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Weekly School Lunch Planner

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A few friends of mine asked if I could share a print out of what the kids had for school lunch. Why did I not think of that?! It will be a good reference for me as well and make sure that I pack variety of food options for the kids.

I wrote down our first week of packed school lunch, all of the recipe’s are available here.

school lunch planner

To make sure I pack a balanced meal for my kids, I use three major food groups which the kids are learning in school – GO, GROW, and GLOW food. Packing at least one food from each group ensures that our kids are getting all the nutrients they need for the day.

I hope our Weekly School Lunch Planner will help you prepare a fun and healthy meal for your kids. Just click on the photo below to download your planner. School/Work week starts on a Sunday here in the UAE.

Planner best printed on a B4 (10.12″ x 14.33″) paper.

Download #LetsMakeLunchFun weekly planner here.

Join in the fun of bento lunch packing with #LetsMakeLunchFun hashtag on Instagram.

PS: I am no expert or a certified dietician. I am a Mom trying my best to provide the healthiest meal I can.

 

Building Session at LEGOLAND Dubai Shop

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We were among the few Mama/Family bloggers invited to an exclusive event of LEGOLAND Dubai’s pop-up shop at The Beach, JBR.

With just 2 months till LEGOLAND Dubai opens it’s doors this October 31, 2016, we were treated to some inside information of its Submarine Adventure Attraction. It has about 15,000 species and its largest marine animal is a Zebra Shark as well. Something the whole family can enjoy together.

legoland dubai lego building session
Vierte with Shamil of LEGOLAND Dubai
legoland dubai lego building session
All set to let the magic happen
legoland dubai lego building session
Daddy C proud of his LEGO Shark
legoland dubai lego building session
Vierte proud of our LEGO creations
legoland dubai lego building session
Chloe with her Duplo house for LEGO Nemo

 

We were given building sheets of our selected marine animal – Nemo, Tang Fish and Shark. LEGO Expert, Shamil assisted us in case we had questions during our building session. Chloe was busy making houses out of Duplo for our LEGO Nemo fish.

legolanddubai-popup-the-beach

LEGOLAND Dubai is bringing “AWESOME” to The Beach before its official opening wit a pop-up shop that is open daily on September 10-17 from 10 am till midnight. Visitors of the shop will enjoy LEGO building experience and a chance to have a photo opportunities with characters Princess and Buddy. In addition, LEGOLAND annual pass are also sold in the shop.

 

Back to School: Get your lunch box kit ready!

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We are about to bid farewell to unscheduled days of summer vacation. Hooray!

Eldest son, Kuya V is off to Year 4 on the same school and is beyond excited to see his friends, talk about summer and how many Pokemon cards he collected and caught. As for LittleMiss C, she will be in KG2 this year, our baby at 4 years is still too young to be in KG 2!

As with every new academic year, it is time to think about sleep routines, school uniforms, bags and lunch boxes. Here are my top five things to get your lunchbox kit ready for school.

1. Lunchbox and bottles: Do you need a new set of lunchbox kits? I always go for compartment style boxes for easy packing, we love our Planetbox and BentGo Kids.

  • Check for leaks – fill bottles with water and lunchbox with yoghurt, give it a good shake and check for leaks. If they do have leaks I re-use them to store toys.
  • Molds / Black spots – Make sure you check the interior of your water bottles, straws and rubber lids you will be surprise to see that black spots have appeared. The most effective way of removing black spots on your straw bottles is to soak them on sterilizing fluid like Milton. I soak all plastic wares on sterilizing liquid once a week.

2. Utensils: Believe me you can never have enough cutlery to pack for school. Over time I have collected good quality disposable utensils from restaurants, take-outs and just recently from an airline. I always ask our flight attendants if I can keep the utensils they provide the kids in flight, they always say yes. I also collect ketchup packets and wet wipes packet provided in every food take-out. I have labelled each cutlery and only a handful manage to come back home. IKEA’s colorful Kalas plastic cutlery is a good buy.

3. Lunch bags: Check every pocket for some forgotten pack of biscuits, I just found an expired ketchup packet on ours. Also check if insulation still works well, if not you need to buy some reusable ice packs to keep food fresh and cold. Wash them all up and they will look like brand new.

4. Sealable or re-usable bags: Stock up on resealable food bags to pack cutlery, wet wipes and some cookies for the kids to eat on the school bus or just to get that sugar up after all that work in school.

