Awesome Autism Day

April is National Autism Awareness Month in America,  & April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day.  Pickle calls it Awesome Autism Day :)   I packed him an awesome autism lunch with a special message:

I used tiny alphabet, heart, & puzzle piece shaped cookie cutters to say "I love you to pieces" with his peanut butter sandwich, & filled the heart shape with cupcake sprinkles in the colours of the Autism Awareness ribbon.  I froze some yogurt in a puzzle piece mold & nestled a piece in some plain yogurt - it holds it shape pretty well as it thaws. And I topped one of his favourite oatmeal muffins with some blue cupcake sprinkles - they're meant to be flowers but I think they look kind of like puzzle pieces :)

If you aren't a regular BentOnBetterLunches reader,  you might be thinking: Cute lunch, but so nutritionally unbalanced!  Maybe you even want to ask: Where are the fruits & vegetables?  The answer most days is:  On his dinner plate, pureed in pizza sauce. Rarely in his lunch box.  Why not?  Pickle has autism, & like many kids with ASDs, he takes picky eating to an extreme.  

Eating issues are very common among kids on the autism spectrum. 

The reasons for this are as diverse as the kids themselves.  Pickle has difficulty with food textures*. Graduating from purees to solids was a slow process that took patience, & help from his speech-language pathologist. And he still prefers softer solids - like peanut butter sandwiches :)

But a peanut butter sandwich every day ?!

Autism challenges us daily, turning simple tasks into a battle, so we try to choose our conflicts carefully.  Pickle's diet is just not something worth fighting over.  If he wants to have the same thing for lunch every day, that's okay.  I personally find it boring, but he seems to find it reassuring*.  So, to make packing the same thing every day less tedious, fun even, I challenged myself to make his sandwiches as many different ways as I could, & set a goal of 101 - and I did it! See all 101 peanut butter sandwiches here :)

I like to think that Pickle's lunches are something he looks forward to during his school day.  He loves to learn, but autism can make some aspects of going to school difficult. Sitting still, working quietly, & transitioning from one subject to another take a lot of effort for him, & the noise & crowds at recess & lunch can be overwhelming.  A familiar lunch is comforting :)

Pickle's Autism Awareness lunch is packed in our new Bentology containers. If the bento box design looks familiar, that's because Bentology is the evolution of one of our longtime favourite brands, Laptop Lunches! Bonus - we already had a spork that matches the new turquoise coloured lids :) And last but never least, I tucked in a Lunchbox Love note. I can always find one with the perfect sentiment ♥

                   

* Sensory Processing Disorder has a higher prevalence among children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
* Many people with autism have a strong preference for routines and sameness. - Autism, routines, & resistance to change.

Look Who's 100 days Smarter!

It's the 100th Day of School for most of my sproutlets! Kindergartner Birdie reaches her 100th day tomorrow :) It's also breakfast for lunch day at school, so most of the kidlets wanted the pancake hot lunch. Bella wanted some of last night's supper leftovers though, which she planned to heat in the lunch room microwave, so I packed her a Laptop Lunches bento box:

She has some saucy pulled chicken to heat & spread on the bun under the Lunchbox Love note, carrots, cucumbers & tomatoes, mozzarella string cheese, a dark chocolate, nuts & sea salt KIND bar, & Light My Fire spork.

To mark Bella's 100th day of school I added a couple of "Look Who's 100 Days Smarter" stickers - one for her & one for a friend - & wrapped her spork in an owl print cloth napkin. I know she'll find this lunch delicious & fun!  :)

#GuacItForward for National Guacamole Day!

Happy National Guacamole Day! The folks at Wholly Guacamole are always looking for fun ways to celebrate National Guacamole Day & love the concept of paying it forward, so this year they're giving back to their community & encouraging fans to do the same, with the #GuacitForward campaign! And in partnership with Laptop Lunches, who also like to pay it forward, they're giving away some of the ingredients for a tasty healthy lunch! I'm pleased to be able to offer one of these giveaways to my guacamole loving readers :)

One lucky Wholly Guacamole fan in the United States will win:

• 1 Set of Laptop Lunches Avocado Bento Buddies
• An awesome Wholly Guacamole cooler filled with:
  • 3 Guacamole Trays (various flavors)
  • 2 mini cups (various flavors)
  • 1 Chip Clip
  • 1 Avocado Squeezie

▼ Scroll to the bottom of the post to enter via the Rafflecopter widget

Use the hashtag #GuacItForward on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram to share how you are paying it forward!

