Every so often we'll bring you a review of some of our favorite vegetarian cookbooks to help you with your meatless options. First up, we wanted to highlight Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison, a book that is like the Joy of Cooking for vegetarians. If you're struggling to find a simple vegetarian recipe for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, this cookbook is a standard for your shelf. We have a decent collection of cookbooks - some of them focus on specific cuisines, some of them are vegan, some for desserts (okay, okay, a bunch for desserts), and some are from specific vegetarian or vegan restaurants we've loved. This cookbook is probably one of the most used of them all. The recipes are simple to cook but tasty and the ingredients can be easily found even in our small town with its standard, non-foodie grocery stores. Since it's a basics cookbook, she covers sauces and condiments, appetizers, sandwiches, salads, soups and stews, casseroles, beans, veggies, pastas, pies, grains, eggs, soy, breakfast, breads, and desserts. Whew!

Here's a very simple recipe that is a hit with everyone in our family:

Lentils and Rice with Fried Onions (Mujadarrah)

Ingredients
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 very large onion, sliced into rounds 1/4 inch thick (we like the onions so much that we usually do 2 onions)
1 1/4 cups green or brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
salt and pepper
3/4 cup white or brown long-grain rice

Directions: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until it's a rich, dark brown, about 12 minutes. Meanwhile, put the lentils in a saucepan with 1 quart water and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. Add the rice, plenty of pepper, and, if needed, additional water to cover. Cover and cook over low heat until the rice is done, about 15 minutes. Stir in half the onions, then cover and let stand off the heat for 5 minutes. Spoon the lentil-rice mixture onto plates or a platter and cover with the remaining onions.

Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone is a great kitchen resource featuring a wide variety of dishes and food categories. We highly recommend it!

Grab a cuppa something relaxing to drink and sit with us to enjoy some of our favorite reads this week:

Learning the value of coins bingo: We spent some time last week helping Z count her money and understand the values of the different coins. This looks like a fun game to reinforce what we talked about. Maybe we'll even let her keep he coins if she gets bingo.

Make an accurate home inventory: Have you made a home inventory? Stored it offsite? We did this a while back but need to update it. This article has some great tips on getting it right and accurate so you get the most accurate reflection of your belongings.

Stop Shopping Momentum: This happens to me all the time! Once I get going, I start thinking of everything else I "need" - I'm going to try employing some of these techniques.

Making Garden stones from leaves: Gardenmama posted a lovely tutorial for making garden stones from leaves. I might have to try growing some rhubarb just to make these beauties!

Playmobil instruction database: I bought a couple of sets of Playmobil toys at a garage sale a few weekend ago. We couldn't figure out how to put one of them together so I went Googling and found a database that lists hundreds of Playmobil sets and shows the box and the pieces included. Using the pictures there was the only way we got our set put together properly.

More links in a week!

School is starting soon so we thought we'd throw out some ideas for packing quick, healthy Meatless Monday lunches for the kiddos. If you read our blogs regularly, you'll know that we unschool Z so we don't pack lunches daily. But we have times during the summer when she goes to summer day camp, and during the spring, Z and I had a weekly picnic between my gym class and Z's Kindermusik class.

Some of our favorite things to pack:

• Carrot sticks with hummus or pita triangles


• Fruit like cherries, blackberries, grapes, sliced apples with cinnamon, or other finger-sized fruits


• Cherry tomatoes or steamed broccoli


• Wasa Crackers and cheese


• A green smoothie (our favorite recipe - makes three servings - 1 banana, 8 oz frozen pineapple, and a heaping cup of spinach - dilute with water or coconut milk, blend.)


• A nut-butter and jelly or banana sandwich (if your school is peanut free try something like soynut butter)


• Mock tuna salad on bread, pita, or crackers


• Ants on a log


• Dried fruit and nut mix (we make our own based on what we have in the pantry)


• Cheese stick


• Granola bar


• Fruit leathers (we love the Fruitabu organic fruit leathers)

We usually pack a combination of items that offer a balance of fruits, veggies and proteins. We usually include a small treat like animal crackers or a square of fair trade chocolate for dessert. Z's not big on leftovers and there's rarely a place to heat them up so we don't usually include leftovers in our lunchboxes anymore - but make sure if you do, you include a ceramic plate for reheating!

If you have five extra minutes while you're packing your child's lunch, do something to make the lunch fun - cut the sandwich or bread slices into fun shapes using cookie cutters (you can do this with slices of cheese or fruit leathers too), include a quick handwritten note, make a portion of the lunch DIY or toss a few chocolate chips into the fruit and nut mix.

Tell us, what are your kids' favorite lunches? Also, what would you like us to address in future Meatless Monday posts?

And if you're looking for a good lunch box, check out either the PlanetBox or the Laptop Lunch kit or our other suggestions in the ZRecs Guide for Safer Children's Products.