Friday Food #29

I’m back.  Sorry about the hiatus, but when your 10 year anniversary, Christmas, and New Year’s Day happen to fall on three Fridays in a row, Friday Food gets a little neglected!

For those of you who might think that I would rather die than make my kids some dinner out of a box, maybe you shouldn’t read this post and ruin your opinion of me. . .

Back before we found out that Kendall does MUCH better when she’s avoiding dairy products, I ordered a couple cases of macaroni and cheese for our food storage.  It won’t surprise you that I don’t buy just any mac & cheese—you know how I feel about regular white pasta, so one of the only kinds of boxed mac & cheese I feel okay about buying in bulk is this Annie’s Whole Wheat Pasta & Alfredo.  There’s no artificial orange coloring, it’s 100% whole wheat, it tastes yummy, and the kids love the D.W. shapes!

Now that we don’t use dairy in our house anymore, I have boxes and boxes of these just sitting in our storage room.  On occasions when Kendall isn’t around, sometimes I’ll pull a box out and cook it up for lunch for the other two girls.  Because we rarely make it, Berkeley thinks it’s kind of a special treat—of course, the key to it feeling like a treat is that Kendall doesn’t get to have it!

Tonight, Kendall had a Build-a-Bear birthday party to go to, so what do you think was the first thing Berkeley said to me when she found out Kendall wasn’t going to be home for dinner?  “Are you going to make something special for dinner tonight?  Like maybe that DW pasta?”  (I was proud of her for being thoughtful enough to wait till Kendall wasn’t around to hear her ask me!)  With as easy as it is to make, how could I turn her request down?  Of course, I steamed some broccoli that I mixed in with the pasta for an even tastier and healthier treat!  There really are some boxed dinners we can all feel good about!