C'est monbento!

Look, a new bento box! And it's French, ooh la la :)

Monbento sent me one of their MB Original Bento boxes - it's so nice! 

I packed a pretty garden salad, a square hard-cooked egg, and leftover lasagna embellished with cheese words I cut out with my alphabet bento cutters. The lasagna was frozen so it kept the salad chilled :)

The two-tiered MB Original bento box consists of two stackable 7" x 3.5" bento boxes with sealing vented intermediary lids, a removable divider, a top lid that leaves enough space for utensils, and a wide elastic bento strap: 

Things I like:

• The lids to the monbento's tiers fit together really easily and securely, they don't need the bento strap to keep them on, and do not leak. The two tiers do need the included elastic strap to keep them together but are perfectly functional individually. 
• It's has a real feeling of quality to it, very solid. I don't see the monbento warping, denting, or cracking easily.
• It's stain resistant! My tomato sauce washed right off, even after it was reheated in the microwave !
• It's microwaveable, with neato steam vents that let you keep the inner lid on while heating, to prevent spatter. No mess!

●  ●  ●  ●

The monbento line also includes matching cutlery & spill-proof sauce cups:

And this is fantastic... monbento has a Customize Your MB Original option! Look, I made one to match Bent On Better Lunches:

●  ●  ●  ●

It's hip to be square!

I made the square egg shown below using monbento's fun square egg mold. Simply pop in a warm shelled hard-cooked egg, snap the lid closed, and let cool. Each set includes one embossed with the word egg, the other with BON APPETIT. As egg sizes differ, it won't always make a perfect square, but close enough :) I've also used my square egg mold as a treat box in a bento!

Want a set of monbento's square egg molds?

Enter my Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!

●  ●  ●  ●

Some other stuff used to make this lunch:

Edible Geekery : Skydiving Judi Dench!

I'm so psyched! Tonight is the season premiere of Psych! My bestest buddy and I just had to make Psych-themed bentos for ourselves - here's mine:

Did you know that Saturday was Twin Peaks Day? (And my Pickle's birthday - but he didn't want a Twin Peaks lunch.) And did you know that Psych did a Twin Peaks parody/tribute episode? Dual Spires :) Damn fine episode! My lunch pays humble homage to that awesomeness.

My LunchBots Duo contains:

• Pineapple (of course)
• A cinnamon roll in a pie cup, with a Suck It pick
• Twin cheddar Douglas Firs atop a salad
• Cinnamon spiced nuts in a cherry cup...
  because isn't cherry the best?

The epicness of the Dual Spires episode simply cannot be reduced to a clip ♥

If you're a Twin Peaks fan not familiar with Psych, you have just got to see it - and if you're a Psych-o, you already have :)

And while you're waiting for tonight's episode to air, check out my bestie Karen's post at What's In Our Lunch Bags! I believe you'll love it :)

Psych-os might also like:

This lunch features:

   

ETA: By popular demand, the "Suck It" pick
came from this novelty set:

Groundhog Day!

I'd never heard of Groundhog Day until I saw the Bill Murray comedy with my husband, after it came out on video. Even after that I didn't realize it was a real day! Though I now know all about the holiday-of-sorts, it's still the movie and not the weather predicting rodent that comes to mind when I hear it mentioned ... and then of course I hear the song that played every morning on the radio :)

My Punxsutawney Phil cheese sandwich predicts Spring is on the way! Above my groundhog I have some carrot sticks & a Clementine orange (sprouting Spring flowers) The main course of my lunch is chili, decorated with white cheddar words from the song that the main character of the movie Groundhog Day woke up to every morning, over and over and over... :)

Used in this lunch:

Buggy Bentos for my Bookworms

Bella & Sprout love to read, so this lunch is more of a celebration of that than an encouragement. Bit of sproutlet trivia: Sprout learned to read when she was four, but not at preschool, and no thanks to me... it was Pickle who taught her, and it was a surprise to us!

Sprout's yubo lunchbox contains:

• sharp white & orange cheddar cheeses
• little flower sandwiches
• Granny Smith apple wedges
• raspberries
• berry yogurt with sprinkles  

Bella also has  bees & bugs in her lunchbox :)

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento contains:

• sharp white & orange cheddar cheese roll-ups
• Galia melon flowers
• cherry tomatoes
• cucumber slices
• & a few marshmallow treats

While I was packing for the girls I went ahead and packed a lunch for myself as well. I don't usually bother with decorations for my lunches, but I had the picks out, so, just for fun:

My brand new orange LunchBots Duo contains:

• a clementine mandarin orange
• a hard cooked egg (blossom shape made by using large egg instead of jumbo in star shape egg mold)
• some cracked black pepper Triscuit
• cheese scarps from the girls' lunches
• raspberries & blueberries

Thanks to Beth of A Boy & His Lunch for the "Buggy for Books" & "Bee a Reader" cupcake picks, they were a nice surprise in the mail :) And I just happen to be linking this post to her "Grown-ups Gotta Eat" Linky :

Some stuff used for these lunches:

EasyLunchboxes Brights + Classics = A Rainbow of Lunch Possibilities!

