A Fun Lunch

Picture this... its a rainy day, it's cold outside, it's mid-January, and we've been cooped up in this freakin' house since November. To make matters worse, the Steelers didn't make the post season so watching the NFL Playoffs is depressing, too. The answer... Creative Activities!

Needless to say - the kids are starting to get stir crazy so, being on a cooking kick recently, I tried to find something fun that we could all make for lunch... together. This is what I came up with: Turkey and Ham sandwich wraps! Woo hoo!

This lunch was a total family effort. Step one is to put out all of the crap. We used some baby spinach, sliced turkey, sliced ham, flour tortillas, nickels (not pictured) and a cheese spread that was made with a 6.5 oz container of Alouette Light Garlic & Herb Cheese Spread and 1/2 cup of roasted red peppers - all chopped up - and then mixed together with the spread.


I gave each kid a little container of the cheese spread so that they could smear it on themselves. (Sammy used mayo because his sense of adventure isn't quite as profound as his brothers' and sisters'.) Here is Ella smearing away...

The first thing we did after smearing was to place a slice of ham on the tortilla. Robby took this part VERY seriously:

Next is the spinach... which is a tricky thing. It's only tricky because it's spinach... and, well, 5 & 7 year old kids tend to think they don't like spinach. My trick was bribery, but your choice of manipulation may be slightly different. I leave that to all of you, should you attempt this at home. A nickel was given out for each leaf that was placed on the sandwich. After placing the leaves, James took a quick break from cooking to calculate his earnings.
Next step is to put a slice of turkey on this badboy:

Then James asks the question, "Dad - can we put more spinach on?" My response - OF COURSE! So we put more spinach on there after the turkey (and now I'm broke).
We repeat the meat, spinach process until we have a nice sized stack - then it was time to wrap the whole thing up. I had to do this for each of the kiddos because it was kinda messy and they all were concerned with losing pieces of the wrap. I walked around the room, wrapped everyone's up, and then it was time to chow down!

Geana is out to lunch with one of her friends, so now we watch football all afternoon and take naps.

Yum

So I've decided to start cooking. To put this in perspective - I've never cooked a day in my life (with the exception of Kraft Mac & Cheese and the occasional ramen noodles and the like...) Anyway - some recent events have inspired me to start trying my hand at cooking and I'm having a blast doing it (it's only been one day, but still.) I'm not naive, It may last - but it probably won't. I'm sure that I'll get sick of it in a week because that's what I do - but dude... yesterday we had some INCREDIBLE food.

We started the day by heading to the Italian Market to get some produce and to get a piece for the food processor that has been missing since the fire. The kids thought that the dead fish laying on ice were the best part. I, however, preferred all of the fresh produce (and continue to enjoy the fresh produce). It was a mild day for mid-January so we got to walk up and down 9th Street, taking our time, and buying too much food.

As an aside - we got the kids some chop-sticks and thought about stopping in Chinatown on our way home. Realizing that we were going nuts and being overly ambitious - we opted instead to go to a Chinese restaurant near our house because the parking was just too freakin' impossible with our van in town. Here is a shot of Anna using her new sticks.


We came home and I made some Blackened Talapia, Garlic Brussel Sprouts, and the aforementioned Mac & Cheese - or as I have now decided to call it - Dibrunaroni and Cheese. (Named for DiBruno Brothers where I bought the cheese which is, hands down, the greatest store on earth.)

Tonight's menu... left overs.