When food and crafts collide, you can always count me in! Two of my greatest loves, really. I also enjoy any excuse to create a fun meal that gets the kiddos excited about trying foods they’d otherwise leave to Mama, like avocado toast. I meeeaaan… monster toast!

I teamed up with Horizon Organic to share a couple of fun and pleasantly creepy toast ideas for a simple lunch idea you can enjoy with your kiddos, or heck, you don’t even need kiddos to get a little weird with your food! Mummy toast in the break room at work? Sure, why not?

MUMMY TOAST

To make the mummy toast, I started with a base of sliced ham. Then I cut strips of Horizon Organic provolone cheese slices with a pizza slicer and layered the strips over the ham, using black olives for eyeballs. You can broil these to melt the cheese a bit too!

I think the mummy toast would be really yummy with tomato sauce instead of ham to make pizza toast too!

GREEN MONSTER TOAST

What started out as a plan to make Frankenstein toast turned into Lucy and I having a bit of fun making happy and mad faces on our toast! I used a spread of mashed avocado (mixed with lime to slow down browning) and let Lucy create faces with cut pieces of tomatoes, Horizon Organic American cheese, black olives, and alfalfa sprouts.

The green monster toasts were my personal favorite (I love avocado toast), but I was really surprised that for the first time ever, Lucy was interested in tasting “the green stuff.”

These toasts were super quick to put together, but Lucy ended up taking lots of time creating more faces out of leftover supplies, like cheese scraps, black olives, and tomatoes. She probably sat at the kitchen for an hour being creative with her food! It was a lot of fun, and I liked that I didn’t need to go out and buy any special ingredients.

I love having the opportunity to work with Horizon Organic, because we really do love their snacks and dairy products in our family. If you’re interested in getting special coupons and savings, sign up for their mailing list here, and be sure to follow them on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to get even more meal and snacking ideas!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon. The opinions and text are all mine. 

Grilled cheese, man. Nothin’ like it! I’ve tried new variations through the years, and have never found a version I didn’t like. But I’ve never tried the sweet/savory style of grilled cheese until now, and I gotta say— I think I’ve found my go-to comfort food! It’s got that crispy, buttery crust, oozing cheddar, and the crunch of a sweet apple, with the delightful addition of my apple’s favorite companion— cinnamon!

Whether you actually grill your sandwich, or toast it (which I prefer), this isn’t your standard diet fare. But who cares? It’s so good. I did make mine with Horizon Organic‘s cheddar cheese and organic apples, so I feel good about the ingredients. Their cheddar is mild, but flavorful. The perfect balances cheese for a picky eater like me. (Yes I said, me! I’m pickier about cheese than my kiddos. Ha!)

• Horizon Organic cheddar cheese (either sliced or shredded)
• Apple of your choice thinly sliced (I used gala apples)
• Butter
• Cinnamon
• Bread (I used raisin bread, but brioche would be great too!)

STEP ONE: Thinly slice your apple and sauté with butter and cinnamon until tender crisp.

STEP TWO: Spread a layer of cheese on a slice of bread, then arrange a layer of the cooked apples. Top with another layer of cheese.

STEP THREE: Spread a light amount of butter on the outside of your bread slices and toast on a skilled over medium/low heat until golden and crispy.

If you couldn’t tell already, I absolutely love this take on grilled cheese. The girls, though? These plain Janes are a little trickier to win over. Lucy insisted she would not like it, but next thing I knew, her plate was clean. Mama mission accomplished!

Do you have any favorite “weird” grilled cheese recipes? My other favorite is colby jack cheese with carmelized garlic and onion, sliced jalepenos, and sliced tomatoes. Weird grilled cheese without the weird additives, thanks to the organic ingredients in Horizon Organic’s cheese! Check out their website to find a product at a store near you.

If you want more recipe ideas like this, follow Horizon Organic on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. And be sure to sign up for their newsletter to hear about new products and discounts!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon. The opinions and text are all mine.

So, what’s a mom to do when she has no kitchen, four mouths to feed, and no kitchen? Lately, as we’re in the thick of our kitchen renovation, I’ve been feeling a bit like a college student again. Our home isn’t too different from my old dorm, except we have a full-size refrigerator (thank God!), but just like nineteen-year-old me, we’re still making all of our meals in the microwave, when we’re not eating fresh foods straight from the grocery store or refrigerator. We don’t have a sink, oven, range, or dishwasher, and let me tell ya— we’re all getting tired of deli sandwiches.

But I remembered something from my past that I knew my kiddos would enjoy— microwavable mac and cheese! We lived on that stuff in college. These days I have a little bit higher nutritional standards, so I decided to use Horizon Organic Cheesy Mac and add some mix-ins to transform a cup of microwavable mac into a decent, kid-approved meal.

In the good ol’ days when we had a kitchen, mac and cheese was a decadent side dish to accompany a full, well balanced meal. Now mac and cheese is the main course, I told Lucy we were going to add some things to make it more nutritious. She told me, “I am not going to like any of them! I don’t like stuff in my mac and cheese.” And like a true mom, I said, “Well, I guess you’ll just be hungry then!” (Ha! The things our parents said that we now hate ourselves for saying.) Oh well. It didn’t matter anyway, because the kids couldn’t get enough of the mac meals.

I didn’t want to be too adventurous with our mix-ins, because this was the first time they’d had anything extra in Lucy and Juniper’s mac and cheese, and I didn’t want to blow the whole thing with one wrong move. So I played it save and mimicked the flavors from meals I knew the kiddos already enjoyed.

Because we don’t have a kitchen, I had to prepare these mix-ins at my mom’s house. I then portions out the prepped ingredients into freezer bags for easy reuse at our kitchenless house. Hanging out at mom’s gave me a great chance to catch up on laundry too. (6 loads done in one day, baby!)

After microwaving each bowl of Horizon Organic Cheesy mac, there was still plenty of room to add mix-ins. (No need to dirty another bowl! Hooray!) I stirred in the extras while the girls asked if it was time for lunch. I told them they’d have a chance to choose their favorite combination of mac and cheese as I began arranging them on the table to take pictures, but before I could finish, the girls commandeered the cups and began chowing down. Lucy’s plan to not eat “mac and cheese with stuff in it” didn’t go over so well. How easily her plan was foiled!

Now that I know they like mac and cheese with mix-ins, I’m going to add more veggies next time! Here’s what we did this time, and what I’ll add in the mix next time.

• ITALIAN STYLE- Spicy Italian sausage with diced green peppers. I had meant to include red peppers too, but I forgot my pepper at home! Next time I’ll add chopped spinach too.
• TACO STYLE- Seasoned ground beef with chopped tomatoes. Next time I’ll add black beans, or whatever beans I have around.
• POT PIE STYLE- Shredded chicken with peas. Next time I’ll add cooked carrots.
• VEGGIE STYLE- I added chopped broccoli and riced cauliflower when microwaving the pasta. The riced cauliflower was practically invisible when added, so I added a lot of it! Next time I’ll probably make this the exact same way.

Do you like adding mix-ins to your mac and cheese? Or are you a purist? I love thinking of new flavor combinations and discovered a new favorite today— the spicy sausage with peppers. So good! We’ll probably bring back this lunch routine long after our kitchen renovation is complete.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon. The opinions and text are all mine. Get more snacking and meal ideas at Horizon’s Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram pages too!