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 :)

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:

Purple Up Lunch for My Military Kid!

I came across an unpublished post from back in April! Poor forgotten post :( But better late than never :)

April is the Month of the Military Child, & April 15th was Purple Up! For Military Kids day. Schools across the nation encouraged their students to help raise community awareness & support of military children by wearing purple to recognize & thank them for their strength & sacrifices. The colour purple symbolizes all branches of the military, as it's the combination of Army green, Coast Guard blue, Air Force blue, Marine red & Navy blue.

My sproutlets wore purple with pride! I wanted to Purple Up! their lunches as well, but didn't have any purple food on hand.  I did have EasyLunchboxes Brights with lovely purple lids though! I packed Bella a lunch full of leftovers in one that she had decorated herself, with dishwasher-safe stickers :)

Lunch was last night's crock-pot pulled chicken & rice, with cucumbers, carrots, & cauliflower on the side. I packed the chicken & sauce in a jumbo muffin cup so she could remove it to heat in the cafeteria microwave, then pour over & stir into the rice. The jumbo size cups are the same depth as the EasyLunchboxes so when the lid's on there's very little chance of spill-over.

I included a Lunchbox Love note with a joke, & bento picks inspired by it. What is a cow's favourite class? Moo-sic! :) Somehow, out of all the hundreds of bento picks in my collection, there's not a single cow in any shape or form. But I do have plenty of musical notes!

In the dip cup she got some Chef Kidd's Funagrette, in Honey Berry flavour. Bella really loves this sweet vinaigrette with her veggies. Chef Kidd's sent us all 5 varieties to try out, and this was the favourite. 

Rainy Day Monday Rainbow Bento

It's a rainy Monday, but the sun is trying to shine! I packed a little rainbow in Bella's EasyLunchbox. A grey day needs a colorful lunch :)

That rainbow condiment cup is one of my favourites :) I filled it with Chef Kidd's Honey Berry Funagrette. Her colourful lunch also contains:

• baby carrots, one skewered in a heart shape (here's how)
• Girl Scout cookies! Do-si-dos,  the peanut butter sandwich ones
• celery sticks to dip in the rainbow cup
• English cucumber slices planted with flower picks
• Babybel cheese with a flower cut out of the wax
• & turkey & cheddar on wheat, cut in hearts with Sweet Bytes

I also packed a sunny yellow cloth napkin from Beneficial Bento.

Some of the tools & accessories I used:

Bento Class: DIY Pizzables!

This month & next I'm teaching an after-school enrichment class at my sproutlets' elementary school, introducing kids to the principles of bento & helping them learn to pack their own creative nutritious school lunches! My class is called Bento Lunch Fun - & I think it's living up to the name :)  I know these two have been having fun:

This week's theme was Kid's Choice, & they all wanted to make something with pizza. Like pizza lunchables, they said. That gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about making a lunch that's not just fun, but also nutritionally balanced.  I asked them what they like about pizza lunchables. They were unanimous - "You get to make your own little pizza!" Of course, I agreed, that is fun! Then I asked them what's missing from lunchables. Aha! They quickly realized, & agreed - fruits & vegetables! Right! Okay, so the tomato sauce is technically in the veggie food group, but you don't get much of it in a store-bought pizza lunch. When you pack your own version of a lunchable (that my sproutlets call momables - the class liked that) you can include however much you want of whatever fresh fruits & veggies you like!

Here's my version of a DIY pizza lunchable, with fruit & vegetables, a Clifford the Big Red Dog cupcake ring, a pizza cupcake pick, & alphabet picks:

The kids chose pepperoni & mozzarella cheese for the mini pizzas. For fruit & veg I brought strawberries to show them how to notch the tops to make a heart, apples to show them how to checker the peel (though I didn't use any in my example), mini peppers they could chop for toppings or eat whole, & baby carrots they could decorate with cupcake rings. I brought a tackle box filled with an assortment of my own accessories for them to use - but didn't think to take a photo until after class, so the cupcake rings were already gone :) All the accessories I brought came from BentoUSA.

The students were very proud of their creations :) The little girl on the bottom left pointed out that we could make our pizzables even healthier if we used whole wheat - an excellent point to make,  & another great thing about packing your own bento - you can choose healthier ingredients than what might come in a pre-packaged lunch. These kids did great!

 

 

I had actually planned to get whole wheat sandwich thins for our pizzables, but couldn't find any (I should have shopped earlier!) so ended up making do with plain mini bagels sliced & flattened with a cutting board. 

