Wendy Copley's Blog, page 13

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: EasyLunchboxes, Veggie Cups, and Eye Picks

Today is Wednesday which means it’s time for another episode of 3 Tools, 4 Lunches! Each week for the next several months, four bloggers will use the same three tools to make a lunch in their own unique style. My hope is that you’ll get some fresh inspiration for using fun bento tools and also discover some wonderful blogs you may not have visited before.

Here are the tools we used this week:

EasyLunchboxes — These popular boxes have a large main compartment and two smaller side dish compartments. They come in a set of four and are a sturdy and economical choice for bento lunches.
Fruit and vegetable cups — This set has three small silicone cups shaped like an orange, cherries and a peapod.
Eye picks — These decorative picks with little googly eyes on the ends of them are one of my favorite tools in my bento collection right now. Stick them in a sandwich, poke them into fruit or cut a slit in a meatball and add one of these to the top to turn your food into a silly character. These instantly make lunch fun.

And here are the lunches our bloggers made with them:

The first lunch is from Jackie at Loving Lunches. The top section of her adorable owl bento box holds lightly steamed broccoli with ranch dressing and an owl made of sliced cheese. The next section holds blue & blackberries with sliced cheese stars and and a frozen yoghurt moon. The main area has a small owl made of sliced egg and carrot and a large owl sandwich filled with jelly. In an ingenious move, she used the cherry cups to hold the owl’s eyes. So clever! You can learn more about this lunch on her blog.

Jackie started packing Bentos in late 2011 when she returned to part time work and her daughter entered day care. Her favorite thing about packing bentos is the conversations she has with her little girl about what’s in her lunchbox.

Stacey Camilleri from Student Bento made this cute sushi lunch. It includes a maki sushi roll made with bbq pork, leftover pork in the blue cup, pita wedges, green and red grapes, a cheese triangle (under the cherry cup) and cashew nuts.

Stacey packs bentos for herself (and occasionally for her boyfriend) so her bentos are geared more toward adults. Stacey says she likes to make bentos “because I am trying to lose weight and save money. I used to spend at least £5 a day ($8) on lunch at university, so decided to start packing my own.” Her favorite thing about packing bento is releasing her creative side.

This “Two Peas in a Pod” bento was created by Jenn Christ from bentoforkidlet. Her blog is about the American-style bento lunches she makes for her 13 year old son. She has been packing lunches since her son was in 1st grade — 7 years!

This lunch is made up of two peanut butter roll sandwiches, pistachios, green grapes, cherries, and oranges. I love how she put oranges in the orange cup and cherries in the cherry cup. Her favorite thing about packing bentos is that she is always learning new things. She says, “Just when I think I may be out of ideas something will pop up to inspire me!”

Finally, we have this vegetable garden bento that was made by…me! I started with a carrot-shaped cheese sandwich. In addition to the cheese inside, I placed a slice of cheese on top to make it orange like a real carrot would be. I also added eye picks and drew on a smile with a black food-safe marker. The carrot “greens” are made of sugar snap peas that I cut vertically into strips and stuck into the top of the sandwich. I also placed cherry tomatoes with eyes in them in the peapod cup and sprinkled sliced black olives around the bottom to mimic soil. One of the side containers has celery sticks with eyes poked in it. The other has black bean dip with leaf picks and clover picks that are meant to be plants sprouting from the soil.

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: May 27-30, 2014

Last week was a little bit light for bentos. It was a short week because of the holiday, of course, but I also forgot to take photos of not one, but two of the kids lunches. I do that very rarely, so I must really be ready for our easier summer schedule to start up! Here are the lunches I did pack:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

Monday was a holiday, so I didn’t pack any lunches.

Tuesday

Tuesday was not a holiday and I did pack a lunch for Augie, but I apparently either deleted the photo I took accidentally or forgot to take one altogether.

What did he eat? I have no idea! Probably cucumbers or something…

Wednesday

Wednesday I packed his lunch in the PlanetBox Rover. He had a salami rose in a silicone baking cups, broken Triscuits, strawberries, frozen mango chunks with a giraffe pick to eat them and cucumber slices.

