40 Days, 40 Boxes

Even though, I am not religious, I was raised in a Catholic family and always loved the challenge set forth during lent. I was recently reading one of my favorite blogs Clover Lane and saw her 40 Bags, 40 Days challenge in which she cleans out her entire house, aiming to get rid of 40 bags of stuff during lent. While I am trying that challenge myself, with only one child and a small house, I'm not sure I can wrangle up a full 40 bags of unnecessary stuff to purge. I was, however, inspired to try another 40 day challenge of my own ... 40 days of lunch boxes. Seeing as I'm working on improving my diet and I'm always looking for an excuse to use my bento boxes, I figured it was the perfect project for me this year.

Today is Day 1! I didn't cook last night, but had some homemade chicken soup in the freezer just waiting to be eaten. I cooked some fresh rice noodles and threw them into the soup (they seem to get mushy if I freeze them in the soup). To get our veggies, we both had okra plus I had a green salad w/ purple cabbage. Ethan is not a salad fan yet (and I'm not a raw pepper fan), so he had raw red and yellow bell pepper sticks plus coconut yogurt for dipping. We both had apple and blueberries, though his has a much higher berry to apple ratio to satisfy his current blueberry addiction. I thought this would be way too much food for a 2.5 year old, so I filled the last portion of Ethan's lunchbox w/ grapes and EnerG pretzels that were set aside for a snack later.

Turns out I under-estimated my son's appetite ...

In the past, I had always removed the inner containers from the box at mealtime to make it easier for him to reach the food. Today, he insisted they stay in the box! Ethan was DELIGHTED with his lunch. First went the soup, then the peppers. After discovering the fruit was also glorious dipped in the yogurt, it was quickly inhaled. He even dunked a few pieces of okra in the stuff. That part grossed me out, but if he's eating his veggies I'm not complaining! The child was so hungry, I refilled his soup twice. About 1/3 of the noodles lost their way off the spoon and ended up all over the chair, but that's still a lot of food. Someone much be about to hit a growth spurt!

I'm so grateful for our time together this morning. We had such a great Mommy-Son lunch today!

Also posted at Whats For Lunch Wednesday.