Lunch Meal Planning, Delicious Lunch Idea & Recipe Link

I almost always plan my dinners for the week ahead. It makes it so much easier to grocery shop, and to keep from eating out when we already know what the plan is. 

This week, I took my meal planning one step further than I usually do, and planned out my lunches for the week. Lunchtime is the most challenging meal for me. I never know what to make, and end up overeating, eating something junky, or just kind of grazing a little bit. I'm hoping this will help me feel less "lost" at lunchtime everyday. I'm trying to keep my meals pretty "clean" too, and organic when I can.

Day one of a planned lunch was great! I made a Clean Eating Quinoa Avocado Salad that was to die for. SO GOOD! I used a recipe from The Gracious Pantry (which is one of my new favorite blogs), with just a few tiny tweaks. I didn't have any limes, so I used lemon. And I inadvertently used too much garlic powder. But, it was one of the best things to hit my palate in quite a while, really. It was simply bursting with flavor.

 
 This recipe is a "clean recipe", so it's dairy free, and it also happens to be gluten free. Perfect! The whole thing took less than 20 minutes to prepare. I highly recommend it! So, go ahead and head over to The Gracious Pantry for the full recipe!

Dairy Free Mac & "Cheese"

Ah, Monday, we meet again. All of last week I was planning on posting this recipe and I just never got around to it. It seemed that this blog and myself were at odds last week. On that note, my kitchen stayed relatively clean and my laundry backlog is less than usual.
Recently I posted about how my daughter and I have started the journey into a dairy free lifestyle. You can read about that here if you missed it.
One of the struggles of having a two year old that is dairy free is that two year olds love cheese. Seriously. Tot-friendly foods like grilled cheese, quesadilla's and macaroni & cheese really cannot cease to exist in the life of a two year old. So what's a mama to do? Well, make those tot-friendly foods of course!
I decided to make some Mac & "Cheese" for my Little Lady, and didn't feel like getting caught up for hours browsing recipes on the internet, so I just made my own version. I mostly eyeballed it as I went, but the following recipe worked well for me.

Ingredients:
1 c. Elbow Noodles
1 Tb. Earth Balance Butter Substitute (I used the whipped spread, but there are several variations of Earth Balance that would all probably work equally as well.)
1/4 c. Almond Breeze Original
3/4 c. Daiya Cheddar Shreds

Directions:
In pot, bring water to boil. (No set amount, I just eyeballed this. Dash of salt if desired.)
Add 1 cup  elbow noodles to the boiling water.
Once noodles are soft, drain the water.
Add 1 Tb. of  Earth Balance spread and 1/4 cup almond milk. Stir.
Add 3/4 cup of Daiya cheese shreds. Stir until mixed well. Salt and pepper to taste.
Serve and Enjoy!!!
Photograph your happy tot.

 Do you have a favorite Dairy Free recipe?

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