Muffin Tin Lunch (AKA Fun Lunch)

Early on in our marriage (who are we kidding, it's purely related to the pre-children phase of my life), I would get up on Saturday morning and make "fun breakfast." Which often included bacon or sausages, pancakes, waffles and all those other things you don't have time to make during the week.

Now, I blamed stopping on the fact that Mark started working a Saturday morning shift for the TV station, but he's home by 10:30am so, really, we could have morphed it into fun brunch. With 2 kids, I'm just too lazy. Mark misses those days.

Mady is much easier to please in the fun food category. Last year I stumbled across a blog called Muffin Tin Mom. Basically what she does is create her kid's lunches inside a muffin tin. One food per compartment. She expands this to allow muffin liners (paper or silicone). It's basically like a Bento lunch without the box. She has a linky party every week for others who make this style of lunch and some peoples' creations are pretty amazing! Sometimes they'll do a theme (or people will create their own theme to go along with life or what their kid is "into.").

I've always wanted to do something like this for Mady, but who are we kidding? I'm lazy. I was not going to cut cheese into little shapes every day or fashion a sandwich to look like a giraffe.

I found my solution thanks to Wilton. They sell silicone muffin liners that have feet on them (See where I'm going with this? Feet are fun!). I have both the clown and animal feet ones in my stash. So one day I decided to make Mady's lunch inside these cups like a muffin tin meal.

She thinks this is the greatest thing ever! She calls it fun lunch. And we do it now about once a week. She would be WAY less interested in any of this food had I just thrown it on a plate.

The picture is of my first fun lunch (uh, basically, they've all looked the same ever since, just with different fruit). Oooh and ahh over my attempt and then go and look at some of the ones on Michelle's site. You'll be totally unimpressed with mine after, but it's worth a look.

And if you have a picky eater (I prefer the term, unrefined palette), this is a fun way to get them to try things. It's good portions for a preschooler too!