Recipe Carnival- LUNCH!

I chose the Let's Do Lunch theme for purely self-serving reasons. The school year is kicking back up, six of the nine of us are here all day long every day (except for the two days a week we're off doing music lessons, art lessons, nature study, and Shakespeare with another family), three of the nine of us are packing lunches (as are the rest of us one day a week), and lunch is just..... stale. So I wanted some other ideas to perk up the afternoons around here.

I asked on a homeschooling list, too, and I'll be sharing some of those ideas here and there in this carnival. So grab a comfortable seat, pick up your coffee, tea, or water, and start your shopping and menu lists, because we're off to Do LUNCH!

Kathee presents Old Fashioned Deviled Eggs posted at World Famous Recipes. She uses brown mustard, too, which is always a tasty treat.

Homeschooling Mom Jodi was looking around online for ideas and came across the Laptop Lunches website. Even stay at home moms might have fun doing lunchboxes sometimes- one advantage of these is you could put them together in the morning or the night before, when you're doing the lunches for the family members who eat lunch away from home (if, in fact, you do that). Their photo gallery has lots of great
ideas for lunches- run your mouse over the pictures and a little box
comes up with the names of the foods that are in the pictures. If nothing else it will prime the pump for more ideas of what you can do at home.


Bill presents Sausage Pancake Puff posted at Pancake Recipes. These can also be baked in muffin tins, and they look delicious and filling! A keeper for sure.

Homeschooling Mom Kelli suggests lunch shish-ka-bobs, something I've done before as well. Set out plates of cut up fruit, veggies, cubes of cheese and sometimes, meat. With it, put wooden skewers or bamboo shish-kebob sticks (my family does this with pretzels sometimes, and we use pickles and olives too). The children put the goodies on the sticks. The only 'rule' is that they can't load the skewer with one or two favourite items - they must take an assortment.

Thelly presents Toasted Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich posted at Chicken Recipes. Delicious!

Homeschool mom Kelli is very creative. She also suggests having a child use a rolling pin to flatten pieces of bread (kids love it when they get to help). Then spread the flattened bread with peanut butter/raspberry jelly or cream cheese/strawberry jam. Then roll each piece of bread from it's shortest side to make a long roll, and cut into thin slices. These make very pretty and tasty
'pinwheels'.


Diabetic Recipes presents Roasted Vegetable & Feta Sandwiches posted at Diabetic Recipes. We're always looking for a way to get more veggies.

Slow Cooker Recipes presents Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Sandwiches posted at Slow Cooker Recipes. These look delicious, piquant, tasty, and tangy. Yum.

Kelli also says,

"I save a lot of money by making my own "fast food." I get Bridgeford bread dough from the freezer section of the store and make homemade calzones, "hot pocket" type sandwiches, etc. I especially like the Bridgeford rolls for calzones when I can find it, just take a roll, roll it into a circle, put some grated mozzerella and spaghetti sauce and a few pepperoni slices in the center, fold it, use a fork to make indentations and let rise for a bit and bake. When cool, throw them in gallon size Ziplock bags and freeze til you need them... I do the same thing basically for hot pockets, only I use grated cheddar and bits of chopped ham. I also make homemade burritos out of leftovers and refried beans. Everything goes in labeled bags in the freezer, then all I have to do is get out the requested item, throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and lunch is ready. Another thing I do a lot that is very fast and easy is scampi. My kids love shrimp, so I buy the big freezer bags from Costco, throw it in a skillet with a bit of butter, garlic and white wine. It cooks in like three to five minutes and I serve it with instant pudding, carrot and celery sticks and fruit"

Expat Chef presents a funny story that starts with a lunch date and ends with a marriage — to someone else ... and a recipe, of course! Tuscan-style White Bean and Tuna Salad.The Expatriate's Kitchen: A Tale of Two Hearts posted at The Expatriate's Kitchen.