I’ve had a few questions about how I make the salami rose lately so there might be other people out there wondering. If you are looking for a tutorial, there is one on page 105 of my book, Everyday Bento.

Thursday

Augie’s lunch was pretty plain on Thursday: a crescent roll, a few dried cranberries in a corner silicone cup, strawberries, a sliced pineapple sausage and a few sugar snap peas. This was packed in our LunchBots Trio.

Wyatt also had a lunch on Thursday because he had a school field trip. He packed it himself, and in all the excitement I forgot to take a picture. he had pineapple sausage, strawberries, a crescent roll, and an applesauce pouch.

Friday

On Friday Wyatt packed his own lunch again (with a little help from me. He used his favorite Laptop Lunches box and filled it with a mini dipper of salsa, tortilla chips, blueberries, strawberries, ham spirals and a crescent roll.

Augie had a lunch with lots of different stuff in it. I was kind of thinking of it as an appetizer veggie tray that you would put together for a party or something as I was making it. He had  ham spirals, pretzel chips, strawberries, blueberries, carrots, cukes, snap peas, hummus, and a crescent roll.

When we went out to the car to go to school, it wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. Oh no! I knew that by the time we jumped the car and got it going again it would be too late to go to school, so I called his teacher and we came inside. Almost as soon as we walked back into the house Augie asked if he could eat his lunch. I couldn’t see any good reason he shouldn’t have it, so he dug in. This is what his lunch looked like at 9:30 am:

He snacked on the rest of it the rest of the morning and then had a regular-sized lunch with me. I guess he was hungry!

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: EasyLunchboxes, Woodland Cutters, and Food Markers

It’s time for another post in the 3 Tools, 4 Lunches series! Each week for the next several months, four bloggers will use the same tools to make a lunch in their own unique style. My hope is that you’ll get some fresh inspiration for using some fun bento tools and also that you’ll discover some wonderful blogs you may not have visited before.

Here are the tools that were used this week:

EasyLunchboxes — These popular boxes have a large main compartment and two smaller side dish compartments. They come in a set of four and are a sturdy and economical choice for bento lunches.
Food-safe Markers — Magic markers that write on food? Yes! These pens are filled with food coloring and can be used to add fine details or big blocks of color to your bento creations. I like to use them to write a quick note to my kids on cracker or bread when I’m in a rush.
IKEA Drommar Pastry Cutters — This set of cutters features six woodland animals. It’s a great bargain at $3 for the entire set!

Now, let’s check out this week’s lunches:

The first lunch today is from Keitha at Keitha’s Chaos. Keitha’s blog mixes family activities, parenting, bento lunches, cardmaking, learning activities, crafts, cooking, and mini-book reviews. She often packs lunches based on the books she reads with her son. For this lunch, she used the fox cutter and the markers to make a ham & cheese sandwich with ham rope around his front paw. The rest of the lunch includes a small slice of cheese in Fox’s mouth, Zbar (for the ground), spinach tree leaves, berries, and a salad with the word FOX cut from slices of radish.

She says, “I started packing story themed lunches by accident. My son’s lunch for his first day of kindergarten was a lunchbox full of hearts inspired by The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. My son liked it so much that he asked for another story themed lunch the next day. It became something he looked forward to each day. He is now almost finished with 2nd grade and still loves taking story themed lunches to school.”

Perry from Dreams, Schemes and Bento Themes made this adorable woodland lunch. She used the cutters to make hedgehog and squirrel turkey sandwiches on honey wheat bread.  The markers were used along with an owl stamp to decorate a Babybel cheese circle. She completed the lunch with some pretzels, red grapes, ridiculously cute strawberry bunnies, and a few Reese’s pieces in a squirrel cup.

This is how Perry describes her start with bento: “I have been packing lunches for years (my oldest is 15) and it was becoming a tedious task that I dreaded — until I discovered BENTOS! I started making bentos in the Fall of 2012 when my second child was in first grade and refused to eat school lunch…ever.  I quickly became hooked to the art of bento. After a little gentle prodding from friends and family, I finally joined the bento blogging world in October 2013.” In addition to her blog, you can follow Perry on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Can you spot the secret hedgehog in this lunch made by Jacey Collins at Monkey Munchables? It’s the sun! She cut it out with the hedgehog cutter. So clever! She also used the squirrel cutter to make a PB&J, then filled in around it with broccoli, almonds, and “mushrooms” made with tomatoes and pieces of string cheese. She added more “mushrooms” for the side dish, along with some blackberries. The food markers were used to add details to the squirrel, the sun and the mushrooms.

