Lollipop Lunches

Lunch around my house has become quite ho-hum these days.  I don't mean to complain because it is certainly a no brainer to make peanut butter sandwiches or quesadillas every single day of your motherly life.  But, sometimes it would be nice to make something that looked a little more appealing and made everybody smile at the same time.  Plus, school is approaching quickly and I'm looking for an occasional alternative to preparing one hundred and eighty peanut butter sandwiches for lunchboxes this year.  So, today we tried our first cool school lunch/fun lunch at home idea.  Today we made....LOLLIPOP LUNCHES!  Because, as my children tell me, everything tastes better on a stick :)

Here's the menu:
Lollipop Sandwiches
Cucumber Lollipops
Grape Lollipops
Cheese Lollipop
And, of course, for dessert....a real lollipop

And here's what you do:
To make a lollipop sandwich you first have to flatten your bread a little with a rolling pin.

Then, cut off the crust for beauty :)

Put your toppings on. 
We tried peanut butter, strawberry cream cheese and jam, ham and cream cheese, and a regular ham and cheese.  You just have to have a fairly thin layer of toppings so that you can roll your bread into a little pinwheel.

  I though I would need a sticky spread to hold this together but surprisingly the plain ham with cheese stuck together just fine once I got the toothpick in it.

Once you've got your toppings on, start at the end of the sandwich and roll it up.  It will look like this:

You can refridgerate it for a while if you want it to maintain a perfect and firm shape...but who am I kidding, I have a very short attention span and on a school morning there is no time for such things.  So, just cut it into cute little round slices and stick a toothpick in it so it looks like a lollipop.  My children were beaming when they saw these things. 

Now, stick some grapes on a toothpick and VOILA, grape lollipops. 

Cucumbers make nice round sucker like shapes

and cheese can be cut into cubes or if you have a little circle cutter that's great too.  My kids loved helping with this LOLLIPOP feast and devoured very last bite. 

Follow up with a real life lollipop and you get the mom award for the day.  Pack it in your kiddos lunch box...it's so much cooler than a plain ol' sandwich with grapes.