Shawn Lea shares links to the best Road Food- sandwiches from this cookbook available online

Homeschooling Mom Merilee suggests putting together a rotation of ideas for lunches, and serve each of them with plenty of fruit on the side. With this rotating cycle of lunch ideas, you pretty much have your shopping list ready made. Here are some of her great ideas:

pb&j on wheat or turkey and cheese on wheat with carrots, celery, pea pods and hummus on side

refried beans and cheese tortillas with salsa and chips and carrots, etc.

mac and cheese and peas

Tuna salad in wheat pita pocket with veggies on side


Dani presents Picnic-Perfect Pasta Salad posted at Catch the Spoon.

Mama Squirrel presents Small potatoes. And Wieners without Beaners. posted at Dewey's Treehouse.- It sounds delicious and is another great example of improvisational cooking.

Merilee also uses pasta salad and regular salad with tuna and/or kidney beans added in her lunch line up, as well as:

bagel or english muffin pizzas with veggies/salad

tomato soup, veggies, cheese and crackers

any other soup

and leftovers from dinners...

Back in the blogworld,
Stephanie presents Canning Tomato Soup posted at Stop the Ride!. She says she may never be able to eat another bowl of storebought soup again, and I believe it. This sounds fantastic.

Anne-Marie presents Oceans Seasons and an alternative to tuna salad sandwiches posted at A Readable Feast.

Marsha Hudnall presents Healthy Recipe: Peach Stuffed Chicken posted at A Weight Lifted.

Meredith Mathews presents It's Lemonade Day! posted at Lemonade Stand.

Annette Berlin says using real garlic is a lot more trouble than just opening a bottle and pouring out powder, but for some dishes the extra work is well worth it. This is one of those dishes, and she presents Spaghetti with Garlic posted at Frugal Journey.

Chief Family Officer presents Crockpot Portugese Bean Soup posted at Chief Family Officer

Eleisia Whitney presents Roast Beef Salad, Chicken Chili Burgers, and Taco Salad posted at Two Moms in a Blog/In the Kitchen.

Frugal Panda presents How to: Eat Healthy for Cheap posted at Frugal Panda

Arvind Devalia shares his idea for a nutritious ingredient for a quick lunch.

pickel presents Salicylate Free Homemade Apple Sauce posted at My Two Boys.

I was making something like bento boxes for lunches years before I even knew there was such a thing (I made some for my foster sister once in a while when we were in high school in the late '70s, and I made them for my husband when we were dating in the very early 80's. I was very excited when we moved to Japan and I saw just how fun these could really be). Here's one effort, and here's where I tried my hand at making onigiri.


from wee wifey at 2 Fat Leaders we have this fluffy Italian Fritatta which looks quite tasty and good enough to eat.=)

Lunch in a Box is another favorite bento lunch oriented site where I get interesting ideas for lunches.

Lucynda Riley presents Chocolate Syrup from scratch posted at Quietly into the Night.

Homeschooling mom Lani found a website with a list of meals already planned out for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. She uses it to plan her shopping list.

Mansi Desai says "This is an asian recipe with my own Indianized modifications" and presents Cabbage Rolls and Salsa posted at Fun and Food.

Lionel at Lookin' At Cookin shares Ham and Swiss Stuffed Burgers, which he says are a different kind of burger with some of the add ons on the inside.

cehwiedel shares an easy grilled pork chop recipe with Oriental pizzaz: Pork Chops with Plum Glaze - New Recipe Posted posted at Kneadle Work.

That's it for this week- enjoy your lunch! Thank you all so much for submitting your recipes! Thanks to everybody for reading as well, and please be sure to pass on the link to this carnival to all your friends and readers. Let me know if you submitted a recipe and don't see it here, or if there is a problem with any of the links. Happy cooking and eating!

Next week we'll be perusing recipes at the Expatriate's Kitchen. Submit your recipes through the very convenient blog carnival doohickey or to recipe.carnival@gmail.com.