We could fit 3 flattened mini bagel halves in each EasyLunchbox, but some decided 2 would be plenty for their lunch - which made another good point - when you pack your own lunch, you can customize the portions to your appetite, so you're neither left hungry nor with wasted food left over :) 

EasyLunchboxes generously provided my class with reusable divided lunch boxes & Mini Dippers that they got to take home, so they could take their bentos to school for the next day's lunch if they wished! These are the boxes I use most often for my own family - they're so versatile! I also gave each child a spoon that fit in the EasyLunchbox, for spreading the sauce on their bagel, & voila - everyone had their own unique healthier-than-a-store-bought-lunchable pizza lunch! I saw a couple of my students in the lunch room the next day, enjoying theirs :) Our DIY Pizzables were a hit!

What's black & white, black & white, black & white?

A panda bear rolling down a hill :)  Heheh, cute. And I love it when I have bento accessories that go with the jokes, riddles, & facts on our Lunchbox Love notes. Bella loves pandas too, so she loved this lunch:

Her EasyLunchbox is packed with turkey & cheddar wraps secured with panda picks, Craisins in a mini dipper, grapes in a flower cup, & celery with a little panda sauce container filled with peanut butter for dipping. Oh, and the last of the pumpkin pie Oreos :)

The Ghost Lunch of Hallowe'en Past

Wow, this past October was the busiest Hallowe'en season ever! Between volunteering to help plan & put on the sproutlets' elementary school Fall Festival, planning & shopping for Bella & Sprout's end of October birthdays, & putting together Hallowe'en costumes, I did not find time to blog. I did make some Hallowe'en themed bentos, & photographed a few ... but for the most part, the sproutlets' lunches were just food :)

This ghostly EasyLunchboxes bento is one of the few Hallowe'eny lunches I took a picture of :) The string cheese ghost's wrapper is decorated with marker, & the PB&J sandwich has candy eyes & a chocolate chip mouth. Baby carrots are embellished with a Boo! pick, & a ghost pick hovers over apple wedges with a little cup of caramel dip. 

Cheese + marker = ghost! I made these easy spooky snacks for Sprout's classroom Hallowe'en party contribution:

Bella's day of Hallowe'en lunch was filled with pumpkins & spiders :) In the spider silicone cup she got a Fig Newton & an Oreo embellished with candy eyes, her turkey, ham & cheese wrap is secured with Happy Halloween & spider pick, a spider ring decorates the baby carrots, & cucumber slices with a jack o'lantern pick fill a pumpkin-shaped silicone cup.

This one was barely Hallowe'eny.  It was a dark & dreary pre-daylight savings time morning, I wasn't awake enough to be creative ;) Bella got pepperoni bites, string cheese, turkey & cheddar wrap, 2 cocktail tomatoes,  Fig Newtons, & a Lunchbox Love note.

●  ●  ●  ● 

The sproutlets in their Hallowe'en costumes:

Bella was Wednesday Addams. I was super impressed with how well she did keeping that deadpan expression, especially for such a naturally smiley girl:

She looked so good! The skeleton behind her is my mom :)

Birdie was Amelia Earhart, in a mini flight suit we got at our NEX.

She loves those aviator goggles!

Pickle was Eggs from The Boxtrolls.  I made the box easy to put on and off, kind of like a cardboard vest - it closes in the back with velcro. Colouring the eggs label was kind of fun :)

Sprout was Annie Oakley, & requested her costume have lots of "cowgirl fringe". For the record, I did not enjoy sewing on that fringe! 

One last picture before going out trick or treating - a silly face group shot - including Beanstalk as a pirate & his buddy as a nerd :)

My little tricksters got lots of treats. A happy Hallowe'en was had by all!

By the Dawn's Early Light

Bella tried ranch dressing at a friend's recently, and liked it! She says she thinks she'd like to take some in her lunch now & then. We wouldn't use ranch dressing for anything else so I got a pack of single serving dip cups rather than a full bottle that would have to be refrigerated once opened, in case now & then tuns out to be rarely ;) If she does end up asking for it often I'll get the big bottle and send it in our EasyLunchboxes Mini Dippers.

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento box contains:

• a juicy little cocktail tomato
• fat little organic baby carrots
• ranch dip for the carrots
• pepperoni sticks
• mozzarella string cheese 
• parmesan garlic Triscuit Thins
• & a brownie left over from last night's dessert

I just realized this morning, Hallowe'en is in less than 2 weeks! Eek! It's time to start spookifying the lunches! There wasn't time this morning, but I did slip a Hallowe'en Angry Bird cupcake ring over the string cheese, for fun :)

It was the dim morning light that reminded me how late in the year it's getting; all of a sudden it's still fairly dark when my bigger sproutlets leave for school! Look how dark & cold Bella's lunch photo was before I colour corrected it - I wasn't even sure there was enough light to take it!