You may already be aware that one of my favourite lunch containers, EasyLunchboxes, just came out with a new set called Brights... but if not... EasyLunchboxes just came out with a new set called Brights!

Now I have lids in red, pink, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, & purple. Aren't they pretty all stacked in that order? Like a rainbow :)

I usually take my pictures against colourful backgrounds but I wanted the bright colours of the lids to show true, so I took them against a piece of white posterboard, which did make them pop! Looking at all my EasyLunchboxes stacked together, something that struck me was how it is nearly impossible, without looking very closely, to tell which ELB containers are the new ones, and which ones I've been using for a year and half!

Really! I started using my EasyLunchboxes Classics, as the original colours are now known, at the end of Summer 2011. I even made a blog post about them. You'd think that after 18 months of regular use they'd be showing some wear, maybe sporting some stains, but nope! See for yourself:

Can you tell which container is new and which is old?

 If the lid colours weren't there to help, I doubt it!

I asked some fellow bloggers who use ELBs if they'd ever had any stains. The answer was a unanimous "No". Collectively we've packed & even reheated:

• tomato soups 
• chicken soup
• homemade ketchup
• spaghetti & marinara
• bright oily dressings
• sloppy joes
• ketchup & mustard

And all agree their EasyLunchboxes came clean. Awesome!

● ● ● ● ●

Right, enough gushing about lunchboxes. Here's today's lunch :)

A 3-cheese sandwich on toasted bread, grapes, carrot sticks,  grapefruit wedges sprinkled with sugar, & strawberry hearts. This lunch is actually for me! I've decided to try packing myself a lunch when I pack for the sproutlets. Not likely to get fancy with my own though :)

All right, so the strawberries are cut in heart shapes ♥ I didn't do it on purpose though... I'm so used to cutting them like this I do it without even thinking when I trim the stems ;) Love my colourful lunch!

● ● ● ● ●

Okay, I have to share just one more pretty picture. The rainbow assortment of colourful lids against the plain white background inspired me to arrange them like a rainbow, which then inspired the text.  I love it!

Lunch for the Man, and me too!

In my one year blogiversary post, I asked you to leave comments telling me what you liked about my blog, and what you'd like to see more of, and a few readers mentioned my Lunch for the Man posts. I do make Sailor Boy a lunch most days, I just don't always photograph and blog them. One of the reasons is a lot of the time they aren't very interesting - not to me anyways :) Yesterday's was kind of cute though, I think:

Romaine salad with golden Sunburst tomatoes and checkered cucumber, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Masa chips from the June NatureBox (thank you Ludicrous Mama!) Raspberries and mozzarella chunks skewered on heart & leaf picks. And a cheeky little monkey pick, for fun :)

●  ●  ●  ● 

Another reason I don't always post Sailor Boy's lunches is that I make his lunch at night and leave it in the fridge for him (since he almost always leaves for work before I get up), so I don't often get an opportunity to photograph his lunch in natural light, and our indoor lighting is not the best for photos.   

For example, this photo was taken in the morning, with natural daylight:

This photo was taken the night before, with our poor indoor lighting:

Doesn't the top photograph look better?

Lunch was leftover pork tenderloin, an egg, NatureBox Lemon Pucker pistachios, oranges & pluots, with some white cheddar hearts scattered over the meat. Protein-heavy, but that's what he asked for.

And this one, from a couple of weeks ago, looks awful to me, so I never posted it. I think the yellow cast makes the turkey breast look very unappetizing :( 

So there you go, that's why I haven't made very many Lunch for the Man posts. That and when he goes on trips I don't get to make him a lunch :(

●  ●  ●  ● 

I hate to end the post with such an unappealing image, so here's one of my lunches from this past week. They're usually just scraps so I don't bother with pics but I took this one because it might be my first EasyLunchbox!

It's made with the scraps and extras from one of Sailor Boy's lunches. If you follow my blog via my Facebook Page you may have seen that lunch, but I'm not blogging it yet, it's for my upcoming PlanetBox review :) I often make my own lunch from the scraps of the hubby's and/or the sproutlets' lunches, but I think this is the first time I packed them in a EasyLunchboxes container! It's definitely the first time I used that cute little apple head sauce bottle (filled with soy) since I just got it from Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You, when she came for a visit last week! (See her post about that here.)

Candy Girl & Ludicrous Mama + Baby E
Shopping for all things Hello Kitty :)

Don't miss the brilliant Sproutlets Bento she made to represent my family!

