What's for dinner? Or rather Charley's lunch...

or rather lunch?

I am trying to be creative with Charley's home lunches because the inevitable happened last year....slowly we went from 4 days a month Charley got to do the school's hot lunch...to mama made his lunch four days a week (well not that extreme, but I was warned by friends that this would happen and it was totally true).

Packing kids' lunches, and I only have to technically make one, gets old fast.  I have no idea how my mom packed all our lunches for sooooo many years.   And she still packs my dad a pretty nifty lunch.  

One of my favorite mom resources sent me a new recipe she tried.

And even though I had success with these pizza rolls...hers looked much easier.  

They don't include the sauce in the actual roll so they turn out much less messy.  And they don't involve making your own dough, which can seem overwhelming to many.   

So this past weekend I made a double batch of these, Pizza Pinwheels.  I am figuring that I can throw four in Charley's lunch instead of sandwich.  

Here is her recipe in my own rambling words:

Pizza Lunch Rolls

1 8oz container of crescent rolls

some Parmesan cheese

some mozzarella cheese

some green peppers, or other toppings

some pepperoni finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray baking sheet.

Unroll dough; separate dough into 4 rectangles. Firmly press perforations to seal.  

 Sprinkle each rectangle with Parmesan cheese, toppings, and mozzarella cheese.

Roll up starting from the short side and then press edge to seal.

Using a serrated knife cut the roll into 4-6 slices and place cut side down.

Bake for 13-17 minutes or until golden brown around the edges.

Serve warm with pizza sauce for dipping or eat cold.

TIP!!!!!!

My friend also mentioned she would add a little pizza sauce for dipping...and I thought freezing pizza sauce in ice trays and popping them out and keeping them in a zip bag...would be an easy way to portion out a little for the kids to dip in.  When you pack their lunch just throw the cube in a small container or their little lunch tray slot and BAM!  It will melt by lunch.  

I find that I don't use up my whole jars of pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce, and so I tend to freeze up what remains anyways...so now I am going to do a little this way!  

ANOTHER TIP!!!!

When freezing things like his...my trick...

I either layer them between wax or parchment type paper in zip bags or Ziploc type containers.  OR, if I want to avoid dealing with wax paper and I don't want them to all freeze in one big solid glob I will freeze them first on a cookie sheet.  Once they are frozen I throw them in a bag or container without the wax paper.  This usually works slick! 

My challenge will be to try this recipe using my pizza dough instead of the crescent rolls since they aren't the most healthy bread choice.  But for a once in a while quick lunch idea...this is definitely going to happen in our house!