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!

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:

Dentist Day PlanetBox

I almost forgot to blog this! It's been a busy day :) Today was National Dentist Day, so I added a smile & some tooth picks to Beanstalk's PlanetBox:

Beanstalk's the only one who took a packed lunch to school today, but I did add some smiles to my salad, with the cucumber scraps I saved from Bella's leaf-shaped cucumbers in Monday's lunch :)

Bella had a visit from the tooth fairy last night, but I didn't get to make a toothy bento for her today - she wanted the school's hot lunch. So I'll re-post this tooth fairy bento I did a few months ago - she loved the celery stick & mozzarella string cheese toothbrush :)

I hope your day was filled with smiles!

This Little Piggy...

This little piggy was made with our CuteZcute!

I made Birdie a little piggy bento :) She has a checkered Pacific Rose apple, watermelon cubed with FunBites, Sunburst tomatoes, and a cheese sandwich piggy - packed in a pink Sassy box. I love the Sassy On the Go Feeding Set for toddler & preschool bentos. It's just the right size for small appetites, versatile, inexpensive, and easy for Birdie to open and close - and it's cute! And the CuteZcute Animal Friends Cutter & Stamp makes sandwiches that perfectly in either side of the divided container :)

Stuff I used for this lunch:

Linked to:

A Beautiful Lunch

Bella has a Thermos Funtainer of cheese ravioli in tomato sauce for lunch today, and a LunchBots Trio packed with her choice of sides - cherry & sunburst tomatoes, Ritz crackers, & a carrot stick. I added flower bento picks & a little rainbow container with a few dried strawberries in it :)

Stuff I used in today's lunch: