First Day of Fall Lunch in PlanetBox

Happy Fall! I have been feeding the sproutlets, just been too busy to blog :) Here's Bella's First Day of Fall lunch from Tuesday last week!

She has pepperoni bites with a maple leaf pick, apple wedges, caramel dip in a Snoopy cup, cucumber slices with an oak leaf pick, a Babybel cheese with Fall carved into the wax, a few Fig newtons, & a Dark Chocolate Caramel Macchiato Balance Bar, packed in her PlanetBox Rover.  Her cloth napkin has a Snoopy & Woodtstock playing in the Fall leaves print :)

Every Lunchtime - A Shel Silverstein Day Lunch!

It's Shel Silverstein Day! My bento friends & I are paying a birthday tribute to the late great author, with a blog hop!  And there's a link-up at the bottom of the post for anyone who wants to join our Shelebration :)

My lunch was inspired by Every Lunchtime from Falling Up:

A snake in the lunchbox! It had to be done :)

My snake is made of cheddar cheese, with a ham tongue & beady sugar eyes glued on with honey. He's coiled atop a ham & cheese sandwich to match (& use the scraps). On the side a carrot snake slithers among green grapes & hisses (with alphabet bento picks), while more eyes peek out from the strawberries. And as usual, I found the perfect Lunchbox Love note:

And here's a look back at one of Pickle's PB sandwiches, an edible homage to The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. It was inspired by my friend Keitha's Storybook Lunches she makes her son, based on the books they read together. And I just happen to be linking to her in our blog hop :)

Click the sign below to hop over to Keitha's Chaos & see what my clever friend has made:

And here's one more look at my lunchbox snake - it cracks me up!

How will you Shelebrate?

"How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em."

~ Shel Silverstein

A Winning PlanetBox Lunch for the Man

Here's a recent lunch for the man :) When I pack pistachios, if I have a few spare minutes I love drawing something on them, ever since I first saw the idea on my friend Eclectic Lamb's blog - she also drew hearts on hers ♥ 

In case you're wondering... spaghetti with sauce, in a PlanetBox? Won't that be messy? And will he be eating it cold? ... The PlanetBox Launch Plus & Complete sets include a tempered glass Satellite dish for easy reheating, with a food grade silicone lid that both cushions the glass container & keeps it's contents from spilling. And there's just enough room on either side to pack utensils. So I was able to pack hubby's Lunchbox Love note on top of his saucy entrée without getting it messy :) I also included a Batman cloth napkin - which I'm told was a hit with the guys at work :)  

Besides the leftover pasta, lunch was grapes, apple wedges, pistachios, an itty bitty container of grated parmesan, & a dark chocolate caramel macchiato Balance Bar - his new favourite flavour. Sailor Boy loved this lunch so much he even texted me to say thanks ♥ 

Oh! Funny bit about the pistachios! I delivered Sailor Boy's lunch to him on base after taking the sproutlets to school.  After he went through the security gate & back towards the hangar with it,  it occurred to me that he sometimes like to crack open a tight pistachio with his teeth. So I called out across the tarmac to tell him I'd used food markers, so he could put the nuts in his mouth. There was a lot of jet noise though, so I had to repeat myself, a couple of times, then finally just shouted "You can put the nuts in your mouth!"  Yeah, his shipmates found that hilarious. Silly boys :)

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Some stuff I used to pack this lunch:

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Oh, I almost forgot!

The winner of my Balance Bar giveaway has been drawn & announced on the giveaway widget in the giveaway post :) Somebody will be getting a big box of delicious & nutritious snacks delivered to their door soon!

A Hobbit Day Riddle Lunch

Today is Hobbit Day, and this week is Tolkien Week! Why? Because September 22nd is both Bilbo & Frodo Baggins' birthday, and Tolkien week, celebrating authors J. R. R. Tolkien & his son Christopher, is always the calendar week in which it falls :) And wow, The Hobbit was first published September 21st 1937... 77 years ago yesterday!

In observance of all this, I've packed a Hobbit Riddle bento lunch for Bella. In Chapter 5 of the Hobbit,  Riddles in the Dark,  the hobbit Bilbo Baggins & the creature Gollum trade riddles; 3 of them are represented within:

1. Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.

2 .Thirty white horses on a red hill, First they champ, Then they stamp, Then they stand still.

3. A box without hinges, key, or lid, Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

I also added a Lunchbox Love note Riddle:

By perfect chance, that was the first card I took out of the box - I love that the answer is the same as the answer to one of the riddles in the lunch, which I also wrote on the note's blank flip side!

Bella's Riddle lunch is packed in a Frutti Blue Yumbox Panino. Obviously, her turkey & cheddar tortilla sandwich is a hobbit hole door (with pepperoni doorknob), as is her Babybel cheese, no riddle there!  In the center section she has pepperoni chunks with a ring pick. In the top right section, she has an egg in the shape of a fish... the answer to riddles 1 & 3 in one! In the bottom right section, she has cucumber chunks & sunburst tomatoes, on teeth picks... the answer to riddle number 2 ;)

Bella, her brother, & her friend who we were giving a ride to school all got a peek at her lunch while I took the photo, but I didn't tell them what riddles were represented, so we had a fun conversation on the drive to school while they tried to remember all the riddles in chapter 5 & figure out which ones went with the lunch - and they did!

It's been a couple of years since I made a Hobbit themed lunch! Last time was the day An Unexpected Journey came out in theatres!
The Hobbit Bento : An Unexpected Lunch

Talk Like A Pirate Day Treasure Lunch!

Yo-ho-ho! Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!  'Tis one o' me favourite days t' fix fancy grub fer me little sprogs, an I've amassed a fair bit o' pirate bento booty t' make it fun & easy :)

Avast! Wha' do ye reckon o' this, me hearties? Won't me smallest scallywag be sure t' love diggin' in t' this treasure lunch?!

Birdie's midday meal be packed in our new Frutti Blue Yumbox Panino. Arr! She's gone off veggies so I doubled th' fruit, t' keep th' scurvy at bay! Mixed berries 'n green grapes - plus one wee carrot stuck through a pirate cupcake ring - just in case th' wee wench might eat it, aye!

Me girly''s sandwich pirate isle be made of cheddar cheese & peanut butter, cut with a special promotional Lunch Punch Landwich cutter. 'Tis embellished with a tropical tree & a pirate flag pick, an X drawn with food marker, an' surrounded by sugar shark-infested water :) The shark cupcake sprinkles are affixed with dabs o' PB.

'Tis a special day so she gets to splurge with a special treasure treat of a few jelly belly jewels an' a chocolate doubloonie ;) Arr!

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day, mateys!