

What did he eat? He had one cup of cottage cheese, two cups of raisins and three cups of cereal. This is what he usually eats for breakfast. Yes, he loves cottage cheese. He saw my husband eating it for breakfast one morning and decided that was what he wanted too.

Muffin Tin Monday- The Alphabet for Breakfast

Muffin Tin Monday has started their themes back up for the fall. The theme for this week is the A,B, C or alphabet related tins. I decided to stick with my theme for Muffin Tin Mondays this month which is breakfast and make an A, B, C breakfast.

The breakfast came out yummy. I know because I made a tin for myself. JDaniel was allowed to select which tin he would like to eat from. He chose one and then he wanted the other. It might have had something to do with the fact that my tin still had a doughnut in it or maybe it was because he is two.

The A, B, C breakfast tin contained strawberry applesauce, blueberry pancakes, a cereal mixture, a piece of doughnut, eggs scrabbled, and a fruit salad.

Muffin Tin Monday- Breakfast with an Ocean View

This week's tin has the water related animal pancakes. Did you figure out what they are suppose to be? There are fish, flamingo, and dolphin pancakes. They are above a sea made of grape jelly, blueberry applesauce, and red grapes.

JDaniel loved this meal so much he asked for it again later. The pancakes had to be broken up for him for dipping. He tried to break them with his fork with little success. It was really important that each piece be totally dunked in jelly or applesauce. It just had to be. He is learning to be more flexible except when it comes to dipping.

There are two other moms with ocean themes this week As is (She brought this to my attention and started the link idea.) and Another Lunch. They both did an awesome job. I love the banana on As is!

Muffin Tin Monday- Christmas Breakfast in August

When you let your two year old pick out the tin for his lunch, he may pick out a Christmas tin in August. The Santas, snowman, and gingerbread men are covered with food, but I bet you can still see their outlines.

We tried a new breakfast casserole this week with leeks, blueberries, and turkey sausage. It was good. It needed something, but I can't figure out what. JDaniel also had blueberry muffins he helped make and grapes. He loved it all.

We will continue our breakfast for lunch next week. I can't decide if it will be french toast or pancakes.

Muffin Tin Monday- Breakfast with a Swap

I am starting a month long series of Muffin Tin Monday breakfast tins today. This week’s breakfast features two animals we saw on our visit to my sister Kate’s house in New York. She took her two children, JDaniel and I to several farms as part of local farm tour event. One of the farms had cows. JDaniel speaks cow so he had a lot of fun there. Kate’s family has a dog named Justice. He really caught JDaniel’s attention.


Today’s breakfast consisted of whole grain animal shaped waffles with syrup between them. The second row contains mandarin oranges, raspberry yogurt and blueberries.



JDaniel and I were sent a wonderful set of animal cookie cutters and a toucan chopsticks as part of the Muffin Tin Monday Swap. We swapped with Jasmine. She really sent us a wonderful package. I have displayed some of the cookie cutters she sent around JDaniel’s tin today. There are 50 total. He loves the chopsticks. They are a bit of a challenge, but he is up for challenges.

Muffin Tin Monday- Create a Car

JDaniel had a create a car lunch. There were two whole wheat bread cars along with a mozzarella cheese car. Ham was used to upholster the car. Bananas were the car wheels. Carrots were the wind shield wipers.

Muffin Tin Monday-Pool Party

The blog is celebrating its first birthday this week. In honor of the blog's birthday JDaniel had a pool party lunch.

He absolutely loved the octopus hot dogs. The swimming pool of yogurt with two teddy bears in inner tubes was really messy due to the blue dye I added to plain yogurt. The beach ball grapes and sun baked carrots were also enjoyed. The catsup for dipping the two octopuses was wiped clean by "Mini Claw".

Muffin Tin Monday- Digging Into a Good Lunch

The blog theme this week is Construction Equipment. JDaniel loves playing with his construction vehicles and reading about them I thought it would be fun for him to eat like one.

He was given Frito's Scoops to scoop up his taco salad lunch. He had ground turkey, shredded cheese, blueberries, peas with barley, and tomatoes to scoop up like a front loader. This wasn't an easy task. After several attempts with the scoops, he went for using an orange peel grappler (his hand bent into a claw) to finish his lunch.

Muffin Tin Monday- Dipping Into the Fourth of July

I know I did a 4th of July tin last week. I guess this is a second dip into the 4th. With that in mind I made a dipping tin for JDaniel. He got blueberries and plain yogurt in the first row. He had meat sauce and tomatoes in the second row. There was pasta and cucumber in the third row.

The idea was that he could dip the pasta in the meat sauce and the rest in the plain yogurt. Everything went in both dips. The cucumbers were tasted, dipped and mostly left behind.

Muffin Tin Monday- Very Berry 4th of July

My blog theme for the week is the 4th of July. I used to celebrate holidays on the week they happened. After thinking about it, it made more sense to share my holiday ideas the week before the holiday. This is JDaniel's 4th of July tin a week early.

JDaniel has a berry good time dipping blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries into the strawberry yogurt. Why is the cereal there? I started using breakfast cereal as sprinkles on his oatmeal in the morning. Now we have "sprinkles" on yogurt too.

Muffin Tin Monday- Best Chicken Salad Under the Sun

I am part of the Swanson's Mommy Blogger Challenge. The challenge was to come up with a recipe using Swanson's canned chicken. I decided to make a try and make chicken salad with a twist. What did I come up with? It is called Fruitful Chicken Salad. My family has been eating a lot of it as I try to tweak the recipe.

JDaniel even ended up with some on the chicken salad in his tin. He also had sunlight peaches, mandarin oranges, and cheese pieces on the top row. Beside the chicken salad he had goldfish swimming in jello on the bottom. The fish inflated a little as the jello set. I thought they looked icky. He loved them.

Please take a moment to check out the Fruitful Chicken Salad recipe and enter the giveaway I am hosting for cans of Swanson Canned Chicken.

Happy First Day of Summer!

Muffin Tin Monday- Dad Lunch

Muffin Tin Monday doesn't have a theme this week. I decided to creat a lunch based on the blog's theme which is Father's Day. JDaniel loved the fact he was having a "Dad" lunch.

What is in a "Dad" lunch? You have chicken breast cut into a D, a cantaloupe A, and a cheddar cheese D in the first row. The second row has peaches set out in a D, an A made of raisins on cottage cheese, and a tortilla D.

JDaniel loves cottage cheese right now and peaches. The other foods are old favorites. I think Dad would have like this lunch too. He would have wanted the peaches to be fresh though.

Muffin Tin Monday- Insect or Bug Lunch

JDaniel had an insect or bug lunch. The bug was made of open faced turkey sandwiches with cheese antennae and pretzel legs. The rest of the tin had foods bugs or insects like to eat. There were red grapes, lettuce, and peaches. JDaniel isn't a bug or insect and he didn't like the lettuce.

Muffin Tin Monday- Memorial Day

JDaniel loved his star themed lunch. He sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when I sat his tin down on the table. The tin had watermelon stars, Colby cheese stars with a turkey burger underneath them, yogurt, honey wheat bread stars, cherry tomotoes, and apple stars.

The cherry tomatoes were supposed to represent poppies that are used to remember Memorial Day. The stars are to remember all the stars of the military that serve our country near and far. The yogurt has no meaning. JDaniel just likes it.

Muffin Tin Monday- Exactly What He Likes

I decide to do an egg theme. JDaniel doesn't like eggs. So, I tried to make some of JDaniel's foods look round like eggs this week. I am not sure I succeeded. He ate grape tomatoes, sweet peas, roundish watermelon, turkey lunchmeat (It comes from a bird that hatched from an egg, leftover stuffed bread that looked speckled like an egg, and roundish sweet potatoes.

This isn't the best example of this week's theme. You will have to visit other Muffin Tin Monday Moms to see that. JDaniel did think that this tin was filled with foods exactly the way he likes them.

Muffin Tin Monday- Nests and One Bird Gather Together

The theme for Muffin Tin Monday is nests and birds. JDaniel's first nest has a nest of cottage cheese surrounded by peaches. The second nest in raisins in a nest of quinoa salad (see recipe on last Thursday's post). The third nest is vegetables in a nest of ham. The third nest is ranch dressing in a nest of cucumbers. Only one bird was in the meal. He was toast with shredded Mozzarella cheese.

The first thing JDaniel noticed was that there was an empty cup. He really wanted it filled to start the meal. I suggested he eat the meal and he would get to pick what we filled it with. He agreed with a little sigh.

Oh! If you get a chance, please check out my guest post on Quirky Mama's blog. It is called Learning at the Grocery Store: Have a Color Hunt.