Real Food Challenge: Days 8 & 9

As Day 8 dawned, it became painfully obvious that the depths of our fridge and pantry were becoming rather bare.  We scraped by to the best of our ability (I would have gone to the trip if we absolutely had to, but with a certain little girl's nose dripping green... well, not exactly something I want to expose the public to), and that evening I took serious stock of what we had to make Day 9 feel a little less desperate.  I didn't actually get any photos on Day 8 between the random meals and tired, cranky babies.  Such is life.

Day 8

Breakfast

We finished off the yogurt, berries and granola for breakfast.

Lunch

My memory is starting to fail me here, but I think I had some leftover pasta with a whole mess of frozen veggies just sauteed up.  I'm pretty sure Anni had a pb sandwich and a banana, but I'm honestly not positive on that one.

Dinner

Ah, a copout meal.  We totally pulled the organic ww mac n' cheese out, warmed up some veggies and chicken and dealt with it.  It was tasty, even if it was kind of lame.


Day 9

Breakfast 

Day 9 went a lot better, as I actually thought things through the night before and stayed up late doing a little baking.  I chopped up our last, lonely little apple, and made lovely apple mini muffins (and proceeded to eat several as I worked late into the night... don't worry, I left plenty for breakfast!)  Anni loved the mini-ness of these muffins... and I felt like she ate them with more ease than bigger ones that usually ended up mostly on the floor before she had the energy to get through them all.  Thank goodness for my random purchase of a mini-muffin pan a few weeks ago!

Lunch

This was truly a conglomerate of leftovers.  I had made sure there was something for Daniel to take (I can't just send him out to the Qdoba near his office when we're on this challenge!), so he took a chicken salad with him to work.  He left enough chicken that Anni and I were able to throw some on top of our spaghetti (the last bit left in the box... catching the theme of this lunch?).  I sauteed up the last of the grape tomatoes with some spices (I usually like to use fresh onion and garlic when I do this... but, alas, all out!), threw in some parmesan and, we had a lovely lunch!  Anni ate most of hers, so it was deemed a success!

Dinner

There's a photo hiding in my dearest's iPhone, but he's sleeping, so you'll just have to imagine this one.  I defrosted some leftover chili, added a little cinnamon (the secret!) and cooked up the tiniest bit of pasta (it was the dregs of what was left in the box... not really full servings, but just enough to add some interest) for some Cincinnati Chili.  We made it!  One more day to go!  


Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I totally had Daniel pick up some dark, dark chocolate.  It's 70 or 80%, so pretty close to real food, but there is a little sugar in it, so we may have kind of cheated.  I don't know if that disqualifies us from being awesome completers of this challenge... but, I'm okay with the decision.  

I'm also realizing that we eat a lot of pasta.  Tomorrow I'm mixing it up and trying quinoa for the first time... if we're going to eat grains, might as well make it interesting, right?!