C'est monbento!

Look, a new bento box! And it's French, ooh la la :)

Monbento sent me one of their MB Original Bento boxes - it's so nice! 

I packed a pretty garden salad, a square hard-cooked egg, and leftover lasagna embellished with cheese words I cut out with my alphabet bento cutters. The lasagna was frozen so it kept the salad chilled :)

The two-tiered MB Original bento box consists of two stackable 7" x 3.5" bento boxes with sealing vented intermediary lids, a removable divider, a top lid that leaves enough space for utensils, and a wide elastic bento strap: 

Things I like:

• The lids to the monbento's tiers fit together really easily and securely, they don't need the bento strap to keep them on, and do not leak. The two tiers do need the included elastic strap to keep them together but are perfectly functional individually. 
• It's has a real feeling of quality to it, very solid. I don't see the monbento warping, denting, or cracking easily.
• It's stain resistant! My tomato sauce washed right off, even after it was reheated in the microwave !
• It's microwaveable, with neato steam vents that let you keep the inner lid on while heating, to prevent spatter. No mess!

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The monbento line also includes matching cutlery & spill-proof sauce cups:

And this is fantastic... monbento has a Customize Your MB Original option! Look, I made one to match Bent On Better Lunches:

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It's hip to be square!

I made the square egg shown below using monbento's fun square egg mold. Simply pop in a warm shelled hard-cooked egg, snap the lid closed, and let cool. Each set includes one embossed with the word egg, the other with BON APPETIT. As egg sizes differ, it won't always make a perfect square, but close enough :) I've also used my square egg mold as a treat box in a bento!

Want a set of monbento's square egg molds?

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Good luck!

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Some other stuff used to make this lunch:

Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

Bella's EasyLunchboxes bento celebrates tomorrow's release of the new Wizard of Oz movie, Oz the Great and Powerful!

A scarecrow pick sits beside a cheddar yellow brick road atop a salad of hearts of romaine, cucumber chunks, & carrot poppies. On the side, she has turkey & spinach flatbread cyclones on ruby slipper skewers, and for dessert, melted witch gelatin topped with a fruit leather witch hat.

A bunch of my fellow Bento Bloggers & Friends have also made bento tributes to L.Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, and you know we love a blog hop! So much so we're doing two, one today and another tomorrow! Click the button below to see what the wonderful Eclectic Lamb has made:

I'm no wizard! I have bento tools :) I used this fun cutter to make all the little carrot flowers in today's lunch:

Daddy / Daughter Salad Bentos

Matching salad bento lunches for my Bella & her Daddy. English cucumber stars & grape tomatoes in Romaine & Boston lettuce:

His was packed in his new PlanetBox Launch, and also included green grapes, flower shaped kiwi slices (cut with a small cookie cutter - I ate the scraps), ham & cheese spirals, and carrot hearts in the salad. Big oops, I forgot to pack any salad dressing!

Hers was packed in her purple Laptop Lunches bento box, and also included red & green grapes on star picks, a checkered cucumber wedge, baby carrots, and "mango tango" pluot wedges. Oh, and a Chobani Champions yogurt, but I can't remember what flavour...

No worries over forgetting the dressing though, Bella likes her salad without :) And I did remember to pack sporks, they just didn't make it into the photos ;)

These lunches were packed in PlanetBox & Laptop Lunches:

Lunch for the Man : I ♥ U

It's been a while since I've posted a lunch for my Sailor Boy. Don't worry, he's been getting fed :) I snapped a pic of yesterday's though. Nothing fancy, just some leftover Jack in the Box chicken strips chopped up into a salad. And some juicy grapes and strawberries on the side.

And a little reminder that I heart him  ♥ 

Rainbow Week : Green Day!

Our Rainbow Week continues with my favourite colour:

Green

Bella's Green Day lunch is a green salad with striped cucumbers, diagonal sliced mozzarella, a striped Granny Smith apple, and green grapes. This one was easy since she likes most greens! But sadly, not kiwi.

It's Groundhog Day! Sailor Boy's groundhog saw his shadow, so went back to sleep in his bed of lettuce...

6 more weeks of winter... I thought so. I made this lunch last night, but I had a feeling winter wasn't over yet, so I cut a snowflake out of a Babybel cheese - my first embellished Babybel :) In the main compartment of his Easy Lunchbox Sailor boy gets chicken kebabs again - this time atop a green salad, and with mandarin oranges. The small green container is filled with salad dressing - and that's a Light My Fire spork, they're great. Mister Groundhog is made of refried beans, with dried chile features and provolone teeth.

Pickle got frog prince & fairy princess peanut butter sandwiches made with sandwich cutters from the Lunch Punch Sand*wishes set. 

Rainbow

Birdie & Sprout's Green Day rainbow muffin tin meal was a yogurt & fruit bar!

I set out plain yogurt and a flower muffin tin filled with mango, banana, kiwi, strawberry & blueberry stir-ins, and a graham crumb & milled flaxseed "cookie crumble" topping. I gave them each a bowl and spoon and let them scoop their own yogurt and add their own fruit. 

They loved it! They were totally digging the "cookie crumble" too, and I was feeling pretty smug about sneaking the flaxseed in there :) Both girls were munching as much fruit as they were putting into their bowls, and still ate what was in the bowl when they finished filling it. They got yogurt and fruit all over, so I did have to put my camera up and sit at the table with them to assist. It was messy but fun.

I did take a quick snap of Birdie's bowl - second helping! Look at that messy mixture - both their bowls looked like that - and they ate it up! Now, if I had served them something that looked like that, they would have declared it "yuck" and refused it, but since they made it themselves...  :)

I was all excited to see Birdie add some kiwi, that was one of the 2 fruits I was almost certain they wouldn't touch. But if she actually ate any, it was by accident - she picked that big chunk back out. Ah well, she gobbled up everything else in her bowl, even the mango, which was the other fruit I didn't think they'd eat, yay!  I'm definitely going to let them do this again... but next time, they'll be wearing smocks :)

More Rainbow Fun!

Did you read my review of the Rainbow Kit?
I didn't mention that there's a Today I Ate A Rainbow Song!
Birdie & Sprout will sing it for you:

Isn't it cute?!  Want to hear it again? Visit The Today I Ate A Rainbow Song Page! to see it performed by Hannah, rainbow eating daughter of Kia, who created Today I Ate A Rainbow!  My Sprout wanted to sing it solo too:

Enter my Today I Ate A Rainbow! giveaway

 for a chance to win your own Rainbow Kit!

Lunch for the Man : Take-n-Make Taco Salad

Taco meat salad for Sailor Boy, some assembly required. I packed the leftover taco seasoned ground beef separately so he could microwave it before adding it to the salad in the Easy Lunchbox, then top it with the shredded cheese. Yum! Kiwi & blueberries for dessert :)

I just had to add a little touch of love to this leftovers lunch - I sliced one of the tomatoes in half diagonally then put them back together with a party pick (same way I made these carrot hearts) to make a teensy tomato heart  ♥

Sleepless Near Seattle

That's me, so so tired... so Bella's lunch was uninspired. Ooh, a rhyme! :)

Really, my mind is kind of mush from lack of sleep. Sailor Boy is away, and Pickle and Birdie seem to have made it their mission to keep me awake as much of the night as they can, they have a little tag team going. Pickle often has trouble sleeping, lots of kids with autism do - he has a hard time winding down, and we give him melatonin to help, might be time to increase that - but I think it's partly they miss their Dad, and partly them testing me - like maybe this trip I'll cave and let them do whatever they want...

Plus, when my hubby's  away, I have to take the little darlings with me everywhere - so there's no such thing as a quick trip anywhere - so I tend to let the cupboards get very bare before I brave the Commissary with the brood.
I have much admiration for single parents who do this all the time. I am so not good at it, not even temporarily.

So there I was last night, out of ideas, almost out of food, half out of my mind from lack of sleep, staring at the empty EasyLunchbox and nearly empty fridge willing something good to appear in either... and somehow it seemed like a good time to play with my new FunBites... I'll save the details for my upcoming review, but here is what I ended up putting in Bella's lunch box:

Salad! Good thing it's not Pickle's lunch, it's not very creative ;)
The FunBites were fun - I chopped with them - lettuce, chicken & cheese.  In the sides, Roma tomato chunks topped with a grape tomato heart, and mini peppers on a bed of carrot slices. It turned out we had enough little bits of a bunch of things to put together something she'd like. Birdie woke up (again!) as I was making this lunch, and I fell asleep settling her back down (it was around 2:30 AM-ish) so the tomato heart was a morning addition, as was the cheerful cheese heart, and the Lunchbox Love note card:

This morning, slightly refreshed from a few hours of sleep, I was able to come up with something cute for my Pickle, who now demands his sandwiches be creative. Good thing I've got LOTS of Lunch Punches and cookie cutters!

He asked me what it was, I explained what a rebus was, and he got it right away, but asked why there were two hearts. Ummm... because I don't like empty space and wasted bread?  "Because I love you so much one heart is not enough."   He liked it.

I tried to get some groceries today but Sprout had a tantrum and we left the store without purchasing anything - so tomorrows lunch might be peanut butter sandwiches all around!

Wheel-y Yummy

Some of today's lunches have a car theme :) I made Pickle's "cars in traffic" sandwiches first, then decided to roll with it and give Birdie some cars too:

Birdie's Sassy box bento has an egg-shaped car, a sandwich ball car, a cheese car with turkey dog wheels, and some carrot spare tires. The cheddar car broke when I was cutting it out but she won't mind :)

Pickle has two "cars in traffic" peanut butter sandwiches. He really liked last week's Christmas Tree Farm tractor - he liked that it had a story to it, and it sparked a conversation. I like anything that gets him using his imagination and interacting! So today I used the car and truck shapes from our Lunch Punch Vrrrm! set,  cut extra boxes for the back of the truck, and made a story to go with them. The story is that the truck is all loaded up with a delivery, and driving very slowly, and the car behind it is in a hurry, and annoyed at how slowly the truck is going, and worried that the pile of boxes will fall down on his hood! I asked Pickle to think up what might be in the boxes, and why the driver of the car is in such a hurry - and told him that if he likes he can make the boxes tumble on the car before he eats them :)

No cars in Bella's lunch. She got a Thermos of spaghetti and a salad. I like this little container for packing something that needs to be kept cold when the rest of the lunch doesn't - it has it's own ice pack that fits inside. 

Some stuff I used: Lunch Punch Vrrrm! - Sassy box - silicone muffin cups - Light My Fire spork - Thermos Foogo

Greens to Go!

I just love the container I used for Bella's lunch today! It's a Klip It Salad To Go by Sistema. There is a divided plate that sits atop the main bowl part, with a little well in the middle for a small lidded dip/dressing container. It can also be used without the top tier. Very cute. Bella has chicken garden salad on the bottom, apple slices (some cut in celestial shapes) & shredded cheese (for sprinkling on the salad) on top, and a little caramel dip for the apples. The container came with a fork & knife that clip in the lid but she prefers the Light My Fire Spork.

The little girls' lunches are not very inspired, but they are still cute, and nutritious - that's the main thing of course - right? ;) Goldfish crackers, carrots, cheese, & turkey for Sprout, and goldfish, carrots, cheese, & grapes for Birdie, who has gone off meats again.

For Pickle I used both our Lunch Punch Train and Train Bytes cutters to make a long peanut butter sandwich train.

I was able to puzzle it all into one container but there was a wee empty space, that he insisted I fill with a piece of the cut off bits - funny boy - and hey, those bits are MY breakfast!  :)