Love my daughter for making healthy choices- A blog about "Feast"

At the risk of saying "Yes I am home alone with my kid twice a week," I'm going to cross-post this from another one of my blogs...

This story has two bits of background and I'm not really feeling as coherent as I'd like to be, but I'm going to share this with you all anyway.

1. On New Years Eve in our family we have a tradition. Hubby goes out to his friend's party and I stay home with our daughter. We've been doing this for about five years now, ever since we realized that it's impossible to bring her to the party. So this year I decided that since it is just her and I for supper we would have a picnic supper in my bedroom. This picnic is basically munchies. I set up a plate that was hers, a plate that was mine, and several things in the middle. We both have our favorite foods on our own plates and then we pick and choose from the others. Some might call it a buffet, or family-style eating. I called it a Feast.

Now my hubby goes out on Saturday nights and stays out late. I value this time as my mother-daughter time. Really it's only a couple of hours that she is awake usually. Just 5pm-bedtime. I'm not a night owl anyway. So sometimes on Saturday nights we will have Feast... again, the picnic on my bed with a variety of whatever we happen to have. There is very little cooking to these meals usually, although I'm not opposed to making something.

2. On Tuesday nights hubby has another commitment  which doesn't go as late. On Tuesdays our normal routine is that I pick up our daughter from school (or camp as it is this time of year) we do something like visit the local library or go to the mall or playground and then we meet up with hubby at McDs or the local diner for dinner. We eat together and then hubby goes off to his thing and I bring our daughter home. School/camp is the next day so I try to get her to bed close to her normal bedtime (I'm really horrible at getting her to bed on time!)

We have been doing this for at least two years now, since we became a 2-vehicle family in 2011 I think.

That's the back story if you will.

So.... yesterday afternoon I picked up my daughter and she says we are having Feast for dinner. "But what about daddy?" She doesn't care. So... we went to the mall and played some skeeball, walked up to Target to get a couple things, and came back to the arcade. Hubby shows up to surprise us (it is now 6pm) and we give him some hugs and kisses and then we left. Hubby in his direction, us in our direction. We had literally parked in different parking areas.  We went to the grocery store to get the ingredients we needed for our Feast--
2 apples
3 bananas (not for feast, just for later)
watermelon
dinner rolls (for dessert, didn't eat them though)
turkey sub/grinder for me
cucumbers
carrots
and of course I had to pick up some non-Feast groceries too because I did actually need groceries.

So at home after I got everything put away, my daughter and I made this for dinner-

Her "plate"-
cut up cucumber (no seeds allowed!)
low-salt soy sauce (for cucumber dipping)
carrot sticks
small bowl of sliced almonds
cup of milk

My plate-
turkey grinder/sub/hoagie/whatever you call it where you live

Shared plates/bowls-
apples (neither of us actually ate them but they were there)
watermelon (we both ate)
chips (I ate some)
Doritos  (she ate)

Dessert was supposed to be dinner rolls with marshmellow fluff, but after dinner neither of us had any desire to eat dessert.

So all and all, a very healthy dinner for both of us. Yes mine wasn't as healthy as hers, but what a great kid to turn down a trip to McDs and eat this instead!!

Very proud of my 7-year old girl!