Peekaboo!

Peekaboo mummy! Dat my lunch?

I don't usually make bento lunches on the weekends, but I do sometimes make something cute. Yesterday I made Birdie a mama & daddy goldfish grilled cheese with goldfish cracker babies:

This was a lesson lunch - I learned not to use a sandwich cutter on grilled cheese until it has cooled off quite a bit, or the cheese will ooze out! 

One of the goldfish crackers shifted when I set the plate down and stuck to the cheddar oozing from one of the grilled cheese goldfish - I guess it was the mama one - because Birdie pointed to the goldfish cracker and said "dat baby one is eating his moot". Moot = mama's milk, her word for it. Cute :)

Birdie's sandwich made with

Lunch Punch Critter Cutters

Baby Love

A couple of my favourite "lunch ladies" have recently welcomed some sweet new wee mouths to feed ♥ Congratulations to Ludicrous Mama of Biting The Hand That Feeds You, on the Christmas-time arrival of her adorable daughter Little E, and to Super Glue Mom Laura of MOMables, on the birth of her sweet son, born yesterday!

Last night I thought it would be fun to say Congratulations to Laura and Welcome to the World to her little man on the MOMables Facebook Wall with a cute little snack made in their honour... but it turned out to be another one of those things that looked better in my head :) See for yourself:

Sailor Boy said it looked a little creepy... so of course I had to eat it in front of him - I think he flinched when I bit into it, heheh. It's just half a mozzarella string cheese stick wrapped in a piece of ham for a blanket, with cupcake sprinkles for eyes and a mouth, yummy, but I had to admit he was right, it didn't seem right for posting on anyone else's wall :)

I've made baby bundle snacks before... I made "Babies in Blankets" - turkey Lit'l Smokies in crescent roll swaddling blankets - for our Labour Day Lunch, that looked cute and not at all creepy... I don't think. Maybe I should have skipped the sprinkle face.

Anyways... Welcome to the world new little babies! You picked some good families to be born into -  and you've got some great meals to look forward to!

 

First Lunches of 2012

The first school lunches of 2012 are also the last lunches I'll be able to take pics of, for the next week or two - I'm sending my camera off to be repaired. It takes pictures just fine but the flash doesn't go off - Birdie hit it with a baseball. I'm so so so so thankful my smart Sailor Boy purchased the repair or replacement plan! I may have to do without it for a bit, but I'll get it back as good as new - or I'll get a new one :)

Pickle's first peanut butter sandwich of 2012, with fireworks!

Oh! He gave me a little scare over the holidays... Boxing Day he announced he didn't want any more peanut butter sandwiches, that they were boring! So for nearly a week all he ate was yogurt, Cheerios, and Life cereal... I was getting worried! The list of foods he will eat is so short, and the peanut butter sandwiches are his main source of protein - so boy was I relieved when the night before school started back up, when I asked him what he wanted in his lunch the next day, he said "A peanut butter sandwich. A surprise one." Thankyouthankyouthankyou! 

Beanstalk's bento boxes from yesterday and today. Bun, ham, Clif Z Bar, apples. He too is a creature of habit. He did vary the Clif Z Bar flavour :)

Of course yesterday and today it was barely light out when I packed lunch - I sure could have used that flash! ... otherwise, I kind of like it... I like it gradually getting lighter, it's a nice way to ease into the day, especially after my 2 weeks of sleeping in while my husband got up with the kids  - I'm out of practice :)

Bella made it easy for me yesterday, she wanted spaghettios. I also packed a bottle of apple juice, a couple of maple cookies, her spork and a cloth napkin:

Tip: When packing hot food, I fill the Thermos with boiling hot water while I heat the lunch, cap it, and empty it just before filling it with the hot food. "They" say preheating the container helps keep the lunch from losing any heat. Bella says her lunch is always still hot at lunch time :)

Today, she did not make things as easy for me. She said she wanted the school's pancake hot lunch, but then 20 minutes before we had to leave she changed her mind. Pickle did that to me last time the school had pancake lunch! I quickly packed her an Easy Lunchbox with the other half of the apple I sliced for Beanstalk, plus some ham, cheddar, carrot and cucumber slices, and a bun. Didn't take any time preparing it in a cute way, but the flower muffin cup and picks were cute enough for her ✿

I made the little girls bentos with a cheerful orange theme - hoping to get them to give mango a chance.  They also got familiar carrots, cheddar cheese, and cheese crackers. I alternated the mango with cantaloupe, on party picks. Looks yummy to me!

Birdie and Bean Sprout didn't even want to TRY the mango. Sprout said she wasn't going to eat the melon either since it was touching the yucky mango, and of course Birdie followed her big sister's lead. Gah! 

There's half a mango left, I'll try again today... maybe cut it into cute shapes... 

Rawr! I'm going to eat you!

I growled in my best dinosaur voice as I put Pickle's lunch in front of him yesterday: "Rawr! Rawr! I'm going to eat you, unless you eat me first!" My little man was all smiles as he bit into the head of this T-Rex sandwich I made from the crazy shaped bread we got last week. I added teeth and claws with a bit of the crust from the bottom piece, but other than that, he was pretty much ready-made! I love how it turned out! And zero waste of bread :)

If you don't follow me on Facebook, you probably don't know what crazy bread I'm talking about, so here's the back story:

My friend Heidi commented that it looked like a T-Rex head, and just like that, I could see it too! Thanks Heidi! Click the photo to see the full conversation, and how it went from T-Rex to Lady Gaga :)

________________

Oh, and if anyone was wondering if the permanent marker I accidentally used (instead of dry erase) to write a message on an Easy Lunchbox lid last Monday washed off - it did! That is, all the black came off - and quite easily - but it did leave behind a sort of a shadow, only visible when the light hits it just so... see below... you might need to squint... look just above the logo:

Faint star... only visible from an angle in the light:

So the lid wasn't ruined at all :) Not that it would have been if my drawings hadn't washed off - I would have just added more doodles and love notes each time I packed a lunch with that lid!

Lemony Snickety Lunch

Fridays both girls are home, no preschool, so I decided that we'd run some errands then snuggle on the couch and watch a movie - Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which we own but haven't watched since Birdie was a baby - and I made a muffin tin lunch to go with it:

Their tins contained lemonade, a lemon wafer cookie (cut in half, because 2 cookies are better than 1), lemon yogurt,  tomatoes and spaghetti noodles for "pasta puttanesca", and ham "shrieking eels". I made the lunch before we watched the movie, and it wasn't until we reached the scene with Aunt Josephine and the deadly leeches that I realized I had gotten mixed up, that shrieking eels were from another movie, The Princess Bride! Oops!  The girls didn't notice, being only 2½ and 5, but I felt a bit silly anyways, heheh.

This picture of Birdie at about age 1½ has always made me think of the baby Sunny from the movie  - if you've seen it you'll know what I mean :)

As for the school aged sproutlets' lunches, today is pizza day at the elementary schools, so I only had to make a sandwich for Pickle. I decided to make him "pizza" too ;) The bottom slice of bread is wheat, spread with peanut butter, then topped with the end piece from a loaf of white, crust side down, as the cheese. I cut some circles out of it and flipped them crust side up to look like pepperoni. I also used some of the end piece of crust as the pizza crust. Pickle laughed when he saw it. I gave him extra yogurt since I trimmed the sandwich to a triangle.

Happy Friday!

