Lunch: Chicken nugget and baby spinach wrappers!!!

Yeah, I know, it sounds a bit odd but when you're trying to feed a family a gluten-free, casein-free diet and one of those family members leans a little on the picky side, you get creative. Sometimes that creativity comes out in the form of calling any sort of food cut lengthwise a "_____ fry" - i.e. "pear fry" As in, "Reiss, would you like a pear fry?" To which, he replies, "Do you wanna pear fry?" and I give him a piece of pear that somewhat resembles the shape of potato wedges like you'd get at some restaurants. At other times that creativity emerges as chicken nugget and baby spinach wrappers, as was the case today - and by accident I might add.

So for lunch I sent James and Reiss out to go get french fries from a local place that we know serves GFCF fries. The trip out and going to get the fries wasn't about me not wanting to cook - heck, I was already planning on making the chicken nuggets - it was all for Reiss. "Riding in the Daddy truck" is a big treat for the little guy since he does it so seldom since the arrival of little sis'. The plan was to send them out for fries while I made chicken nuggets from scratch with chicken breasts, GFCF corn flake crumbs, and my special seasoning which isn't mine at all, but a recipe I have stored away in an online cookbook. They would provide the fries, I was to make the chicken nuggets, and we'd all meet back here for lunch. Of course chicken nuggets and fries may serve as "lunch" for some but serving these two things alone does not constitute lunch for me, as doing so would break my number one rule for lunch/dinner meal service: Always serve something green. Today, "green" was organic baby spinach leaves that were an item in our Farm Fresh Delivery bin this week.

Getting Reiss to eat chicken or any sort of protein is often a battle of the wills between him and myself. Getting veggies into him is quite a lot easier than meeting our quota for daily protein, thank goodness. So it was here that Reiss' own creativity came out by his want for making some sort of sandwich out of the items on his plate: chicken nuggets, french fries, and baby spinach leaves. Not much to work with in the way of sandwich ingredients but alas, chicken nugget and baby spinach wrappers were born! Reiss simply took a piece of chicken cut from a larger nugget and wrapped it in the baby spinach. Now these were nothing like the lettuce wraps you may get from the large chain restaurants - they were better because their size was just one bite. It was a win-win situation. Reiss was having fun wrapping his little pieces of chicken in the baby spinach and his dad and I were happy because he was enjoying himself and getting a healthy lunch. Above all, we had a peaceful meal, which has not happened in a very long time around here.