I packed my hubby a National Guacamole Day bento! Sailor Boy's favourite Dr. Seuss book is Green Eggs & Ham so I thought I'd make him smile with a green eggs & ham salad sandwich in his lunch. Of course I had to tell him that's what it was to get the smile ;)

Guacamole Green Eggs & Ham Salad Sandwich
Ingredients:

• 1 Wholly Guacamole mini (or 2oz Wholly Guacamole) 
• 2 hard-cooked eggs
• 2 slices deli ham
• 2 slices bread

Directions:

1. Peel & chop eggs. 
2. Chop ham. 
3. Combine eggs & ham with guacamole in a bowl & stir/mash until desired consistency. 
4. Spread on a slice of bread, top with another slice, & cut if desired.
5. Pack or enjoy!

I also packed green grapes, a Babybel cheese, & NatureSweet Sunbursts tomatoes in the side containers of his Laptop Lunches bento. I used a bento cutting tool to carve OMG! in the Babybel wax coating, & spelled OMGuac! with alphabet bento picks in his sandwich :)

Last of all, I added a Lunchbox Love note atop his Laptop Lunches Bento Buddies lid to remind hubby to #GuacItForward too :)

Wholly Guacamole Minis come in Classic, Spicy, Ranch, Chunky & Organic varieties! I used Spicy in my egg salad sandwich - Sailor Boy likes it hot!

You can also enter to win a NatureSweet Prize Pack 

from the Wholly Guacamole OMG! Sweepstakes!

▼ Enter the Giveaway!▼

a Rafflecopter giveaway

► Visit Wholly Guacamole for more fabulous & fun ways to OMGuac Your Lunch! There are some delicious lunch ideas for both adults & kids!

Message in a Bento: 11 Lunch Note Ideas

When I pack my kidlets a bento I'm sending them to school with more than a nutritious & waste-free lunch... packing their favourite foods with fun touches also sends the message that I love them & want them to enjoy their meal! And it doesn't need to be fancy to be fun; simply adding an amusing or encouraging note is enough to brighten their lunch & their day :)

I love including a Lunchbox Love note ♥ Each colourful card has a positive message on one side, a joke or fun fact on the other. My sproutlets tell me the whole lunch table enjoys them - hooray for sharing the Love!

 In this lunch:  Watermelon & cantaloupe, cereal & pretzel snack mix, cheddar tortilla spirals, a heart-shaped hard-cooked egg, & symphony tomatoes, packed in Laptop Lunches.

A bananagram is an a-peel-ing way to slip in a note :) Did you know you can write on a banana's peel with something pointed, like a toothpick, & your message will turn brown by lunchtime? I'm sure I got a bunch of smiles with this silly pun message for my sproutlet who was getting over a cold.

 In this lunch:  Babybel cheese with smiley face cut-out, banana, crackers, mini turkey pepperoni, golden & orange carrots, grapes, & pistachios, packed in Laptop Lunches.

No artistic ability was needed to make this confidence booster!  I used Wilton alphabet cutters to add some encouragement to my nervous about starting middle school 6th grader's sandwich :)

In this lunch:  Peanut butter sandwich, cantaloupe,  apple wedges & caramel dip, & Babybel cheese with star cut-out,  packed in Laptop Lunches.

Make an impression with a stamped sandwich! Cookie stamps can also be used on bread! I have a cookie message set for embossing words & phrases, even more fun ... fondant stamps would work just as well :)

In this lunch:  Embossed peanut butter sandwich, apple wedges, strawberry hearts, & yogurt with rainbow marshmallow bits, packed in Laptop Lunches.

7 more ways to leave a message in their lunchbox:

• Food markers. Write a note on their sandwich, cookie, or cheese!
• Alphabet crackers or cookies. Glue them to a granola bar or across a sandwich with honey :)
• Alphabet bento picks. Stick them in almost anything to spell out a message. I use mine a lot! There is 1 of each letter per package so I got 3 sets to have enough letters.
• Include a little chalkboard, like these Lunch Box Scribbles.
• Dry erase marker. Make a test mark on your lunchbox first, in a spot that won't be seen, just in case. 
• Write on erasable stickers made for labeling food!
• You can always write a message or draw a picture on a piece of note paper, or if you use them, paper napkin (like this dad!), plastic baggie (like this dad!), or paper lunch bag (like this dad!). 

