School Lunch Specials

In keeping with the time theme for the next few weeks here is this weeks weekly installment for Quick Easy Meals.

I call this School Lunch Specials because they were inspired by some of my favorite school lunches as a kid. Yes I had favorite school lunches as a kid. Not all School lunches are bad and one of my favorites and now my families favorites was Bagel Pizzas with carrots and broccoli and ranch dip. I like to vary this particular recipe because let's face it there are a TON of varieties of bagels. For instance you can use Everything Bagels with pizza sauce and pizza toppings, you can use plain bagels with HUNTS oregano and basil tomato sauce and whatever pizza toppings you like. What I'm saying is the combinations are endless and you can let your imagination fly. To alleviate the "guilt" of serving your kids bagel pizzas you create a side dish of fun veggies for dipping.

Prep time: varies depending on ingredients used for pizza

Hands on time: approximately 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

Bagels (big or small bagels it doesn't matter)
Pizza sauce or tomato sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Sliced pepperoni
Browned Italian sausage.
Browned Hamburger (I like to brown my hamburger ahead of time and freeze it)
Sliced bell peppers
Black or green olives
Really whatever you like on your pizza that's what you put on top of your bagel.

Favorite raw veggies sliced for little hands
Ranch Salad dressing for dipping.

Set the oven to 350 degrees and assemble your bagel pizzas. Cook in pre-heated oven until cheese melts and is slightly bubbly. Cup up your veggies and assemble on the side of the plate. When the bagel pizzas have cooled slide onto the plate with veggies and ranch dressing for dipping.

My families other favorite "School Lunch Special" is tuna melts with Homemade Fries. For this recipe you'll need Lender's Everything Bagels. I've tried other brands and they are sadly just not the same. For easy clean up I suggest lining the cookie sheet with some tin foil.

Ingredients

Favorite brand of tuna fish
1 medium onion
2 stalks of celery
sweet pickle relish
Mayonnaise
Dijon or some kind of spicy mustard.
5 large potato's (roughly one large potato per family member)
Thick sliced Cheddar Cheese
3 sliced tomatoes
Vegetable oil
Large pot for frying

In a large mixing bowl your going to put in two of your favorite cans of tuna fish (be sure to drain the liquid first). Finely chop the onion and celery and add to the tuna fish. From there you're going to mix in your mayonnaise. Notice I'm not giving you measurements for this, that's because EVERYONE has their own idea of what is enough for their perfect tuna fish to mayonnaise ratio. After you mixed your desired consistency up you're going to add 1 tablespoon of the spicy mustard and mix well then add the relish to taste. Set that aside and line your cookie sheet with tin foil and place the Everything bagels split and open on it. Spoon the tuna fish onto the bagels and and place one slice of tomato and one slice of cheddar cheese on top. In case you haven't yet it's time to pre-heat the oven.
Now rinse off those potatoes and peel those bad boys! here's the secret to REALLY amazing home made fries. Whether your bake them or fry them ALWAYS rinse them in with clean water and then pat them dry. This gets rid of the excess start from the potatoes. Put the vegetable oil in the pot and once the oil is hot and popping you're going to slide the potatoes into the oil. Watch them carefully when they float to the top take them out and put them in a brown paper bag. OK now mostly likely your kids are going to want to do this part. In the brown paper bag place whatever seasonings you want on your fries, salt, pepper, Tony Chachere's, whatever it is that you love seasoned on your fries close the bag up and give it a shake! Shake it, shake it, and do the french fry dance! I like to peel, wash, and fry each individual potato and place them in separate paper bags for each of the kids to shake. This way each one gets their "own" special home made fries ;-).
Once your oven is pre-heated place the cookie sheet of tuna melt bagels inside and let bake till the cheese melts about 5 to 8 minutes.
Remember those paper bags you shook your fries in? Tear those bags open along one side and spread out at the table then place one bagel tuna melt next to those "special" homemade fries.

Hands on time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes.