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!

DIY Pizzables - Fast Food!

Last week Birdie took a fun DIY pizzable lunch, which she loves. Today was her preschool's pizza day, where the school provides a delivery pizza lunch as a treat, and since she loves pizza, I thought she'd be thrilled! But, no, minutes before we had to leave, she asked, "What's my lunch?" and when I told her it was school pizza day, she was not pleased. "I want your kind of pizza lunch." Aw... ♥ So, here is another version of the DIY pizzables lunch, the quickly throw stuff in an EasyLunchbox in less than 3 minutes version :)

She has marinara sauce in a little lidded cup (I love the way Birdie says it, mara-mara sauce), a bagel thin cut in half for her crusts, & shredded cheese to top. On short notice just cheese will have to do :) No time for cute details. Luckily I already had honeydew melon chopped for lunches (I pre-chop fruit to save time) so we made it out the door with time to pause & take a picture even.

Yumbox DIY Pizzable!

Apparently enough time has gone by since our Momables Lunchbox Wars pizza lunch makeover for Birdie to forget that she doesn't like Lunchables, since she asked for one as we passed them in the grocery the other day. Even though we taste-tested several for the Lunchbox Wars series I did for Momables, they are still inexplicably drawn to those little boxed lunches - go figure.  I reminded her that she doesn't like them and that I can make a better one. So we added the necessary ingredients to our list, and today, I did!

Birdie's fun DIY pizza lunch, or "pizzable",  is packed in a Yumbox, which keeps all the ingredients, wet & dry, perfectly separate:

Her Yumbox pizza bento contains:

• bagel thins, cut in quarters
• shredded cheese
• marinara sauce
• mini turkey pepperonis
• & honeydew melon balls with alphabet picks

I also included a little spoon for spreading the sauce, & a Lunchbox Love note ♥ The other side of the note has a fun fact about belly button lint, which Birdie was talking about yesterday, so she'll like that :)

Click to see another version of our pizzables & a DIY pizza muffin tin meal!

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Stuff used to make this lunch:

Make Your Own Pizza Lunches!

Recently, I contributed a post on MOMables' blog, making my own healthier, fresh version of a packaged DIY pizza lunch. My girls loved my version and have been asking me to make it again just about every other day since.

Here's Bella's pizzable. She has ham, whole wheat sandwich thins for crust, marinara sauce in a little leak-proof container (lid not shown), a sweet mini pepper, shredded cheese, and a side of grapes.

Sprout & Birdie had a muffin tin version of the same thing:

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I overslept this morning, so we were running way behind, and I didn't have time to pack lunch for everyone or we'd be late for school. I packed Beanstalk's Lock & Lock (ham, grapes, Clif Kid Z bar & Gala apple wedges), but told Bella & Pickle to have the school hot lunch.

Tuesday is breakfast for lunch day at school - they sometimes do want that - but of course, not today. *sigh* I said I'd try to drop off some home made ones before their lunch periods, but if I didn't, to just have the school lunch.

After running some errands,  I did have time to make lunch for them. I made Bella's, then got out the peanut butter for Pickle's sandwich - but where was the bread? Sailor Boy had bought bread the day before... where could he have put it? Unfortunately he was on an airplane so I couldn't ask him. We did have hot dog buns, so I made Pickle some peanut butter dogs instead:

I dropped off Pickle's lunch in time, but I must have been confused about what time Bella went to lunch (she's at a different school) because when I got there, she was already at a table with a school lunch tray (and apparently they get to pump their own syrup, because her pancakes were swimming in a pool of it).

As soon as she saw me, Bella shoved her tray away. "Hang on," I teased, "you don't even know what I brought, how do you know it's better than what you have?" The girl next to her piped up "Anything is better than the school lunch!" The rest of the table agreed, and Bella excitedly opened her EasyLunchbox, squealing at the sight of her pizza lunch :

Way better than Lunchables...  it's Pizzables!

I wished I could have brought lunch for her whole table :)
My friend Keeley of Keeley McGuire Blog did just that today - brought lunch for everyone ♥ You have to read her heartwarming post - when you're done with mine of course :) Pay It Forward - Bento Blessings 

Back at home, it was Sprout & Birdie's turn to make their own mini pizzas:

Sprout piled half the shredded cheddar beside her plate right away, before spreading her sauce - she was worried her sister would eat all of it before she got any - a valid concern, Birdie's a cheese fiend!

Birdie took some ham! She rarely eats any meat - but sometimes likes ham (thanks to Ponyo!) Nobody touched the yellow pepper - not even cutting it to look like little flowers enticed them today.

After eating half her pizza, my funny little Birdie decided what it needed was a grape on top, "like a cherry".  Silly sproutlet :)

The DIY Pizza lunch that inspired today's was just one of a series of healthier lunch remakes I'm collaborating on with MOMables for our Lunchbox Wars series - a this vs that of the lunchbox.  If there's a packaged lunch you'd like to see remade,  head over to MOMables and let us know!