The Lunch Challenge: Day Three

Peanut butter balls for lunch challenge day three was okay with 2 out of 3 kids.

Lunch was a big hit with the girls today. Unfortunately, Jaden still swears he can't stand chocolate and peanut butter mixed together, so he didn't have any of the peanut butter balls. He fixed his own lunch while the girls and I (and Jeff) enjoyed our protein-packed lunch.

This is probably not a lunch that a nutritionist would recommend, but it is not necessarily unhealthy either. The peanut butter balls are primarily peanut butter and powdered milk, both of which are high in protein. Sure, there's honey and chocolate chips too, but surely the protein value of the peanut butter and milk counteracts that a bit, right? Plus, we added apple slices to the meal, so it wasn't entirely without nutrition. (Do you hear me trying to convince myself?)

I had planned to make the pb balls last night, but time slipped away from me; so I got up a little earlier this morning and whipped them out in about 15 minutes from start to finish. Every time I've contemplated making this recipe before, I've always dreaded how long it takes, but now that I've paid attention to how long it actually takes, I won't be dreading it in the future. It's super easy, and it was so nice to be able to just grab our lunch and run since our afternoon was pretty busy.

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Protein Balls

(see, I added the word "protein" so they sound healthier!)

Ingredients

• 1 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy, depending on your preference)
• 1 cup powdered milk
• 6 TB honey (that's 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup = 6 TB)
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips (I don't have the mini kind, so I put mine in the freezer for a bit, then chopped them smaller with my food chopper)
• 2 graham cracker rectangles, crushed (Put the crackers in a Ziploc and use a rolling pin to crush them)

Directions

1. Mix all the ingredients together (except for the graham crackers) in a bowl .
2. Form the mixture by hand into balls. (Mine are usually 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter)
3. Roll the balls in the graham cracker crumbs to coat completely.
4. Refrigerate or freeze, then enjoy! (I love eating these right out of the freezer.)

Variations: Coat the balls in baking cocoa or powdered sugar.

I've already prepped tomorrow's lunches: deli roll-ups. I'm not sure how the kids will like them, but since I didn't mix peanut butter and chocolate, at least Jaden should be giving it a try this time.

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 Grace's Kitchen.