Edible Geekery : Embrace Your Geekness Day

Today is, according to my geekiest girlfriends, Embrace Your Geekness Day. Okay :) Since I'm the biggest geek in our family, I made myself a bento lunch. I thought of doing a Doctor Who theme lunch and packing it in my new TARDIS lunch box - but we have a DW/TW blog hop coming up (spoilers!)
so I went with Red Dwarf instead:

I packed my LunchBots Trio with Lister in mind, so of course I have his favourite, vindaloo - though mine's seitan pretending to be chicken. It's not pretending to be spicy though! I also have a salad with Red Dwarf cut from sharp cheddar cheese, grapes, and in the small LunchBots cup, chile-spiced almonds. Lister only has two working taste buds - one for vindaloo and one for lager - but since it's only noon here and I'm surrounded by my sproutlets, I skipped the lager and poured myself some limeade instead. It's green, so I'll pretend it's mimosian telekinetic wine, and decide it tastes like lager :)

A couple of my geeky girlfriends have also made special lunches today! Not giving you any hints though, go see for yourself :)

• Bento for Kidlet
• What's In Mom's Lunch Bag?

Did you embrace your geekness today?


♫ ♪ Red Dwarf End Theme 

"It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere
I'm all alone, more or less
Let me fly far away from here
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun

I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose
Drinking fresh mango juice
Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun"  ♪♫

● ● ● ● ●

And because I love Doctor Who, I must include this excellent Red Dwarf & Doctor Who Mash-Up!

Lunch looks Seussalicious!

I made those Seuss-inspired lunches some time ago but never got around to posting them ... In Birdie & Sprout's Sassy boxes, apples for The Cat in the Hat, goldfish crackers & gummy fish for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, & green scrambled eggs & honey ham for Green Eggs and Ham.  Bella doesn't like eggs cold so had green plastic ones from last Easter filled with shredded cheese & almonds for her salad instead. Beanstalk doesn't like eggs at all so he got a Clif Z Bar in his Lock & Lock.

No better day than today to finally share them!

Beanstalk and Bella will also be sharing Dr. Seuss pencils with their classmates in honour of the beloved author's birthday. Pickle already handed some out his class on his birthday last Friday.

We love Dr. Seuss! Who doesn't?!  And what a Seussful week we've had so far! I did repeat many of  the themes, but there are some new things too :)

In case you missed it, Monday I made Birdie & Sprout a Seussilicious muffin tin meal with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish goldfish grahams & gummy fish, a Gala apple & mozzarella Cat in the Hat hat, three cheese trees with 3 chocolate sprinkle fleas, from Fox in Socks, scrambled & dyed Green Eggs and Ham, strawberry, mozzarella & cream cheese Thing 1 and Thing 2, and green tapioca pudding Oobleck:

Yesterday, I made Bella a Seussified bento:

Green egg-shaped grapes & ham :) A Cat in the Hat cracker stack plus mozzarella string cheese. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish goldfish grahams & gummy fish, & another Cat in the Hat-inspired snack of skewered strawberry fruit leather and mini marshmallows. 

And finally,

Today's Seuss-inspired lunchboxes:

Beanstalk's PlanetBox is pretty plain and simple, the way he likes it. He has a Star Belly Sneetch egg peanut butter sandwich, Cat in the Hat striped Cheez-it crackers (spicy & white cheddar), egg-shaped Granny Smith apples & skewered applewood smoked ham for Green Eggs & Ham, and a couple of green foil-wrapped chocolate eggs just to be sweet :)

Pickle wanted me to take a photo of his sandwich using his iPod's Dr. Seuss Birthday camera app.  I used it for Dr. Seuss' photo above too. It's fun!

I've learned that Pickle doesn't like his sandwiches to look too much like characters he loves, or he doesn't want to eat them. Remember my Angry Birds sandwich? I had to keep it in the freezer for him to admire for weeks. I don't really mind... the Cat in the Hat's hat is a much easier sandwich to make than the Cat in the Hat! So that's what he got, with yogurt & a couple of chocolate green eggs:

Bella's class is having a Read Across America pizza party today so I was told she didn't need a lunch, but just in case she wanted something healthy to go with her pizza, I packed her a little snack inspired by :

Nothing much, just a pair of celery pants & an apple wedge moon, from the last story in the book, What was I Scared of? I also added some lime gelatin Oobleck & a honeycrisp apple Cat in the Hat hat, just because :)

Poor empty pants

With nothing inside them.

That particular story reminds me of my Bella. She would totally feel sorry for and hug the poor lonely pants :) 

Lunchtime Update: 

A last-minute bento for ME! Cucumber Green Eggs & Ham, Cat in the Hat striped radishes, crackers, cheese & potato, broccoli & cheddar Seuss - yum! 

This post is part of a Dr. Seuss Birthday Bento Blog Hop! Your next hop stop is Bento for Kidlet, to see what cheese artiste extraordinaire Jenn has made for her lucky Kidlet.

If you've hopped all around and back again, and still want more, I have more Seussalicious blog posts! Click here to see them all :)