Muggle Munchies

My little muggles are in for a treat today! I found some little boxes of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans among the Hallowe'en candies, oh about a month ago, and decided to buy some and stash them away for a Harry Potter themed lunch. Amazingly, they survived all this time in the same house as candy addict me! OK, so I forgot I had them :)

Ham topped with a lightning bolt chunk of cheddar cheese (Harry's scar) mini grilled cheese Sorting Hats, carrot wands (I divided a fat carrot into long sticks and whittled them - kind of fun - made lots of carrot shavings for my lunch salad), little broccoli baby mandrakes, and of course, the Bertie Bott's candy beans. Hope they don't get any bogey flavoured ones!

Pickle's peanut butter sandwiches are not what I was going for...  I tried to cut them in Harry Potter scar-like lightning bolt shapes, but couldn't do it to save my life! I don't know what my problem was... the fact that I didn't have my morning coffee, the distraction of my bickering sproutlets, my lack of artistic talent... yeah, most likely all three :) Anyways, here's what he ended up with :

The top sandwich is somewhat lightning shaped - if you're not picky - and beneath it are more failed attempts. I know my boy will still be happy with it  ♥ 

Bento Lunch #33 + Egg Fail #2

I was so excited to try out my egg molds and make cute little shaped hard boiled eggs. The instructions on the package were in Japanese, but the pictures were in English and looked foolproof  enough :) I cooked the eggs after the sproutlets went to bed, snapped them into the molds, put them in the fridge to chill, confident that I would have adorable heart and star "eggies" for my girls' lunches the next day.  

Sadly, that's not what I found when I unsnapped the molds. Had I been able to read Japanese, the instructions might have told me sooner what trial & error eventually did. There's a clue in the pic above... see it?

Yep, I used Large eggs... Should have used Extra Large. Ah well, now I know what size to use if I want to make a flower shaped egg in my star mold :)

Egg fails aside, the bentos themselves still looked pretty cute. Sprout had a heart "eggie", with blueberry pomegranate fruit leather squares and dried apple chips, shredded mozzarella cheese, and bunny grahams. Birdie had the blossom shaped egg, and cubed cheddar jack cheese with hers.

 

Bella had pizza roll-ups. I stuck some leftover turkey frank in the center of a couple of them - she said they were better without. She also had grape tomatoes, a fruit leather bar cut up, and vanilla wafers.

Oooh, I did have an egg success too, though, mustn't forget about that! They were perfectly cooked AND the shells came off easy peasy. My (finally) successful method:

Place eggs in pot of cold water, add salt liberally. Bring to a rolling boil, cover and remove from heat. Let sit for 15 minutes. Put pot in sink, add cold water until it's cool enough to put your hands in. Remove eggs to crack, but peel shells under water.

A fan of my facebook page suggested adding a teaspoon of vinegar (rather than salt). Maybe I'll try that next time :)

Happy Hearty Bentos

Today's bentos were supposed to have heart-shaped eggs in them, but my first attempt at that was a fail (picture below) and by then the rest of the eggs had cooled too much to shape - so instead I decorated the eggs with cut out carrot shapes. Bean Sprout had the heart bento and Baby Bird had the happy face. Sprout asked for green grapes and mozzarella cheese, while Birdie opted for "all colours cheese and grapes", and they each got a croissant. I really doubt these bentos could make the trip to preschool in their lunchboxes and arrive intact, but we were home today so all was well :)

Pickle got peanut butter sandwich kebabs. I used cocktail swizzle sticks as skewers, they're brightly coloured and blunt-ended. Pickle LOVED his sandwiches on a stick!

Bella had a MOMables lunch again, slightly modified to her taste. In case you missed yesterday's post, MOMables is a healthy, kid-friendly lunch menu subscription service. I probably won't post many pictures of MOMables lunches, because they are for subscribers :) If you are interested in seeing more, check out their website or facebook page !

See my egg fail?
I followed Anna the Red's instructions, but I was clumsy and slow, and my eggs cooled too much and cracked. Also, I only had child's chopsticks, that might have been part of the problem. Oh well, better luck next time!

Oh, and if you click the link above, be prepared to be blown away by Anna the Red's bentos - amazing is putting it mildly!