Lovely lunches

With the return to school and routine I have been thinking of lunches that are suitable for work. They have to be portable, as lunches are often eaten on playground duty, or during the wet weather eating supervision, or sitting at desk marking, healthy to set a good example and to contribute to my good healthy lifestyle choices,easy to prepare ahead of time, and I confess I am not a huge fan of the sandwich. Linda imjustlinda.blogspot has also posted about favourite lunches this week. One of my favourites (I love the fresh flavours and colours of this dish) is

Beetroot, roast pumpkin and rocket salad.

Serves 4 @ 2 points

440 g peeled butternut pumpkin, peeld, seeded and cut into 2cm chunks

120g baby rocket leaves

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

50g reduced fat feta cheese, crumbled

440 g canned baby beetroot, cut into bite sized pieces

2 tsp olive oil

1 tbs white wine vinegar

2 tsp sweet chilli sauce

1 tbs pine nuts, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Place pumkin on a lined baking tray and spray with oil. Bake for 20 mins or until golden and tender. Turn once during baking. Cool for 5 mins.

2. Combine rocket, onion, feta and beetroot in a large bowl.

3. Combine oil, vinegar and chilli sauce in a seperate container and mix well.

4. Add pumpkin and pinenuts to salad. Toss with dressing prior to serving.

I have bought some great salad containers from Howards Storage World that have a dressing lid built into the container so you can keep dressing seperate to salad until eating so it doesn't go soggy.

I also like doing fun stuff with fruit to encourage my class to eat fruit during snack break such as

I made these last night for the boys as we had a bbq. They love the choc-hazelnut sauce from the new WW Easy cookbook. Just heat two tablespoons of nutella with a tablespoon milk. Can be drizzled over fruit kebabs or used as a dunking dip.

I know vegies aren't everyones cup of tea, although I love them. I was interested to read this blog that offers some fabulous tips for cooking with veges I don't like veggies. Lots of new ways I am keen to try as a couple of my teenage boys have gone off veggies.