Jacey started packing lunches when she had begun changing the way her family ate. As she strove for healthier meals she found herself dissatisfied with the options at school and began packing lunches. Soon it became one of her favorite hobbies.

And finally we have this beautiful lunch featuring Sven, the reindeer from Frozen! This lunch was made by Sandra from One Crafty Thing. Here’s what she had to say about this lunch:

Today’s lunch was a Sven cheese sandwich for my preschool kiddo. Since the moose cutter from the Ikea set looks like, well, a moose, I had to make it look more reindeer-like by cutting off the dewlap (the moose’s neck flappy thing) and  sort of prodding the back antlers forward by gently pushing on the bread until it gave a little. Bread is pretty pliable, so it bent fairly well. For the muzzle and brown parts, I used crust and for the eyebrows and eyes I used the food marker. The highlight in the eye is just a little white non-pareil. The sides were carrots (which both my kiddo and Sven like!) and mini-marshmallow snowflakes, for which I just took a mini marshmallow and cut around it to make the little snowflake-like shapes.

You can find more details about this on Sandra’s blog. Sandra writes: “One Crafty Thing is about art and crafting. It’s not exclusively bentos, although much of it is, lately. I take a whenever-you-have-the-time approach and hope to inspire other people to create by promoting the idea that it doesn’t matter how often, but to create One Crafty Thing when possible– whether it be once a day, one a week, once a month, or whenever you get a minute. ”

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: May 19-23, 2014

We are so close to the end of the school year! Only two more weeks!! Of course, that arbitrary date isn’t going to change much for me as far as lunch packing goes because Augie will be attending his preschool summer program and I am currently on a lunch-packing strike for Wyatt’s lunches (more about that in last week’s post). As far as lunches go things will be the same, but I’m excited about having some more relaxed days.  In any case, here are the lunches I packed for Mr. A this week:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

I kicked this week off with a colorful Yumbox lunch: Funley’s peanut butter pretzel granola balls*, mango chunks, cucumber sticks, turkey meatballs and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Augie’s comment on this lunch box after school: “I had a good lunch for ONCE in my life.” Cheeky little monkey!

* The granola balls were from a box of samples that Funley’s sent me.

Tuesday

Tuesday, he had whole wheat crackers, peanut butter banana bites (from Weelicious Lunches), amazingly sweet nectarine chunks with kitty picks to eat them, and Persian cucumber sticks.  This was packed in our PlanetBox Rover.

Wednesday

On Wednesday he had the teddy bear’s picnic lunch I packed for last week’s 3 Tools, 4 Lunches post. You can get more details about it here. This was packed in a Laptop Lunches box. (TIP: Laptop Lunches is offering a coupon code for 15% off through 5/24/14! The code is: CAMP31)

Thursday

Thursday’s lunch was packed with bright fruits and veggies and I loved all the colors in the lunch. He had a salami “rose” in an orange silicone baking cup, a few crackers, strawberries with a bunny pick, blueberries, carrots and snap peas. I also added snap pea and tomato food dividers for a little extra color and cuteness. This was packed into a single layer of our Bentgo box.

Friday

I pulled out our square Lock & Lock box for Friday’s lunch. He had pineapple sausage slices, blueberries, sugar snap peas and a blueberry cereal bar. It looked pretty plain after I finished loading the box up, so I added some cute food dividers to it, too.

Have a great week! Happy bento-ing!

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento boxlunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’stime to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon[image error], Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: Laptop Lunches, Animal Egg Molds, and Hat Picks

Welcome to week 2 of 3 Tools, 4 Lunches! Each week for the next few months I’ve invited several of my bento blogger friends to make a lunch using the same three tools — a lunch box and two tools for decoration. We all make them independently from each other — no one sees what the others have done until everyone has sent me their photo — so we all approach the project with fresh eyes. You’ll get inspiration for different ways to use some popular bento tools and I hope I’ll also introduce you to some wonderful blogs you may not have encountered yet.

Here are the tools we used this week:

Laptop Lunches Bento Lunch Box — This box consists of an outer, lidded box and five smaller inner containers. It comes in a variety of colors and configurations.
Decorative Japanese hat picks — These cute picks come in a pack of eight with four different styles of headgear: a party hat, a bow, a baseball cap and a lady’s hat. They’re great for adding a little personality to a lunch.
Bunny and Bear egg molds — slip a peeled hard-boiled egg into one of these molds, clamp it shut and wait a few minutes for it to turn the egg into a new shape. If your family likes hard-boiled eggs, this is an easy way to make a lunch cuter.

And here are the lunches:

First up is this cute bear lunch from Anna Adden at Becoming A Bentoholic. Her lunch box is filled with red grapes with bear shaped watermelon pieces on top, a bear shaped hard-boiled egg with a bow in its hair, baby carrots, crinkle cut cucumbers, corn on the cob, and a small container of butter for the corn.

Anna started packing bentos two years ago when her daughter started preschool. She says, “When I realized I needed to start packing lunches I was perplexed by what to pack.  I did a google search, found bento and the rest is history!”

Shannon Carino from What’s for Lunch at Our House is the bento-ist behind this bunny lunch. She says:

“Lately, we’ve been loving the extra simple bentos, so this one features ham & cheese sandwiches on honey wheat, boiled egg, carrots, apples, and a blueberry oatmeal square for a treat.  The sandwiches are cut with a bunny Peeps cutter and the apple was just cored and sliced.  The eggs were pre boiled, then stored in the egg molds until it was bento time.”

“I’ve been writing What’s for Lunch at Our House sine 2007, just before my oldest started kindergarten, she’s finishing up 6th grade now!  I initially wanted fun lunches that would help her eat in a short amount of time and I fell in love with the bento idea.  Luckily, I lived in a town with a great little Japanese store and I was able to find tools and go from there.  I love playing around with food and making it cute for my kids, along with experimenting with new recipes.  My favorite thing with bento is trying to balance the box which leads to overall healthier meals for us!”

You can see more of Shannon’s bento box lunches by following her on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.

Grace Hall is the English mum behind Eats Amazing. Here’s her description of her bunny bento: “I started this lunch off with some leftovers – a fruity rice salad from dinner the night before, topped with some bunnies cut from raw carrot.  On the side was a hard boiled egg, shaped using the rabbit egg mould, cucumber sticks and a couple of raw baby carrots, decorated with leaf picks.  I popped the egg in a silicone cupcake case, and added a sheet of silicone ‘grass’ and a bow from the hat pick set to decorate.  For dessert I layered green grapes and raspberries in one of the containers, topping with a couple more grapes decorated with hat picks.  I finished the lunch off with a tub of natural yoghurt, topped with a few rainbow sprinkles.”

Grace blogs over at Eats Amazing about healthy children’s food, focusing mainly on the bento-style lunches she packs daily for her 6 year old son.  She has been packing bentos for nearly two years, ever since her older son (one of two) started school.  She stumbled across the idea of bento lunches completely by accident whilst surfing the net the summer before her son started school, and was immediately drawn to the possibilities that bento offered; to reduce packaging, pack a good variety of food and make healthy food fun. Her favourite thing about packing bentos is the opportunity that it offers to turn an everyday chore into an opportunity to be creative.

The last lunch is one I made — the teddy bear’s picnic. Since neither of my kids like hard-boiled eggs much, I decided to try something new and I made a shoyu egg — one that’s been marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar and a little sugar. In addition to adding flavor to the egg, the marinade turns it a lovely brown color. The brown egg called out to be a bear so I put it in the egg mold and then when it was done I added one of the baseball cap picks. Now that my bear was ready for his picnic, he needed a checkered tablecloth (an apple), some hummus with an olive “ant” on top, snap pea “grass”, pretzel butterflies and a pretty white nectarine.

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more!My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: May 12-16, 2014

Last week we had soccer lunches, a ferocious T-Rex, a kitty who keeps the peace and a mom who went on a lunch-packing strike. There’s a handy dandy tip for helping younger kids with hard to open packages, too.

Oh, also I’ve started a newsletter and I encourage you to subscribe to it. I’ll be sending tips, tutorials, recipes and other fun stuff every other week.

Read on for all the details!

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

I decided to kick off Monday with a couple of soccer lunches! Kick off! Get it? Har har har!

First up is the lunch I made for my preschooler, Augie. I started wih a special treat to make his Monday a little brighter: a graham cracker sandwich filled with cookie butter and banana slices. Yum! I wrapped it up in an extra-long piece of sushi grass to emulate the grass on a soccer field. I also gave him apple slices on a paper soccer cupcake pick, a soccer ball “Easter Egg” that I filled with cheddar bunnies, a square silicone cup filled with salami slices and a soccer ball pb&j set on a bed of reusable silicone sushi grass.

To make the sandwich, I used one of the extra containers that comes with the PlanetBox Rover to cut two circles from bread. That ensured that the sandwich fit perfectly in the space. I then assembled a peanut butter and jelly sandwich like one normally would. (I’m guessing you’ve got that down pat.) Finally I used a food-safe marker to draw black pentagon shapes on the top of the sandwich. They weren’t perfect, but I think they got the idea across OK.

My fourth grader, Wyatt, is less inclined to let me decorate his lunch, so the soccer stuff was toned down in his lunch box. He had a salami and pesto sandwich, the same graham cracker, cookie butter and banana sandwich wrapped in the same long sushi grass, cheddar bunnies and apple slices. This was packed in an EasyLunchboxes bento box.

This was what was left of Wyatt’s lunch after he came home. He ate the apples and picked the salami out of his sandwich. Unfortunately, it’s pretty typical for his lunches to come home with barely any food gone and I’m pretty frustrated. I can’t STAND throwing food away and the sandwich and the cookie snack were completely inedible because he purposely mixed them together. So as of last Monday, I’m going on a lunch-packing strike and making him eat at school. He doesn’t like school lunches and I would much rather feed him food from home, but if it’s all going in the trash anyway, he can toss the school’s food and save me the trouble in the mornings. I’m hoping he’ll come around soon and agree to start eating his lunches again, but until then there will be no 4th grade lunches around these parts.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I packed Augie’s lunch in our green Lego bento box. He had carrots and snap peas, a chicken drumstick, crackers (in the smaller white Lego box), and cookie butter and graham cracker sandwiches with sprinkles pressed into the edges. I put the graham crackers in a rectangular silicone cup to help keep them from getting soggy.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, he had the Sheriff Kitty lunch from the 3 Tools, 4 Lunches post I put together last week. You can read more about this lunch over there.

Thursday

Dinosaur lunch! Grrrrrrrrr!

I packed this ferocious dino lunch into an EasyLunchboxes bento box. He had a T-Rex pb&j, grapes and cucumber sticks. The sandwich was made with this cool cutter and though the grapes were supposed to be dino eggs, I forgot and jabbed some leaf picks into them instead of putting them in the cucumber sticks where they were supposed to go. Oh well.

Friday

Friday, Augie had strawberries (with eyes!), crackers and salami, a Persian cucumber, and carrot sticks with a piece of decorative baran to make the lunch a little cuter. We received a huge box of snacks to sample from Funley’s Delicious on Thursday afternoon so I let Augie pick any snack he wanted from the box (crackers, granola bites and Stix in the Mud candies) and he chose the Pizza ‘n’ Stuff Super Crackers.

Quick Tip: sometimes Augie has a hard time opening packages of crackers, granola bars and things along those lines by himself. He’s too shy to ask his teachers for help so he doesn’t eat his treat at school. If I take 5 seconds to cut a small slit in the package before putting it in his lunch bag he can tear it open by himself! I did this on Friday and it worked like a charm.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: PlanetBox Rover, Star Cutters, and Alphabet Picks

Welcome to a new series on Wendolonia: 3 Tools, 4 Lunches!

Each week for the next few months, several of my bento blogger friends will make a lunch using the same three tools — a lunch box and two tools for decoration. We’ll all make them independently from each other — no one sees what the others have done until everyone has sent me their photo — so we all approach the project with fresh eyes. You’ll get inspiration for different ways to use some popular bento tools and I hope I’ll also introduce you to some wonderful blogs you may not have encountered yet. Let’s dig in to the first challenge!

