The Lunch Challenge: Day Two

It's hard to believe, but I actually cooked/baked twice today. Yeah, that's right — twice!

Jerah requested the peanut butter baked oatmeal from last week again, so I decided to make it this morning for breakfast with some of the changes I wanted to try.

I had hoped to grind the oatmeal a little finer in my blender to satisfy Jerah who stated she didn't like the texture of oatmeal, but when I got out my blender, I discovered the blade was missing. And I still haven't been able to find it.

So that alteration to the recipe wasn't possible; but I was still able to increase the amount of peanut butter (as Jeff had requested) and to add chocolate chips (as Joely has suggested). Jerah was just going to have to deal with the texture.

So here's the recipe as I ended up making it. It was so delicious, the entire 13×9 pan was gone by evening. Lynn's original recipe can be found here.

(And yes, I realize that since I've made it this way, my kids will never be satisfied with the original recipe again. But I'm okay with that because I thought it was delicious too!)

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal

Ingredients

• 3 (generous) cups quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 2 TB melted butter (I've used an equivalent amount of applesauce instead of butter with some success before.)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Mix all the ingredients together and spread into a greased 9×13 pan. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees, then try not to eat the whole pan of baked oatmeal before serving your kids.

After baking the oatmeal I prepped lunch, which consisted of putting my white rice in the rice cooker, placing the last of my frozen boneless skinless chicken in the slow cooker, and topping the chicken with a bottle of sweet and sour sauce. It was so easy!

Lunch was ready as soon as we got home. Joely decided to be picky, so she opted for just the rice, but the rest of us enjoyed the chicken too. You just can't go wrong with cooking chicken in a slow cooker. Even boneless skinless turns out so tender.

Tonight I'm going to be making Peanut Butter & Chocolate Protein Balls (Hmm…I'm detecting a pb & chocolate theme here) since we plan to go swimming right after Music Camp tomorrow. We'll also take apples so our lunch will be completely portable. I know it's not the most perfectly balanced lunch, but it's definitely high in protein!

Don't forget to check out how Amanda's lunch turned out today. You're also welcome to join Amanda and me in this Lunch Challenge. Just focus on preparing a lunch each day this week, then stop back by here next Monday and link up your lunch recipes. Even if you don't join us in our challenge, we encourage you to link up your recipes. We'd love to have some more recipes to choose from to add to our master menu plans at the end of June. Also, if you have breakfast recipes you'd like to share, you can link up to our breakfast challenge summary here.

This post is linked to Tasty Tuesday.