The streetlights & outside lights were even still on when we got to the school. I felt a little bad for my girl as I watched her cross the parking lot in her winter coat while I got to stay in the warm car, still cozy in my pajamas ;)

School's about to let out now and it's still cold & grey...  Bella & Beanstalk usually walk home, but I think I'll surprise them and pick them up :) 

Special Delivery Lunches : Cupcake & Pirate

I recently had the pleasure of making fun lunches for my friend's little girl & delivering them to her at school while her mother was away for a couple of days. Her little girl is called Bella too, so I just had to use my alphabet stamps in one of the lunches, I already had the name put together! 

Bella's Cute Personalized Lunch contains:

• strawberry Go-Gurt (frozen in an L shape to fit)
• cupcake ham & cheese sandwich made with a Lunch Punch, stamped with her name, & topped with a cherry tomato
• roll of Rockets candy (or Smarties if you're American)
• organic strawberries cut like hearts, with a heart fork pick
• organic green grapes in a pink flower silicone cup

For the other day, she asked if I could make her a lunch like the one I made Birdie on Talk Like A Pirate Day, but without berries, & jelly instead of cheese on her treasure map sandwich. She definitely wanted me to include the jelly bean treasure & chocolate doubloon though! I packed her lunch in an EasyLunchbox with the treasure in a Mini Dipper.

Bella's Pirate Lunch contains:

• mozzarella string cheese through a pirate cupcake ring
• treasure map PB&J embellished with shark sprinkles, food marker, pirate flag, & palm tree cupcake pick
• organic green grapes
• jelly bean & chocolate coin treasure
• organic baby carrots

Both lunches were packed in EasyLunchboxes that she got to keep :) It was fun packing lunches for someone other than my own sproutlets! My friend told me how much her daughter was looking forward to lunch those days, rather than being bummed about having the school lunch, so I really wanted her to like them. And I'm told she loved them ♥

No Mojo Bentos :)

Today's post is for my friend Nina, who says she can't find her bento mojo. It's not at my house Nina! See, here's what I packed today:

Bella got a turkey & cheese wrap, a couple of peppers, some pepperoni bites, almonds (in the EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper), grapes, tomatoes, & cucumber. The picks are there to secure the wrap, not as decoration ;) Her lunch is packed in an EasyLunchboxes divided container.

Birdie got a Yumbox packed with a Fruit by the Foot (Hallowe'en treat size), strawberries with a bento pick fork, Trix yogurt, mozzarella bites with a bento pick fork & in a little silicone cup to make the section smaller, & Scrabble Cheez-its crackers.  I forgot to put her chewable Lactaid tablet in the centre, oops! And I didn't even make a word with the cracker letters ;) 

A Bookish Bento for Roald Dahl Day

It's Roald Dahl Day tomorrow! In honour of the beloved author's birthday, some blogger friends & I are making Dahl-icious lunches & doing a blog hop! I made my Bella a bookish bento, with turkey & Asiago cheese tortilla books! I made Fantastic Mr. Fox, Esio Trot, Matilda, & The BFG:

The book sandwiches were super easy to make. I cut tortillas in rectangles & used food markers & stamps to make the covers. I cut cheese & turkey in smaller rectangles & stacked them for the pages, then folded the tortilla book covers around them. These were a big improvement on the ones I made for 2012's Dahl Day lunch.  I had come up with the whoppsy-whiffling idea for them just that morning, & only had cheddar & white bread. I've long been meaning to remake them with white cheese & brown bread, but Bella prefers sandwiches made with tortillas over bread - which worked out even better since tortillas are much easier to stamp & draw on!

I love how my new & improved edible books turned out! Here they are in my 6th grader Bella's EasyLunchbox. She also had some broccoli & grape tomatoes with a "Read" pick, & grapes with a chocolate bar pick - it's the 50th anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

And look, I had the perfect Lunchbox Love for Kids joke note to go with it :) Oh, I also tucked in a tiny pack of Wonka Gobstoppers ;) Hallowe'en candy!

Even the flip side of the Lunchbox Love note was just right :) I had a great foxy cloth napkin from Beneficial Bento too:

This book bento was such a fun lunchy use for my Stupendous Stampers :)

And in case you missed them, here are some of my sproutlets' splendiferous lunches from Dahl Days gone by :

 

2012's bento had elements from James & the Giant Peach, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, & Matilda. One of 2013's (above) was all James & the Giant Peach, & the other (below) was mostly the BFG, with a smidge of Danny the Champion of the World. 

Now, it's time to get jumpelling over to Robot Squirrel and the Monkeys to see what luctuous lunches Eileen has made:

●  ●  ●  ● 

●  ●  ●  ● 

Some stuff used to make this bookish bento: