Hawaiian haystacks – Pile it on and enjoy
The girls always love when I make haystacks, or rather, they get to make them, because the ingredients are rarely the same twice, and they each get to customize their “chicken sundae.”
Hawaiian haystacks aren’t even from Hawaii, by the way. It’s just that pineapple is a common ingredient and that’s connected to the Hawaii name.
Anyway, if you’ve never made them before, you should. Haystacks are a great way to finish off a bunch of ingredients that you only have a handful of, and if you have picky eaters, no problem…..only add the items each person wants.
Hawaiian Haystacks Recipe:
- Rice
- Chicken, chunked or shredded (leftover chicken works great)
- Chicken sauce/gravy (recipes below)
- Any number of diced/sliced/chopped ingredients including pineapple, olives, green onions, green peppers, chow mein noodles, mandarin oranges, cheese, avocado
Pile on in order and enjoy. Yep, it’s that simple.
Chicken Sauce Recipe Ideas:
(The links are to recipes that don’t use canned condensed soup, if you’re like me and try to avoid it….but the canned soup version is tasty and fine if you’re okay using it)
- 1 cup chicken, 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1 cup water, salt and pepper (you could also add sour cream, cream cheese, chicken broth, or milk in addition to or in place of various ingredients….really, it’s not an exact science….work with what you have)
- Mel’s Kitchen Café
- Real Mom Kitchen
- Your Sacred Calling (this one uses coconut milk
Here’s some of the ingredients from another time I made them:
So colorful. The second item on the top row is chopped almonds, by the way….they give a nice crunch.
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You went to a Chinese restaurant again?? – Bento boxes
Another challenge I had with making bento boxes was being concerned they might get teased for taking nontraditional lunches. Of course their nutrition is more important than some silly kid drama, but kids have it hard enough with peers who make fun of pretty much anything they can. I didn’t want to add to that.
I started making the boxes with more traditional items like a fair bit of rice, for example, but have shifted to some more “American” items to help balance some of it out. This is why it made me giggle even more when B told me a story about her friends.
Yeah, I got out my lunch and Jacky yelled “You went to a Chinese restaurant AGAIN??!!”
Talk about an American mindset, huh? Hehe. I had sent spaghetti that day even, and nothing “weird” but B said she didn’t think her friend believes that I make the food. And we don’t have Japanese cuisine here where I live, so it makes sense that the assumption was Chinese takeout.
Some more boxes, mostly very far from Japanese food
- Saltines
- Tuna salad
- Pretzel sticks
- Homemade pineapple mango fruit rollup leather
- Grapes
- Frozen mixed fruit
- Leftover pasta
- Bacon!
- Pretzel crackers
- Carrots
- Frozen apple slices
- Bean and rice burrito
- Crackers
- Cauliflower
- Raisins and grapes (“Uh, Jessi, those are like, you know, the same things….” Yeah, I know, sorta, shush it.)
More bentos – Not always the healthiest, but still better than school’s?
One of the challenges I ran into while making bento boxes is making sure the food I sent was both healthy *and* something they’d really enjoy eating.
After all, I didn’t want them to feel like they were missing out on what other kids were eating at school. Fortunately, they dislike a lot of the cafeteria foods, but when I’m sending lunches, I want them polishing most of the food off instead of discarding various bits like they would off a lunch try.
Here are some more attempts, which aren’t always the healthiest (see those fries? yeah….), but still manage to balance out quite nicely:
- Homemade pizza pockets
- Peanut butter and crackers
- Dried pineapple chips (they taste like laffy taffy!)
- Cauliflower
- Orange slices
- Homemade roasted red pepper hummus (not pictured)
- Pork onigiri rice balls with soy sauce
- Baby dill pickles (they look like sweet gherkins, but they’re dill)
- Vegetable straws
- Pretzel crackers
- Fresh strawberries
- Peanut butter and banana sandwiches
- Spaghetti
- Orange (I ran out of time to peel or slice)
- Cucumber, tomato, red onion Greek salad (but they call it Canadian salad because I made it the first time after a trip to Vancouver)
- Overstuffed chicken fajita with chicken, peppers, onions, salsa
- Boiled egg on a bed of sprouts
- Homemade beef jerky
- Peanut butter banana sandwiches by request
- Spaghetti with meat and olive tomato sauce
- Chopped pink eggs with funky colored yolk sunshine
- French fries
- Homemade dried pineapple chips
- Frozen strawberries
- Ketchup packages for the fries (totally going with the traditional Japanese bento here, huh?)
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