Here are the tools we used this week:

PlanetBox Rover — a favorite among bento lunch packers, it’s four large compartments make it easy to pack a balanced lunch
Wilton Nesting Star Cutters (Set of 3) — every bento-ist should have some star cutters in their collection! In addition to the lunches below, use them to make bentos about space, “all star” sports, super star, movie star, rock star — the list is nearly endless!
Alphabet Decorative Picks — use these picks to spell out a word or include your child’s initials in his lunch. Because each set only includes one of each letter in the alphabet, I recommend purchasing two sets so you can “write” more words.

Let’s get to the lunches!

The first lunch in today’s round-up comes from Glory Robinson of Glory’s Mischief. She used the letter picks to spell out “shine bright” on a sandwich for her son and she used the two smaller star cutters to cut veggies for a salad. She rounds out this star-themed lunch with star crackers and apple slices with a star pick.

When I asked Glory to tell us about her history with bentos, she said, “I started making bentos 4 years ago when my oldest started Kindergarten.  When I was a kid my mother would draw on my lunch bags, and leave surprises in my lunches. I wanted to do something similar for my children.  I searched the internet for “Cute Food” and “Fun Lunches” and discovered the world of bento.  I jumped in with both feet, and have loved it ever since.”

You can find out more about this lunch by viewing it over on Glory’s Mischief. Or follow Glory on Facebook or Pinterest to keep up with her beautiful lunches!

Next, Myra Simpson of Mommy and Me Lunch Box shares this adorable lunch she made for her daughter’s birthday. Myra used the star cutters to make a cheese decoration and to stamp a star design into the skin of an apple. She inserted alphabet picks into raspberries to spell out “birthday.” She also included ants on a log and ravioli in this festive bento. You can read more about this lunch over on her blog where she posts lunches for her 1st grader and for herself.

Myra started packing bentos 3 years ago when her daughter was in preschool. She was inspired to start after visiting sites like Bentobloggy, Meet The Dubiens, and BentOnBetterLunches. She says that her favorite thing about packing bento lunches is, “Kids tend to try and eat foods when they are visually appealing. And when you have the right simple tools, it’s very easy to just put something together. It doesn’t have to be grand everyday. A little note or a fun food pick can bring a smile to your child’s (or spouse’s) face!”

This pretty lunch was made by Jessie McCusker from Chaos and Confections. It contains smoked turkey and cheese sandwiches cut with the star cutters, star cheese crackers, strawberry and orange bits, and marshmallow stars. Jessie used the alphabet cutters to spell out “estrellas”.

Jessie is a mom of five and her blog, Chaos and Confections, focuses on allergy safe and gluten free lunches for busy kids and parents. You can also find occasional product reviews, recipes, and bento tips. She says, “I have been packing bentos for three years, ever since we made the switch from homeschooling to at-school schooling. It started as a fun way for me to keep connected to my kids while also trying to make sure they had tasty and (mostly) healthy lunches each day. Last year two of my kids were diagnosed with multiple food allergies, and packing bentos became a great way to keep them safe without making them feel stifled. They can explore the world and know that there will always be safe foods to keep them fueled to keep going!”

And finally, we have Sheriff Kitty checking in! I packed this lunch and you can see that I stuck the alphabet picks in some sugar snap peas and spelled out Sheriff Kitty’s name. I made the sheriff using my Cutezcute Animal Friends cutter set, then I used the medium star cutter to make his badge. His hat is a decorative cupcake pick from the set. I also used the small star cutter to stamp the skin of half a banana. I also added a cup of bunny crackers with a posse member  and a cereal bar.

A few observations:

I expected everyone to cut shapes with the star cutters and we all did. There were sandwich stars, but also cheese, turkey, carrot and radish stars. But the cutters were also used to stamp fruit — an apple and a banana.

I also found it interesting that three of us used that long section at the top of the PlanetBox to put our words. I guess it just calls out for that.

I’m the mean mom because I’m the only one who didn’t put a treat in her kid’s lunch! I honestly just forgot, but still!

