Back To School with yubo for my Bigger Boy!

This Back To School lunch I made for Pickle may be the last one of his that I blog! He's decided that now that he's in middle school, he's too old for themed bentos & shaped sandwiches, and wants plain lunches.  But I packed him this one (possibly) last special lunch anyways :)

He has a Babybel cheese with a check mark carved in the wax, Oreos with a chalkboard pick stuck in the frosting of one, yogurt with chocoladehagel (sprinkles), a notebook paper peanut butter sandwich embellished with food markers, stacked atop a second plain sandwich, & a Lunchbox Love note.

Everything pictured plus a drink, napkin, & spork is packed in his new, more grown up, yubo tote. It's less bulky than the yubo lunchbox, but still the perfect size for all the yubo containers, & more:

The yubo ice pack fits perfectly in the new soft-sided Tote, along with the same container combination as can be packed in the hard-sided yubo, as well as additional yubo container(s), accessories and/or a drink.

Something else that's new for middle school is that Pickle doesn't have an aide sitting with him,  encouraging him to eat tidily & helping him pack up when he's finished.  He likes to squish his food - it's an autism/sensory thing - plus he's neither the neatest of eaters, nor very good about remembering to put the lids back on his containers, & frequently brings home a messy lunch bag covered inside & out with smushed Oreo smears & spilled yogurt. So I was pretty thrilled with the ability to completely unsnap the yubo Tote & wipe it down, or even machine wash it. No scrubbing crud out of seams, yay!

I really like that when the yubo tote is completely unsnapped it becomes a placemat. Having a messy kid myself makes me more than a bit squeamish about eating on shared surfaces... who knows what germs are lurking there ready to leap onto my lunch, heheh... so this is a great feature for me :)

See all the lunchboxes & accessories yubo has to offer at getyubo.com

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Just in case anyone's wondering about the bottle in Pickle's lunch, it's this:

It's called Bot-L, by Fred & Friends, & it's one of his favourites.  I like it well enough - it doesn't leak - but it's not insulated, & I have to hand wash it...
so I don't love it quite as much as Pickle does ;)

Disclosure: I received no monetary compensation for this post. I was offered a complimentary yubo tote to review with no obligation to endorse. This post does contain affiliate links to products I used. All opinions & images are my own. 

Fall Picks!

Today's Fall-ish bento for Bella was a perfect example of what my friend Kendra refers to as "pickography" - that's when you make a bento with nothing really artistic done to the actual food, no carvings or shapes, just plain food, "where picks and cups and accessories do all the work."  You may know my friend as bloggess Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You (and if you don't, check out her blog).  Pick a theme, any theme... if she doesn't have a pick for it, they probably don't make one!

Bella's EasyLunchbox is packed with carrot sticks, turkey & cheddar wraps secured with Autumn Leaves cupcake picks, a tomato in a yellow flower cup, & grapes embellished with a flexible plastic Sunflower pick:

The picks I chose were inspired by the sunflowers I had seen in the courtyard of her school the week before. Sunflowers make me smile. I hope the simple touches to her lunch made her smile :)

Book-ish Bento Lunch for Roald Dahl Day

Yesterday would have been beloved author Roald Dahl's 99th birthday! We love his stories so much.  In observance of Roald Dahl Day, I made my 7th grader a Dahl-icious bookish bento lunch, featuring a Giraffe & Pelly & Me "bookwich", strawberries with a giraffe fork, checkered cucumber slices, carrot sticks, & a cocktail tomato with a "Read" pick.

The bookwich is a turkey & white cheddar tortilla sandwich. I stacked deli meat & cheese slices on the right half of a tortilla, folded the left half over the stack, & trimmed it to a book shape. I used food colouring pens to illustrate the cover in the style of one of our books. That's meant to be the giraffe & the pelican... *sigh* ... I decided I'd better not even attempt to add Billy or the monkey...  I'm no Quentin Blake!

Splendiferous, but small. I folded the scraps, along with another couple of slices of cheese & turkey, into a little bundle & secured it with a long food pick, then packed it in the bento box where it would be covered by the bookwich. More filling for my middle-schooler, & no waste. Whiz-bang!

The bundle also raises the bookwich to the top of the bento box. Filling as much of a bento box's space as possible keeps a scrumdiddlyumptious lunch from becoming a muckledy mess on the way to school!

I packed her lunch in my new nested snack pots / bento boxes! I ♥ them.

They're really, really new - they only just arrived the day before Dahl Day,

all the way from The Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre in the UK! The lids feature Quentin Blake's iconic illustrations & quotes from Matilda, The Enormous Crocodile, & George's Marvelous Medicine.

I've had a lot of fun over the years making Dahl Day lunches for my sproutlets.  In fact, it was while making one that I was first inspired to make a bookwich,  a type of sandwich with layers of cheese(s) & sometimes deli meat folded between bread or tortilla to resemble a little book. It's become a favourite with my sproutlets, that to their delight was even featured in the September issue of Family Fun magazine! They're so proud of their lickswishy lunches & of their phizzwizard mum for making them :)

Click to see all my Roald Dahl Day lunch posts!

Have a whoppsy-whiffling Roald Dahl Day!

Wait, there's more!

Some of the Bento Bloggers & Friends have a blog hop of bento tributes to Roald Dahl to share with you! Click the big button below to hop to Yummy Bites By Amy, then keep hopping until you're back here, & you'll know you've seen them all. And when you're done with the hop, why not have some food fighting fun with Mr. & Mrs Twit in their new app, Twit or Miss!

PS - Today is my birthday! 

You didn't know though, so I'm not expecting a present... but how about sharing our blog hop via your favourite social network? It's free! :)

A Last Dip of Summer Lunch

On one of the last days of summer vacation, Bella went on a day trip with friends & needed a sack lunch. She asked for a bagel, veggies, apples, & 3 different dips - good thing we have lots of EasyLunchboxes Mini Dippers!

She wanted peanut butter & nutella for the bagel, & caramel dip for the apples. The veggies she requested were broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, & cucumber, which she likes to eat as is, no dip :)

I added some summery decorations: sunglasses & flip flops cupcake picks, & a frog in an inner tube bento pick. I also packed a little plastic spreader that I forgot to include in the photo. 

Fun summertime accessories used: