Food Help! - Littleton,CO

Get to know your crock pot. They are life savers on busy days. Also, can you double your recipes and freeze half for busy days? We like to do things like taco salads, homemade chipolte, soups, stews (once the weather changes and we have cooler weather), salads (with grilled or leftover chicken for protein), ravioli (not the canned kind, but the frozen type from Costco-but it has cheese in it), spag with meat sauce on what we call "fast food" days. Those are our fast foods. LOL But, you can put a roast, or a whole chicken in the crockpot with some vegies and let it go all day also.
Can't help you with the lunches. We homeschool. After seeing all the posts about homework, I'm more thankful than ever that we homeschool. My children never have homework to do after school hours. I can't imagine!

Here is a list of what I have going for my 3 year old (almost 4), who starts MDO next week: I'm just copying & pasting, so ignore anything she's allergic to ;p
Lunch box ideas:
Www.weelicious.com
Fruit leather (peach)
Organic fruit/veggie pouches (baby food)
Baby carrots
Fruit like bananas or grapes
Pasta
Boiled egg (peeled)
PB&J
Chips & Guacamole
Apple & peanut butter
String Cheese or slices with crackers
Fruit salad (no nuts)
Avocado slices
Nuts:almonds,cashews,pistachios 
Raisins/cranberries/apricots/cherries/prunes
Wheat thins
Popcorn 
Applesauce
Yogurt & strawberries
Granola
shredded wheat cereal...Maybe...(ingredients?)
Banana bread or muffins for breakfast/Smoothies/yogurt & kefir

For school lunches, if you are running out of time to do something inventive, you can always use those cool sandwich cutter that they sell in the markets. I have seen dinosaurs and hearts. Also, large cookie cutters work well. But you can't do this everyday or the sparkle will dwindle and then they will be bored with their lunches again!

http://www.5dollardinners.com/ and she just did a "lunch week" too, so tons of ideas. And most of her recipes are dairy free.

I like Lynn's Kitchen adventures too-- and she has an allergy section, her allergy recipes are nut and gluten free http://lynnskitchenadventures.com

And you can always get out your crock pot http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

and google "Menu plan Monday" for TONS of menu ideas!

I use allrecipes.com. They have some real good ideas and its free. I've never tried it, but I think you can list allergies and they will not gve you recipes with those food items in it.

Good luck to you and yours.

A friend of mine bought a cookbook at a Farmer's Market in Parker and just loves it. The recipes are easy, affordable and the kids gobble them up without question or argument--they like it. There are even some recipes for tempering crankiness.
The title is Love More Feed Less.

It was written to help parents avoid raising obese kids, but I find it a great help for getting fussy kids to eat good tasting healthy meals even with allergies. To order go to---she has lots of tips for high altitude cooking/baking on the site too.
www.themuffinlady.com

We make a huge batch of things that will freeze and reheat well (curry, spaghetti sauce, soups, stew, etc)(lots of crockpot things actually fit well in this category, but thinking about dinner before 3 pm is just really hard for me). With our small family (2 adults, 2 kids) we can make it once and get 6 meals out of it. We supplement that with grilled sandwiches and quick stir-fry stuff. Dinner that takes less than 20 mins is always very helpful for me, especially with school and homework starting up again.