A classic - mac and cheese, tube steaks, and broccoli!

Ah! I don't know many kids who don't love mac and cheese with hot dogs!
Our little foodie has a preference for Annie's mac and cheese or as he calls it, "mommies mac and cheese" --as opposed to other mac and cheese served in restaurants.  It's such a simple lunch to pack the next day!

We have a tradition in our home.  Every couple of weeks when Lisa decide to fry up some pretty tasty steaks for dinner, she always makes Christopher mac and cheese with hot dogs! It's become so common in our household -- whenever we have steaks, Christopher knows he's having mac and cheese, hot dogs and broccoli.

I love hot dogs too and with kids, we ALWAYS seem to have hot dogs in the house. And, me, being the cheapest person I know, I don't like seeing food go to waste and would rather save it, eat it, make something out of it or take it for my lunch. But, who really wants to be eating hot dogs all the time?

When Lisa started storing the hot dogs individually, I thought it was pretty darn smart.  When we'd open a new package of dogs, she storing the rest, a couple of dogs at a time, in little snack zip lock bags in the freezer!  So when we get that primitive call for bloody rare red meat, she grabs a set of dogs out of the freezer for Christopher's "tube steak" dinner and next day lunch. And, to save yet another pot from being used (and cleaned), she tosses the dogs in with the pasta water.  As the pasta cooks up, the dogs warm up and are ready to serve with the man and cheese!

Back to the snack bags --> We used to think those little snack bags were such a waste. But now, we use them all the time. We even toss them in the dish washer and reuse them to keep together games that have lots of little pieces, legos, or crayons.