I did a search on pintrest and up popped amazing cupcakes and clothes and decor all things school.  Super cute but ummmm seemingly impossible when you consider the fact that school requires dressing kids, packing lunch, remembering school work, encouraging through the resistance to get out the door, reassuring the younger sibling their time will come…..

I have been on the hunt for fun lunch ideas but again, the ideas are boundless and require way more than my 15 mins I plan on spending. Sorry, bud, your fruit will not be cut out into shapes of apples and your cheese into the shape of pencils. Nor will it be skewered. But I don’t love you any less! (and you all know I am SO tempted to do 90% of these lunches. I bet I will fall into temptation at least once but I want to keep expectations low at first. I can’t start with a puppy shapes sandwich with scooby bone-shaped cookies on the first day) And moms out there that are doing these…you are my hero!  But we can’t be friends because the pressure to copy you would be too strong!

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Some feasible ideas I have seen are….

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tortilla roll up with peanut butter and jelly and a banana all wrapped up…although I just learned that we cannot take any peanut products! So this will have to be modified! ….a continuation of the peanut discussion is that pb&j is on the cafeteria menu but we can’t send it. It is all so confusing to me!

homemade lunchables…ie cut the ham and cheese and pop in some cracker instead of making a sandwich with bread

hard boiled eggs…my sister-in-law showed me these little egg molds. Jackson will for sure come home asking me how the chicken laid an egg in the shape of a car or a fish but once we got beyond that I think he would get a kick out of them! We got some off Amazon!

Our first week of packing lunches went pretty well. I am still looking for ideas for mixing it up and making it easier but so far so good. And I think he’s actually eating it….I was worried he would be so busy and excited that he wouldn’t touch it and would come home starving. And for buying lunch I am still adjusting to my child being able to use a pin to pay for his lunch on days he buys! Credit cards will be no big deal after basically having one in Kindergarten! It’s pizza day today so I had to let him buy……he has to have that first experience of the famous rectangular school pizza!

This is the last in our mini series on packing! If you missed the first couple of posts you can find them here: Packing Advice?! From us?! {Part 1} and Packing {Part 2} UAB.

Last but not least is a list of food items that I would tuck in the shipment if you can. Again, some people don’t have the space or weight to do this but if you do these these are things I always include when going overseas just in case we can’t find them or in our case now they are out of the budget.

~taco seasoning

~ranch dip packets

~onion soup packets- good for dips and roasts, etc

~lots of spices. Spices are pricey in the US  and can be hard to find or expensive overseas. Take an extra bottle of things  you use often just to give you time to hunt locally or mail them. Add extra of things like Cajun seasonings and Mexican seasonings!

~vanilla extract..and any other extracts you like to bake with.

~chili mixes

~cream of whatever soups….so even if your mom never cooked casseroles with cream of chicken soup there is something about being far from home that will occasionally make you crave an American casserole and somehow the Campbell’s gods have engraved it in our brains that such a casserole might include such a soup.

~salsa. you might be able to find some for a price or some that just doesn’t taste good but you will miss the good stuff! if you have the space bring some along!  We have learned to make different salsas but sometimes it’s nice to have some handy.

~Bisquick/pancake mix

~syrup (or bring some maple extract so you can make something similar!

~peanut butter, again you might not eat it much now but for some crazy reason when you can’t get it you crave it!

~chocolate chips or whatever baking things you like for holiday baking…instant yeast is a good one to take!

~cake mix/brownie mix….even if you normally do it from scratch throw a few in. On days when you are culture shocked by the inconvenience of life you will have a new appreciation for brownies that smell like home and you didn’t have to measure

~crystal light or similar drink mixes…sounds silly but sometimes lemonade or cranberry juice sounds so good and either can’t be found or…you guessed it, is super expensive. The individual packs are light for packing but will brighten a summer day abroad!

~liquid smoke (for all you Texan’s)…pack this one well! can you imagine your entire household smelling permanently like smoked meat?…Seth’s response to that question would be “but I like smoked meat”. Precisely why his involvement in minimal with the ziplocking!

~macaroni and cheese…I have heard you can even just buy the cheese powder now without having to buy the whole box. All you need is the yellow #5 right?!

*Remember to ask for your favorite family recipes! You will miss your mom’s home cooking and you might just have to learn to make all of it since you can’t pop over to moms house!    Even with this big list of things we would take I have to say mostly we have just learned to make most of the things we miss! While I would love to hop out to a restaurant to get a break from cooking I am glad that these 2 years in Switzerland have pushed me to learn so much with cooking. SO if you can’t take food items or if you forget something google what you miss and be brave enough to try something new!