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☺ This post contains affiliate links to the tools used to create these lunches.

It's Shark Week!

Discovery Channel's Shark Week is one of our favourite summer traditions! So I was setting this stuff out tonight to make my 13 year old a shark-themed bento tomorrow, when I remembered he has oral surgery in the morning! He'll be wanting soft foods only for a few days, and probably only ice cream tomorrow, so my lunch plan would have to change. That's okay - like Fin in Sharknado 2, I'm just making this up as I go along ;)

Shark Lunch Alert!  With a bit of thought, I made use of Beanstalk's Laptop Lunches & the shark accessories for Pickle! He really liked the fun shark fact on the Lunchbox Love note, and the flip side too, which said "Don't be afraid to ask questions. That's how we learn." That boy loves asking questions, lots of questions :)  Shark fact card from Lunchbox Love for Kids Volume 9

I made a couple of peanut butter sandwiches with a shark cookie cutter. They were kind of small so I added a sandwich ocean floor beneath them - the perfect place to stick the bento pick letters. My picky boy never eats crackers so I only included 2 goldfish - in case he felt like trying something new (he didn't). A drop of food colouring made blue yogurt to stick the shark fin cupcake pick into, & I chopped a string cheese into triangle shark teeth. Sharks do have several rows of teeth, you know :)

Maybe Beanstalk'll heal fast & be back in biting form soon... as Marian Call sings in The Shark Week Song, "It be Shark Week all week through!"

And here are a couple of my favourite previously devoured shark bentos:

 

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Click the pic for the original post 

I've got a couple more fun Shark Week ideas I'm going to try to get to, though even if I do, I may not get a chance to blog them - so you should follow me on Instagram - I'll at least post a pic if I do!

Update: I did get around to making one of my sharkish food ideas - Sharknado cinnamon rolls! And also a shark lunch for Birdie, with a Sharknado pizza roll :) Click the pic to see all my shark week posts:

Happy Shark Week!

Some stuff I used to make these lunches:

Storybook Bento: Pinkalicious!

March is National Reading Month, & Laptop Lunches is celebrating with a month of storybook bentos!  I was so pleased to be asked to contribute :)  I let my girls choose the book they wanted me to make lunch to go with.  They chose Pinkalicious by Victoria & Elizabeth Kann:

Pinkalicious is such a cute book.  The story is about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns completely pink!  She loves it, and cries pink tears of happiness over how beautifully pink she is!  Her mother is not so thrilled with her new hue and takes her to the doctor, who prescribes green foods to return her to her normal colour, but she likes being pink, and sneaks another pink cupcake instead.  She's not happy when it turns her red though, and finally eats her greens.

Pinkalicious is a perennial favourite bedtime story at our house.  It's a silly story filled with fun, colourful illustrations.  My girlies love that the mother in the story quotes the same rhyme I do, "You get what you get and you don't get upset".  And we all love the ending :)

We even have Pinkalicious pajamas! (Purplicious ones too - that's one of the sequels.) Here my 7 year old reads the book to her 5 year old sister:

You can imagine how excited they were about these Pinkalicious cupcakes I made! Cherries aren't in season right now so I topped ours with raspberries:

Yummy! And a perfect fit in the smaller Laptop Lunches inner containers:

My eldest daughter's Pinkalicious Laptop Lunches bento contains:

• A flatbread cheese sandwich - I used scissors to cut it in a crown shape - and a cheddar star-topped wand.
• Strawberry yogurt sprinkled with pink & white sugar crystals.
• One of the Pinkalicious cupcakes
• Greens! Lettuce, celery, cucumber, and broccoli - plus carrot & radish flowers and a butterfly cupcake pick, for the part of the story where the butterflies think the pink girl is a flower :)
• And a Pinkalicious cupcake ring repurposed as a cloth napkin ring, and a spork (not shown above, see below)

My younger girls got similar lunches - with less greens.  One more thing went into each bento box: a Lunchbox Love note card. Bella's says "Dream big!" and has a fun fact about belly button lint on the flip side :)

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Some stuff I used to make our bentos:

Celebrate National Reading Month with Laptop Lunches :)