Flashback Friday : Flutterbyes

Today's post takes us back to some day last summer & this forgotten bento...

Lunch appears to be a peanut butter sandwich topped with cheese butterflies, strawberry yogurt with butterfly sprinkles, apple wedges, & baby carrots. 

Looks like my little Birdie was pleased with her "flutterbyes" :)

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This is what I used to make this lunch:

And I'm pretty sure it took less than 15 minutes :)

Don't miss my FunBites Giveaway!

Fair Winds & Following Seas...

My Sailor Boy is shipping out again, so this will be his last homemade lunch for a few weeks :( It's only for a few weeks - but he'll miss Father's Day! I stuck in a Dad pick & a Lunchbox Love note, it can be his advance Dad's Day dinner :)

His EasyLunchbox is packed with leftover garlic butter rice & broiled pork chop, with some bite sized sharp cheddar hearts, baby carrots, & kiwi. The sides are in silicone cups so he can take them out to microwave the entrée.

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Stuff I used in this lunch:

FunBites Triangles Giveaway!

FunBites have added a colourful new shape: orange triangles! FunBites are fun to use tools that make it easy to cut food into fun, bite sized pieces - perfect for toddlers or picky eaters! Invented by a mom and her kids, FunBites are dishwasher-safe, BPA-free, and 100% made in America. FunBites come in squares, red or pink hearts, and now, triangles!

The new Triangles FunBites cutter makes 10 right angle triangles - 2 big and 8 small - exactly enough to create 2 fish shapes :) 

What else they can create is up to your imagination! 

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I made Bella a cheesy vegetable garden after school snack :)

I used the cutter on one slice of lightly toasted white bread and one of wheat to make Birdie these lemon curd pinwheels from the small triangles. (I ate the 4 larger triangles - I love lemon curd!)

Make a grilled cheese sunshine :) Allow the sandwich to cool a little first!

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How to use your FunBites cutter on sandwiches with sticky spreads without making a gooey mess: Spread your sandwich filling on the bottom slice of bread, but don't top it with another slice - instead... Place the top slice on the cutting surface & press the FunBites cutter into it - but don't pop the cut bread pieces out yet! Lift the cutter keeping the top slice bread pieces stuck in the cutter shape, and place it on top of the bottom slice. Press the FunBites into the bottom slice. Rock it back & forth.  Now use the popper to pop out perfect shapes. No mess!

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I have 3 FunBites Triangles to give away!

FunBites has generously offered to send one of their brand new cutters to 3 lucky Bent On Better Lunches readers! 

Giveaway Closed

Disclosure: I received a FunBites to review.  No other compensation or payment was given. All opinions & descriptions are my own.  Giveaway open to US residents only. Prize will be provided by FunBites.

Rainy Day Monday

Have you ever forgotten it was a holiday and made school lunches?

It's raining this Memorial Day Monday, perfect day to make umbrella sandwiches for Pickle, using the sticks I saved from the Lindt chocolate carrots the sproutlets got in their Easter baskets: 

One of Bella's favourite rainy day lunches is soup & veggie sides.  She has cream of potato soup in a Thermos Foogo (really keeps it hot all day!) and a Light My Fire spork, cucumbers, sweet peppers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and Ritz crackers.

Sprout loves hearts in her lunch. Her Goodbyn Bynto is packed with cheddar hearts, peanut butter sandwich hearts, baby carrots, and strawberry hearts.

Little sister Birdie wanted the same thing as her big sis. I gave her triangle shaped cheese made from the scraps of Sprout's hearts.

The adorable cloth napkins are from The Red Poppy on Etsy. 

Other stuff used to make these lunches:

Linked to Bento for Kidlet's last Meatless Monday of the school year:

Don't Panic, It's Lunchtime!

If you're the least bit geeky, you may be celebrating Towel Day in honour of Douglas Adams' The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy,  Geek Pride Day, as it's the anniversary of the first Star Wars film release,  the Glorious 25th of May if you're a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld ... or maybe even all of the above :) We might be a bit geeky - so I made Sailor Boy a geeky lunch:

Sailor Boy's PlanetBox Launch contains:

• The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything stuck in some almond butter greek yogurt dip, with honeycrisp apple wedges to dip in it. 
• Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg!
• Delicious grapes speared with lightsabers in a lilac purple cup
• 2 slices of leftover Papa Murphy's taco pizza embellished with cheese "Don't Panic" in large, friendly letters.

I served his lunch with a gift of a new black "42" towel:

Sprout wanted her picture with the "funny little towel":

I got it from ThinkGeek, where else?

Did you made a geeky lunch today? Or some other time?

Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge : Monster Muffins & Nutty Greek Yogurt Dip

When I offer a new food to my preschooler, I find that when I "hide" it among familiar foods she's less likely to flat out refuse it, so I try to make the new food just one of many small portions. Muffin tin meals are perfect for that!

Believe it or not,  Birdie's never eaten a pear! I don't like pears, so they're not a fruit I buy unless a recipe calls for it (I do like how they taste, just not their texture) and I recently realized I've never offered them to my 4 year old. Perfect - I wanted a new food to score bonus points in my Crunch A Color Healthy Lunch Challenge meal - pears it is :)

I decided to offer the pears with similar fruits I know she likes, apples, and something yummy to dip them in.  The Crunch a Color formula for a healthy lunch is 3 colors + a protein + a healthy grain. No processed foods. Birdie's not much of a meat eater so a greek yogurt & nut butter dip was just the thing for her protein. Celery sticks would go well with that too.

Nut Butter Greek Yogurt Dip 1 cup greek yogurt  1 cup nut butter (I used almond butter)  1 Tbsp honey  1 tsp cinnamon Stir all ingredients together & serve with fruit, veggies, graham crackers... whatever sounds good to you!

Birdie loves muffins so for her healthy grain portion I baked a batch of carrot bran ones and gave some of them monster faces :) I haven't made monster muffins in ages! I featured some in one of my first blog posts! That batch had cheese teeth & craisin eyes. Today I made the teeth with almond slivers and the eyes with cheese & candy coated sunflower seeds.

The monster muffins inspired a monster theme for the muffin tin meal!  I put a funny creature cupcake topper ring on a celery stick, and some octopi bento picks in the almond butter dip became baby monsters taking a mud bath :)

So how did Birdie's muffin tin meal score? Using the cards from our Crunch A Color Healthy Eating Game, I calculated the points:

Red - apples - 5 points

Liquid - water (not shown) - 5 points

Green - apples - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - pears - 5 points

Try a New Food - pears - 5 points x 2 = 10 points

Healthy Grains - carrot bran muffin - 5 points

Yellow/Orange - if carrots in the muffins count - 10 points

Green - celery - 10 points

Protein - almond butter & yogurt- 10 points

Bonus - calcium rich protein - yogurt in dip - 1 point

66 points, not too shabby for a simple lunch! It could have scored more points with a little more colour... but there's always dinner  :) 

Most importantly, lunch was a winner with my little sproutlet :

Are you wondering if she liked the pears? No, she didn't - but she tried them!

Thanks Crunch a Color for including me in this Challenge!

There's something fishy about our FunBites :)

Yesterday FunBites unveiled their newest shape - triangles! Confession: I already have one! FunBites sent me mine in advance, to take a few pictures for them, but I couldn't post anything I made with them until they were officially revealed :) My little girls love "fishies" so of course that shape jumped right out at them and they wanted fishy snacks.

You can make 2 complete fish shapes from one press of the cutter:

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Here's Birdie's lunch from yesterday:

Triangle shaped peanut butter sandwich bites topped with a cheddar goldfish, and a triangle cantaloupe & watermelon fruit salad. I made way too much food for her little belly, and had a lot of sandwich left over.

That's okay, I used her leftovers in Pickle's fish mosaic sandwich:

Bella put her own lunch together, in her Laptop Lunches bento box with the larger Bento Buddies container, and added a few triangle picks to go with the new FunBites shape:

She has tomatoes, cantaloupe, a croissantwich, and an Odwalla bar.

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The Triangle FunBites will be available soon!

I'll be doing a giveaway, watch for it!

Mia Made Lunch

I usually take a few minutes Sunday night to make sure everything is in order for Monday morning, but last night I failed to do so and as a result this morning was chaotic. Mia Bella was ready ahead of time though so I asked her if she wouldn't mind making her own lunch while I made her brother and sister's.

She packed a lovely lunch ♥ She has a turkey & sharp cheddar croissant sandwich, cantaloupe chunks, and sunburst & cherry tomatoes, embellished with pandas, hearts, & one lollipop bento pick, because "pandas like candy" :) Well done Bella, it's as cute & colourful as the girl who made it ♥

I had no worries about my girl packing a healthy lunch though, she makes good choices :) One of her lunches was even awarded 3rd place in Tray Talk's Healthy Lunches Kids Love Photo Contest! 

You can see all the lunch entries in Tray Talk's facebook album.

Kindergartner Sprout "helped" me pack her lunch by standing beside me and suggesting what went in it :) She loves sandwiches made with the CuteZcute sandwich cutter and today she chose the cat face:

Sprout's little lunch is packed in a Sassy On the Go Feeding Set container. It's the perfect size for small appetites. She also got a yogurt tube, not shown.

Some of the stuff used for these lunches: