The Ubiquitous Top 12 of 2012 Post :)

Looking back, it appears 2012 was indeed a good year for lunches! 

I'm late to the year end Top 12 post round-up party, but here they are! Fun seeing which posts were most popular, all in one place :) And these are just the top 12... I made 20 times that many posts in 2012. Yowza!

#1 Fun With FunBites & Chopsticks
Cubed sandwiches are perfect to practice eating with chopsticks! Which is of course much more fun than fingers or forks :)

#2 Eating Real Food Can Be Fun!
Let them play with their food with this simple healthy snack!

#3 The Mighty Thor Bento Lunch & Birthday Party
Both the lunch & the movie party were a hit. Love that granola bar hammer!

#4 Do You Like Green Eggs & Ham?
Strawberry Thing 1 & Thing 2 were the stars of this muffin tin meal :)

#5 Every Day is Earth Day
With wacky aqua noodles & Planet Earth jello these were colourful lunches!

#6 What Makes A Rainbow?
We love rainbows! That includes reading about them & eating them too :)

#7 May The 4th Be With You
 A special Star Wars lunch any Padawan would trade his food pellets for.

#8 Disposable Field Trip Bento
Just because everything has to be disposable doesn't mean it has to be trash! Recyclable containers can be repurposed & disposed of in a recycling bin :)

#9 Yummy Mummy... On A Stick!
Isn't everything more fun served on a stick?

#10 Lunch Looks Seussalicious!
Green eggs & ham & other Seussian stuff for Dr. Seuss's birthday!

#11 Back To School 
An A+ apple-themed lunch for the first day of school!

#12 Doctor Who Bentos Are Cool 
I'm so pleased this one squeaked in at #12; it's one of my personal favourites!

Even though it's not a bento, I just love the Bad Wolf ginger carrot soup :)

Happy New Year!

May your 2013 be delicious in every way!

Yummy Mummy... On A Stick!

This sandwich kebab was sooo easy, but came out so cute! 

I used my FunBites Cube it! to cut squares of white cheddar cheese and bread, then alternated them on a wooden skewer - sticking a craisin near the top for the mummy's mouth - and finishing off with candy eyes stuck on with a dab of honey. I've been seeing candy eyes in stores with the novelty baking goods, but you could also use chocolate chips if you couldn't find any.

Mummy Loves You!

The sproutlets got yummy mummy sandwich kebabs in their lunchboxes :) This is Sprout's. She also has a Jack O'Lantern Jello Jiggler, cherry tomatoes, grapes, caramel rice cakes, & a pumpkin candy treat. Pickle got a peanut butter version of the mummy kebab, & Bella's had turkey as well as cheese. I trimmed the pointed ends of the skewers before packing them.

I also added a Lunchbox Love note - they have a new black, purple, & orange Hallowe'en set, with Hallowe'en jokes on the flip sides!

These will be fun to pull out of their lunch bags!

My friend Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You made a yummy mummy lunch for her little goblin too! She used her FunBites Luv it! ♥ So creative...  And, she's doing a FunBites Giveaway!

Some Stuff I Used:

  

Use my code to save 15%!

Back To School Lunches!

It's the First Day of School today! Here are the Back To School lunches:

Sprout starts Kindergarten! I packed her an Apple themed lunch:

She has 2 apple-shaped peanut butter sandwiches with a gummy worm, Enjoy Life caramel apple bar, alphabet cookies, tomatoes, fruit salad, and yogurt, pack in a Yubo lunchbox.

Bella packed her own lunch! Her theme is "I Love Teachers"  ♥ 

She made herself heart-shaped peanut butter sandwiches, and packed alphabet cookies, grapes with ABC picks, and carrots in a heart-shaped muffin cup, in an EasyLunchboxes container.

Beanstalk requested his sandwich say "Back To School". 

He didn't request a checkered apple, but cute or not, I put one in his PlanetBox anyways :) I also gave him some SmartFood popcorn, pork jerky (hidden under the Lunchbox Love note because I don't like the look of it), the requested peanut butter sandwich, and a gummy worm.

Pickle requested a sandwich just like his big brother's :)

He also has an oatmeal cookie cut in half, a mini number 3 sandwich (for 3rd grade) and yogurt with 3 sprinkles. Pickle also wanted me to take a picture of his new red spork and robot-print napkin: 

Wow, what a hectic morning we had - we are out of practice!
There's more to this story... but that's for another post :)

Lunch Gear shown here:

Edible Geekery : Doctor Who Bentos Are Cool

We're all so excited about the return of Doctor Who this Saturday night! Yes, the sproutlets are fans just  like their mum & dad; they've grown up watching it as a family, so even 3 year old Birdie is a little Whovian :)  Bella's even planning to have a Doctor Who & Sarah Jane Adventures 10th birthday party - wish me luck with that theme! Better yet, give me ideas ;)

For today's Hop, I made Bella a lunch full of Doctor Who-isms:

Bella's PlanetBox bento lunch contains:

• Bacon "That's bacon! Are you trying to poison me?" skewered on a Stetson pick "I wear a Stetson now, Stetsons are cool," and on a Union Jack flag, like Rose Tyler's t-shirt.
• "Hello Sweetie" ham on a brightly coloured lips pick, like River Song's when she put on her hallucinogenic lipstick, and on a bow tie pick "Bow ties are cool." 
• "Come Along Pond" in mozzarella cheese.
• A smiley face apple, like Amelia Pond's mother made.
• A satsuma orange, which the 10th Doctor once used to save the Earth from alien invasion. I stuck a little tiny sonic screwdriver of sorts into the satsuma, for fun ;)
• A very cool handmade TARDIS print cloth napkin, from Shannon of Molly's Lunch Box
• A couple of "Jammie Dodger" sammies
• And Jelly Babies! 

 Yes, those are real Jelly Babies :) The blackcurrant ones are my favourite.

I don't actually care for Jammie Dodgers though, so I made my own Sammie Dodgers with wheat bread, cookie cutters, and lemon curd:

They were meant to be made with raspberry jam, but I discovered at the last moment that we were out! It was almost tragic until I remembered I had food colouring. Lemon curd to the rescue! Yum :)

I love this Doctor Who lunch! How can you not smile back at that apple? And I just know the Doctor would love it too... I can almost hear him... 

"I eat bento lunches now. Bentos are cool." :)

I had a Whovian lunch as well!  Not a bento though. I had a delicious ginger carrot soup, topped with Bad Wolf in mozzarella. Poor Doctor, he's always wanted to be ginger... With my soup I also had a satsuma - and a good cup of tea, just like the newly regenerated 10th Doctor :)  

I can hardly wait until Saturday night and the return of the Doctor et al in the Series 7 premiere!  I think I'll make some jammie dodger ice cream sammies for a sweet treat during the show :) Then again, who knows what fabulous food ideas I might get from my fellow bento bloggers in this hop! 

I bet Astrid of Lunches Fit For A Kid has something special to share. Click on the TARDIS button below to hop through the vortex and see...

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UPDATE: When this lunch was shared on a Doctor Who fan page on Facebook, the most common comment was "Where are the fish fingers & custard?" The answer is, here:

Click the pic to jump to this post for a Whovian lunch Linky Party!

Fun with Chopsticks & FunBites!

Eating with chopsticks is currently all the rage with my girls, and of course Pickle wants to do what they are doing,  so yesterday I used my FunBites Cube it! to cut his peanut butter sandwich into perfect little bite-sized pieces, and served it to him with chopsticks. Fun!

The girls had muffin tin meals with sandwich cubes, cheese cubes & apple cubes, all cut with the FunBites Cube it!, plus diced pluots, mandarin oranges, and a fortune cookie:

The little girls are still learning to use chopsticks and aren't always successful at getting their food to their mouths. Sometimes they just stab the food with the chopstick end :) Whatever works! The sandwich and cheese cubes were really easy for Birdie to pick up though, since they weren't slippery at all. She was quite pleased with herself.

FunBites + chopsticks = lunchtime fun :)

I've finally perfected the knack of using the FunBites to cube peanut butter sandwiches without making a mess!  Here's how:

1. I spread the peanut butter on the bottom slice of bread, but I don't top it with another slice.
2. I place what will be the top slice on the counter and press the FunBites cutter into it - but I don't pop the cut bread pieces out, not yet.
3. I lift the cutter with the bread pieces stuck in the cutter grid, and place it on top of the peanut buttered slice.
4. I then press the FunBites cutter into the bottom slice and rock the cutter back and forth.  *This method also works for sandwich cutters, but for this step,  slide the cutter back & forth on a smooth surface until you can feel it's cut all the way through. 
5. Now I use the popper to pop out the perfect peanut butter sandwich cubes. No mess!  *If using a sandwich cutter, pop out with your fingers :)

Bite-size peanut butter sandwiches = no messy faces either!

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Giveaway Closed

Just leave a comment telling me which FunBites cutter you'd like if you win - the Cube it! (the one I used for these lunches) or the Luv it! (which makes heart-shaped tangram pieces, shown below).

Giveaway CLOSED

Disclosure: No compensation was given for this post. After making this lunch I thought it might be fun to add a giveaway to it and FunBites generously agreed to provide the prize :)  

The Mighty Thor Bento Lunch & Birthday Party + Bonus Paper Bag Popcorn Recipe!

Here's another Marvel character lunch for Beanstalk! He's had Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man & the Amazing Spider-Man themed bentos... today his PlanetBox lunch is a tribute to the Mighty Thor !

I went with colours from the movie poster - red, silver, black and a little blue. The blue corn chips look kind of blackish to me! The salsa is red, as are the Gala apple wedges, and the ham is skewered on a blue star pick. Surrounded by garlic pepper popcorn - made in the microwave with plain kernels, olive oil, garlic salt, & pepper in a brown paper bag - is The Hammer of Thor.

The Hammer of Thor is two granola squares wrapped in aluminum foil on a popsicle stick! Beanstalk took a peek before he left for school, and his smile made getting up at 6 am to think up how to make a hammer from my picky kid's limited food choices well worth the effort   ♥ 

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Mighty Thor Movie Party!

Last year for Beanstalk's birthday we reserved the balcony of the base theater and took him,  Pickle, and 10 of his friends to see Thor ! Sounds expensive, but it was so not! About $6 a kid which included their admission, popcorn, a drink & a candy selection. We had the balcony to ourselves to watch the movie, and the upstairs lobby for the cake and presents. Awesome!

I made "movie ticket" invitations with Beanstalk's picture on them and hand delivered them to the invitees in striped popcorn bags as envelopes: 

They were so cute - the bar code even said RSVP and our phone # ! They were really easy to make - I found the free template here - all I had to do was drag and drop his photo, add my text, print on card stock and cut out :)

I used more popcorn bags (a pack of 12 for $1 at Dollar Tree) for loot bags. 

And since my baking is hit or miss and my cake frosting skills non-existent, I bought a grocery store bakery cake and added a Thor action figure and his accessories as cake toppers. Beanstalk loved it.

His 10th birthday Thor movie party was a hit! 

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By request, here is how I make
Easy Peasy Paper Bag Microwave Popcorn!

 

1/4 cup good quality popcorn

2 teaspoons olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt, the finer the better

Seasonings to taste - I like garlic salt, cayenne & cracked black pepper

Brown paper lunch bag

1. In a small dish, toss the popcorn with the oil, salt and seasonings.
2. Dump it all in the paper bag.
3. Fold the bag over several times. Secure w/ tape if it won't stay folded.
4. Microwave on high 2 or 3 minutes - until there are several second pauses between pops.
5. Empty into a bowl and enjoy!

*If not eating right away, line bowl with tea towel or paper towel to absorb oil and cool before transferring to storage container.