5. Label: Get that name stickers and permanent markers ready, label everything that you can and add a little wish that each piece in your lunch kit find their way back home.

One more thing, if like me you have bento lunch making tools, it is the best time to re-organize all your stuff. Place all similar items in one box for easy access.

I hope this will help you get your household lunchbox ready for school. Let me know in the comments below if you have anything to add on the list.

Happy lunchbox packing!

LittleMiss Chloe’s 4th Birthday

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*Late post.

Just before we left for our 2 months long vacation, we got to celebrate LittleMiss C’s birthday on the day she was born, June 25.

LittleMiss Chloe 4 yrs

Cake

As with every birthday in our family, I baked and designed Chloe’s 4th birthday cake, cookies and cake pops in my tiny kitchen. She chose the cake theme and gave me instructions that it should be just pink with a silver tiara. This year, Sheila and Jill helped me finish designing all sugar cookies and party setup.

princess tiara cake pops
Vanilla & Chocolate Cake Pops
princess tiara dessert party spread
Cookies & Cake Pops Table
Princess Pink Tiara Cake
Chloe’s Pink Princess Tiara Cake

 

Venue

We looked at several venues and chose to celebrate her birthday at AdventureLand, Sahara Centre. It is close to where we live and we won’t have a hard time traveling back home.

AdventureLand Sahara Centre Party Stage
sahara centre adventureland sharjah indoor play
adventureland sahara centre

We really liked Adventureland’s party hall, located on the 2nd floor just above the bumper car rides. Children’s table is inside the main party hall where the stage is, while long tables for adults were arranged outside the main hall. I think it will comfortably accommodate 50 guests.

Party Games

Some familiar and new games that kept everyone smiling. The host’s clearly knew what they were doing – each of them took charge of one game while the rest did the setup and the other took care of music.

adventureland sahara centre party
adventureland sahara centre party
adventureland sahara centre party
adventureland sahara centre party
adventureland sahara centre party

Food

This is where we had a little issue, we ordered from Pizza Hut and KFC for the adults while kids got to choose a McDo meal. Food choices were settled days before the party, Marivic head of the party hall spoke to all three companies and settled that we will give payment after the party. She assured us that this was the setup they do in each party they host. KFC however did not deliver food on time! Both Pizza Hut and McDo delivered food 10 minutes before the last game was done. Our KFC order arrived 25 minutes after the guest’s have eaten.

Chloe's 4th Birthday
adventureland sahara centre party
Birthday Wish
adventureland sahara centre party
Cake Cutting

Chloe initially did not like a big party and only wanted to invite 3 friends over and have a cake. She only had 3 friends in her party, some kids are Kuya V’s school friends and our closest friends here.

She had so much fun and declared her birthday “the best day ever!”

Happy 4th Birthday Chloe

Happy birthday, Chloe!

We will always be here for you. Always remember that we love you forever and always.

Daddy, Mommy and Kuya

 

*Huge Thank You to Arence for taking photos during Chloe’s birthday.

Giveaway: Back to School with De’Longhi Multifry

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We survived the first week of back to school. Hooray!

For a job well done, surviving the early morning alarm and manic school runs I am giving YOU the chance to win a De’Longhi Multifry Multicooker to help you in the kitchen.

As you may have now noticed, I absolutely love our De’Longhi Multifry and have been using it to prepare this week’s lunchbox food.

To learn more about De’Longhi Multifry, visit this page. For more tasty recipes you can do with your Multicooker, just click here or download recipe book on your phone, search for De’Longhi.

Za’atar Pinwheels for Vierte’s first day back.

0831-tapsilog

 

Chicken Pilaf

0904-chicken-rice-pilaf

 

Roast Chicken Fresh Spring Rolls 

0906-roastchicken-spring-rolls

 

Chicken Popcorn

0907-chicken-popcorn

 

Lobster Balls

0907-pokeballs-apple

To WIN one De’Longhi Multifry:

 

De'Longhi Multifry Giveaway

  • Head over to our Instagram and tag 3 friends, under De’Longhi giveaway post.
  • “Like” our facebook page, here.
  • Share our giveaway on your social media, make sure you tag me.
  • Leave a comment on our Facebook page, under De’Longhi giveaway post, that you have done all steps.
  • One entry for each step done.