*Don’t whatever you do become a hoarder!!! Share the treats with others you know are missing home! Trust me, they taste better when you share them.

Of course when you go back stateside be prepared to crave things that you learned to love overseas!! I am sure we will be on the hunt for fondue and Swiss chocolate just like we searched for ajiaco and arepas when we left Colombia!

If you aren’t packing and moving or going overseas consider sending a package to a friend abroad with some of these goodies above. you will make their day and give them a taste of home!

This weekend has been packed. Yesterday I made a baby shower cake for a friends shower that I attended in the afternoon. Today we spent the morning with Jackson’s school at a local farm for the end of the year party. They served a traditional Swiss brunch. This evening we had a potluck at church! Our last weeks in Switzerland have been so full of fun times with friends making memories that we will for sure not forget.

Baby Shower

The cake looks grey in this lighting but I promise it was pale purple. I made a cream cheese icing and I guess because it was so hot outside it was super thin. Instead of piping on decorations like I had planned I had to find a plan B quickly because the icing was just running off. So it looked artsier than I had planned but tasted good and the makeshift clothes line looked cute in the end! The shower was beautifully done by my friends, Karen and Merve. They decorated with lots of flowers and purple decor and had a beautiful spread of fruits, veggies, cookies, etc.  The favors were little flower pots with seeds displayed on a cupcake stand. Such a cute idea. Beautiful job, ladies!

Preschool Farm Brunch

get this boy a pup!

king of the mountain

class sing along

succulents in the roof gutter! so pretty!

SO all week I waffled about if this Saturday was the day to pick strawberries. We had a group that wanted to go together, the weather was iffy and I drove by and saw that lots of the strawberries were still green. So by this morning I decided with a friend that we would pop over (it’s less than 10 mins from us) and pick a few and return with the group next week when the weather and fields were more promising. I am glad I didn’t take everyone along because the berries weren’t in their prime but I got a big bowl for the weekend and will head back.

I promised you this recipe from my friends mom, Theres! Thanks for the recipe, Theres!….

Theres’ Strawberry-Rhubarb Dessert

serves 6-8 people
750g strawberries
750g rhubarb
Einback (a very fluffy white bread, similar to Zopf) or Zopf (something like challah)
250g low fat quark (what is quark in English? it’s similar to joghurt, but firm, like a fresh cheese…)
500g semi fat quark
butter
sugar
syrup

Wash and slice the strawberries. Put them in a bowl and marinade in syrup for 30 min (Holundersyrup tastes best, but any berry or fruit syrup will do).

Wash rhubarb and cut in 1cm pieces. Add sugar and cook in the microwave until it’s soft (10 min at full power. Instead of microwaving, you can cook the rhubarb in a pan. In that case add some water.

Slice the Einback oder Zopf (challah white bread) in 1 cm slices, enough to cover the bottom of your serving dish. Butter them, add some sugar and toast in the oven until they are light golden.

Mix both quarks, add sugar to taste.

Pour strawberries and if necessary rhubarb in a sieve/strainer
Lay the toasts in the dish, cover with a layer of rhubarb. Add a layer of quark and put strawberries on top.
Enjoy!
T.

I realized that really we don’t have anything comparable to quark in the US. You can use cream cheese  whipped with sour cream and sugar I bet to get something similar.

Here are some other strawberry recipes!

*Last year we made strawberry bread…like banana bread but with strawberries!   Here is the recipe we used last year.

*In Barcelona we went to the Hard Rock cafe because you know every American abroad needs a decent burger every once in a while….the point of mentioning this useless information is that I ordered a strawberry basil lemonade and it was amazing!  This Strawberry Basil Lemonade recipe isn’t from hard rock cafe but I bet it’s similar.

*This year I plan to work our way through some of Southern Livings suggestions for strawberries that came in the April edition. Here is the link for them online if you aren’t a regular with them!  We will for sure be trying the chicken salad with strawberries, strawberry hand pies and some of the other salads!

*and of  course you can make jam! I learned last year from a friend how to can jam and also made a batch of freezer jam. If you haven’t tried freezer jam give it a go! It isn’t too tricky and you will feel oh so domestic each time you pull out a fresh jar of homemade strawberry jam.