And finally I thought the variety of themes was noteworthy. Myra chose a birthday theme and I went with cowboy. And though Glory’s and Jessie’s bentos each featured stars — and even used similar crackers — I thought they looked completely different from each other!

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

 

SUBSCRIBE TO THE WENDOLONIA NEWSLETTER for lunch ideas, recipes, tutorials, videos, bento tips and more!

 

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: May 5-9, 2014

We had a nearly full slate of lunches last week. Read on for a flower lunch, smoothies, a couple of lunches made with the bento formula and a quick tip to keep things from mixing together in transit:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

I was still in a Star Wars-y mood on Monday after Star Wars Day on Sunday, so I packed Augie this vaguely Star Wars-ish lunch in the Yubo: a Darth Vadar peanut butter and jelly sandwich, half a banana, grape tomatoes, a chunk of baguette, a raspberry cereal bar and dill pickles. That kid loves dill pickles!

Wyatt started his week of lunches off with some leftover lasagne packed into a thermos along with a piece of garlic bread and a banana. I was in a huge rush to get him out the door, so I didn’t get a photo.

Tuesday

I kept Wyatt’s lunch super simple on Tueday: salami, crackers, strawberries and bananas packed into the LunchBots Trio. And despite getting his approval on every item before putting it in his lunch box, he still only ate the salami.

Tuesday morning was beautiful and springy so I was inspired to make this flowery lunch for Augie. I have to admit that I was really pushing it by making this lunch. Despite all my efforts to raise open-minded, feminist boys who can handle a few flowers in their bento boxes they are allll about the gender norms right now and I knew there was a possibility that he would refuse to eat it on principle.

I packed this meal in the PlanetBox Rover: a chocolate chip granola bar, sugar snap peas, cucumbers cut with a flower cutter (the scraps were under the peas), a flower sandwich and strawberries with flower picks. I made the sandwich by cutting two large flower shapes from bread with this cutter set. Then I cut another flower shape from one of the slices of bread using a smaller cutter from the same set. I filled it with peanut butter and jelly, then added some flower sprinkles in the hole on top.

And it turns out I needn’t have worried about him eating his lunch because it was completely empty when we got home!

Wednesday

Wyatt has been asking me for smoothies a lot lately, so I made a big batch for breakfast on Wednesday morning and then filled our Yummi Pouches with the leftovers for the boys lunches. This one was mostly made of frozen berries, but I also added some Greek yogurt and milk to give it a little creaminess. I tucked the pouch into a Laptop Lunches box, along with a cereal bar and a salami and pesto sandwich. The sandwich looked so plain and boring in the box so at the last minute I poked an eye pick into it to jazz it up a little. I don’t think it helped at all!

I was really dragging Wednesday morning so I made a simple lunch for Augie following the bento formula I use when I’m brainless: equal portions protein, grain, fruit and veggies. Except I ended up doing two veggies which is A-OK. He had carrots with a piece of kitty baran, Triscuits with bunny baran, cucumber spears with a heart cut-out and a silicone cup filled with a salami “rose”. Super fast and pretty cute in the end. (This was packed in our Lock & Lock bento box.)

Thursday

Here is the Yumbox lunch I packed for Wyatt: grapes, Triscuits, strawberries, turkey meatballs, and a nut-free granola bar.

Augie had the exact same lunch, but I swapped in sugar snap peas for the granola. This was packed in our Lego bento box and the crackers were in a smaller Lego box that fits perfectly inside it.

This Lego box is really tall and I’ve found the lunches I pack in it can get mixed together because there’s often a lot of space at the top after I’m done packing it. Here’s a quick tip to prevent that that I got from Kendra at Biting the Hand That Feeds You: fold up a napkin and set that on top of the food before you put the lid on the box. The napkin expands a bit and holds the food in place.

Friday

Friday I used the Lock & Lock bento box for Wyatt’s lunch: apple chunks, cheddar bunnies, a few ginger snaps and a jelly sandwich with a robot pick stuck in it.

Augie stayed home from school with a tummy ache, so it was plain rice and bananas for him.

Have a good week! We are heading into a heat wave here in the SF Bay area and I’m kind of looking forward to it!