Terms and conditions:

  • Entrants must have a public profile to be able to avail this offer (you can change it back to private after the competition is closed if you wish)
  • Giveaway is only open to entrants residing in the United Arab Emirates
  • The competition opens at 1om GST (UTC+4hrs) on September 7, 2016 and closes 8pm GST on September 14, 2016.
  • The winner will be chosen at random from valid entries (that have completed all four actions) and announced on September 18, 206 on this blog post, as well as on Instagram @cuddlesandcrumbs
  • The winner will need to provide complete name as stated on a valid ID, email address, phone number and delivery address to be passed on to De’Longhi Middle East team.
  • This giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by or associated with, Facebook and Instagram. You are providing your information to CuddlesAndCrumbs.com and not to Instagram or Facebook. The information you provide will be used for this competition only.

Bento Lunch box Recipe: Chicken Pilaf

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Our yummy lunchbox recipe for you this week is Chicken Pilaf. It is always a hit and miss for me when cooking basmati rice, most of the time it turns out mushy. As my friend would say “basmati is no good when sticking to each other”

I prepared this pilaf recipe twice this week and the basmati rice was perfectly cooked. The kids love it as well, that is why they had for school lunch and more at home.

Chloe’s: Chicken pilaf, strawberries and cereal bar

chicken rice pilaf recipe

Vierte’s lunchbox: chicken pilaf, baby carrots, dried mangoes, kiwi and cereal bar

chicken rice pilaf bento lunchbox

 

Give it a try and let me know if your kids enjoyed this Chicken Pilaf recipe as well.

Chicken Pilaf

Ingredients

1 ½ cup Basmati Rice

500 g Chicken, cut to bite size

½ cup Carrots, diced

Onion, minced

Olive Oil, Level 1

2 cups Chicken Broth (or water)

3 Garlic cloves

2 tsp Arabic Mix Masala  or Bezar

Salt, to taste

Method:

1.       Wash basmati rice until water is clear, soak in water.

2.       Insert paddle in the bowl.

3.       Put oil then add chicken, onions and carrots and a pinch of salt. Close lid select STEW function, power LEVEL 3, set TIMER to 20 minutes and press Start/Stop button.

4.       After set time, open lid and remove paddle (use a silicon glove it is hot). Add basmati rice (water not included), bezar, garlic and broth. Mix well. Add salt to taste.

5.       Close lid, select STEW function, power LEVEL 4, set TIMER 30 minutes and press Star/Stop button.

6.       Once timer is done, mix pilaf and serve on a dish. Enjoy

Bento Lunch box Recipe: Zaatar Feta Pinwheels

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We survived the first week of back to school! Well, technically it was not 5 days of school week for us but still, YAY!

For us UAE residents our busy school and work week begins on Sunday till Thursday. We have Friday and Saturday as our weekend.

Our back to school week was a breeze, both kids woke up on time and no major morning drama. LittleMiss did have a rough start in school but was fine after.

I first had a taste of Za’atar pinwheels when LittleMiss and I attended a Baby Massage class. After that, I have a weird craving for the flavor ever since and would eat one whole Za’atar Manakish just to satisfy myself.

Recipe Zaatar Feta Pinwheels with DeLonghi Multifry

This week I finally got a chance to re-create the za’atar pinwheels I had 4 years back. It is super easy to make, perfect size for your kids lunchbox and yummy too. Our De’Longhi MultiFry Machine is becoming one of our favorite kitchen gadgets, it has literally saved me from spending more time in the kitchen. This machine also allows me to “fry” food by using small amount of oil and sometime no oil at all, I posted a chicken recipe using the multifry here.

As you can see from this week’s lunchbox, these pinwheels are becoming a favorite.

August 30: LittleMiss C’s first day back in school

Zaatar Feta Pinwheels Lunchbox

August 31:  Kuya V’s first day in Year 4

 

September 1: We had a weird combination for Kuya V’s lunchbox.

Lunchbox Rice Cake

And now for the recipe.

Zaatar Feta Pinwheels Recipe

Za'atar Feta Pinwheels

½ C Zaatar Spice Mix

½ C Feta Cheese, crumbled

¼ C Unsalted Butter, melted

2 TBSP Flour

Puff Pastry, defrosted but still cold

Instructions:

Roll out puff pastry on a floured surface.

Brush puff pastry with unsalted melted butter.

Sprinkle generous amount of Zaatar mix, followed by crumbled Feta cheese.

Begin at the opposite end, start rolling pastry towards you. Pinch seams to seal roll.

Cut dough about ¾ inch thick. Next, lay pinwheels on your De’Longhi MultiFry pan.

Select CAKE program, power LEVEL 2, timer to 30 minutes and press START/STOP button. Â