Wonderful Wizard of Oz Cowardly Lion Bento

Surprise! Wizard of Oz Hop, Take 2 ! I already blogged my Oz bento in yesterday's hop, but I just had to jump into today's as well, so I could share this wonderful Cowardly Lion bento, that I did NOT make :) 

Isn't it incredible? My friend Lauri Fitzsimmons made this bento. Lauri is an amazing food artist.  She not only contributed her gluten-free recipes, but she helped Kelly Lester of EasyLunchboxes choose & style some of the lunches for the Cooking with Trader Joe's: Easy Lunch Boxes cookbook, (that I am featured in!), and she makes bentos for her husband & son. Lauri is one of the few Bento Bloggers & Friends who don't blog, but this awesome bento needed to be seen, so I asked her if I could share it. Thank you Lauri!

Now,  get back on the yellow brick road to 

visit Robot Squirrel and the Monkeys!

OR, scroll down to read more about Lauri's bento...

I took the liberty of playing with Lauri's photo above, just for fun,  but here is the original, and the description of her bento, in her own words:

This lunch was in honor of my fateful meeting with Kelly Lester, the ELB queen. (More on that below, keep reading.) The face is provolone cheese, the mane is a combo of roast beef, ham, turkey and prosciutto, and the eyes are corned beef. The whiskers are sliced chives (from my garden) all on a slice of potato bread with mayo (so basically, an open faced sandwich) all lying on a bed of wild greens. The upper right corner is blue jello with cupcake sprinkles for the rainbow, the lower right is pomegranate applesauce with pineapple slices and half a maraschino cherry for the "medal" and that's it. It took 20 minutes tops to make!

More on Lauri & the ELB Queen...

Lauri & Kelly working on the TJ's cookbook

I met Kelly Lester through an amazing “Small World” story. I had become a fan of her EasyLunchboxes on Facebook and had been following her for about a year and a half. I loved admiring all the lunches, since I enjoyed making bentos as well. When I saw that she had posted a video about a Summer Camp that she taught at for young actors, I private messaged her and asked her for information about the camp because I knew my son would love it. She wrote back and asked if we lived in Northern California, and I told her no, we were in Southern California. She wrote back that she did too! What a small world! But wait, after a few more messages back and forth she said that she had noticed that we have several friends in common. She asked how I knew Ronnie Sperling, and I told her that we had known each other for quite awhile but that my son happened to be in a show he was directing. Kelly wrote back “The Wizard of Oz?” Um, yes! She wrote again that her daughter was playing Dorothy! Well my son was playing the Cowardly Lion! And thus a friendship was born, our families adore each other and I owe it all to EasyLunchboxes!

Thanks for reading! Now go visit Robot Squirrel and the Monkeys!

Like the look of the EasyLunchboxes? Get some!

And the Mini Dippers, and of course,  the cookbook too!