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

Grown-up Lunch: Two Salads

One of my goals for the last few weeks has been to eat a TON of vegetables at lunch. The easiest way to do this? Salad, of course!

While I don’t mind a simple green salad as a side dish now and then, I need a little heft in my lunch to keep me satisfied until dinner time so I like to load my bowl up with lots of hearty ingredients until lunch time.

Up above, you’ll see the Nicoise salad I had for lunch today. I started by tossing baby greens and arugula with a simple lemon vinaigrette (fresh squeezed lemon, an equal amount of extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. After I put the greens in my salad bowl, I popped a quartered, boiled potato into the same bowl where I’d tossed the lettuce and swirled the chunks around a little so they’d have some of the vinaigrette too. Next, I added some tomatoes, a hard boiled egg and a big glop of tuna right in the middle. Finally, I sprinkled a few kalamata olives over the top.

And this is a very different salad I made a couple weeks ago. Is started with a base of arugula (my favorite salad base), then topped it with cooked farro, chunks of roasted sweet potato, snap peas, and goat cheese. This was tossed in a Meyer lemon dressing which is a little sweeter than regular lemon dressing. I always try to use Meyer lemons for dressing if I see them in the store or — even better — when a friend is kind enough to give me some from her tree.

How do you eat your salads?

The Week in Bentos: April 28 – May 2, 2014

We had a bit of a light week for packed lunches last week because Wyatt ate lunch at school several times. Also, I never really did a full shop for the week, so meals were a little bit of a hodge-podge. Check it out:

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Monday

Monday I surprised Wyatt with a special treat in his Yumbox – leftover strawberry shortcake! I admit it was a little half-hearted. There was no whipped  cream and we only had one shortcake left, so I split it in half and put one piece in his lunch box and the other in his brother’s. I also divided the remaining strawberries between the two boxes. Still, they both loved it (though they both said it was messy). The rest of this lunch held apple chunks, crackers and meatballs with ketchup for dipping.

Augie had a very similar lunch to Wyatt’s: tomatoes, apple chunks, meatballs with circus animal picks, and his share of the strawberry shortcake. It was packed in the PlanetBox Rover.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I packed Augie’s lunch in one of our Laptop Lunches boxes: watermelon spears, white cheddar popcorn with colorful star sprinkles, meatballs with bear and monkey picks, a Persian cucumber, and sugar snap peas. I also added a little animal food divider between the veggies to break up all the green in that box.

Wyatt had school lunch.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, Wyatt’s lunch was a dinner roll, apple slices, carrot sticks, and a Batman skewer with chunks of leftover pork chop on it. I also included 3 smaller containers with black bean dip for the carrots, butter for the roll, and cookie butter for dipping the apples. A Lunchbox Love joke card was the final addition.

This lunch came home completely full. The only thing missing was one of the pieces of pork. The rest? Untouched. Very frustrating.

Augie had a Persian cucumber, smoked turkey with a kitty pick, a dinner roll that I sort of decorated with food-safe markers, tomatoes and apple slices.

Thursday

Thursday I packed this car lunch for Augie. It was pretty simple, but he was SO excited. It had grape tomatoes with alphabet picks spelling out “car”, apple slices, celery stick “roads”, and three small peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I cut and stamped with this cutter. The sandwiches are stacked on top of each other. This was packed in our 4-up Lock & Lock bento box.

I was annoyed that Wyatt didn’t eat any of his lunch the day before, so I told him he had to eat school lunch.

Friday

Thursday night I brought leftover pinto beans home from a local taqueria, and when Augie saw them in the fridge on Friday he asked if he could have them in his lunch so I heated them up and put them in the Thermos with a lego spoon to eat them. I also packed a small bento box with some sides: a dinner roll with his name written on it, sliced Persian cucumbers, a few carrot sticks and a small container of hummus.

Wyatt had school lunch again. He was not so thrilled about it, I don’t think, but the first five foods I offered for his lunch were met with a “no thank you” so I finally gave up and told him he could eat at school. I would rather he eat a healthier lunch from home, of course, but I don’t want to toss a full lunch box at the end of the day and honestly it’s just not worth the battle.

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Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.