Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween! This lunch has gone to the CATS!

Well, Ruthie has been back and forth on some foods, as I mentioned in my last post.  One of those things is chicken salad (chicken mixed with mayo, sometimes a mustard of some sort or other seasonings, and some people even add celery and/or relish, apples, grapes)... we do it pretty simple around here... chicken and mayo, sometimes with relish and/or honey mustard or spicy mustard... I prefer honey mustard, the hubby spicy.

Ruthie was eating it last year as long as there was nothing but chicken and mayo, but she stopped liking it and hasn't been willing to try it since.  Well, last night, after she finished her plain chicken, she came to me, asked if she could see my sandwich, and then took a big bite... she chewed, thoughtfully, and pronounced it delicious.  I asked her if that's what she'd like for her lunch and she jumped up and down and squealed yes.

So... because I'm not sure if her bite contained honey mustard, I made hers with just chicken and mayo, but I made her the requested chicken salad.  I then was left to come up with one more (and hopefully original) Halloween lunch for this year.  Well, when the begging kitties in our family came around for scraps, the answer was done.

I used a coffee mug (one with quite a large opening to use almost the entire sandwich) to make a sealed sandwich (a trick I accidentally discovered would be possible when I made her owl sandwich previously)

I used food safe markers to decorate it like a black cat.


I put a witch finger puppet above it ... which makes her look as if she's riding a giant kitty... lol.  The banana was made into a snake... ironically similar in color to a baby black snake one of our cats caught a few years ago... with the use of food safe marker to make a face on one end.  Witches fingers (green beans) are in the pink (her favorite color, even though green would have been more festive) silicone cup with a spider crawling over them and the little kitty fork pick.  Three tootsie rolls are in a ghost paper mini cupcake liner (the same one used in her lunch yesterday... sometimes they can be reused).


This lunch was packed in our betty crocker box that I scored for 50c at Food Lion when they marked them down for discontinuation.  Water is in her funtainer as there are sure to be more treats at school and so she needs to keep sugar low and protein high.

The kitty made me think of Hello Kitty, so that is what will probably start our November lunches off tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

1 Day Until Halloween!

Friday ended up being another "Sleep in and I'll get the kids off to school" offer from my husband day, so I took it and let him.  Yesterday, no school, thanks to Hurricane Sandy blowing through over the weekend.  Today, they start 2hrs late, but they have school.  I threw this together with what we had available.  We'd stocked up before the storm with lots of non-perishables, so it's not the most appealing lunch, but it's still cute and has Halloween touches.

The top container holds some low-fat, low-sodium potato chips, which is why she only gets TWO (rather than 3-4) tootsie rolls for her treat, but she was quite pleased.  She has mandarin oranges with a skull ring and peas (which she will usually eat with her fingers, like grapes, but I have included a kitten fork pick (for some reason she eats them with this... I can't eat peas with a fork, but she can)... she hasn't willingly eaten peas in quite awhile, but she said she will eat them and that she likes them again, so hey, sometimes being low on preferred foods turns out well.  Her sandwiches are pb & strawberry of course, her favorite.  I used the same ghost cutter from when I made her pizza sandwich that looked like Oogie Boogie, but I didn't press as hard so instead of the imprinted features, I gave them round eyes and round mouths to make them look like ghosts.  It worked by using softer bread and pressing the bread flat first, so it didn't require as much effort to cut and I avoided the other face.  Her tootsie rolls are in a little mini-cupcake liner reversed so she can see the ghost pattern.

Her Funtainer is filled with water since the chips, even while low-sodium, taste pretty salty.




Thursday, October 25, 2012

6 Days Until Halloween

With only 6 days left until Halloween that means that there will only be 4 more spooky lunches!

Today, I decided to make a batty lunch... so everything was put together with bats in mind.
This lunch was one that surprised me again (as they often do when packed in this box) with how much the Melissa & Doug Bella Butterfly Snack Container (also available as a turtle) really can hold.

In the top sections, she has mandarin oranges and green beans (cocktail fork picks from Dollar Tree are in the bottom section in front of her sandwiches)... an orange bat finger puppet is flying above the oranges and a black bat ring is in the green beans.  In the bottom section she has ANOTHER pack of the halloween pretzels that she got at her school's fall celebration (really have been loving that she got so many) that I opened so that it would fit inside to prevent crushing.  A bat ring is on the halloween pretzels.  Next to the pretzels are two pb & strawberry bat sandwiches, stacked.  In a separate container is her dessert.  Her aunt loves to spoil her and got a big pack of the individually wrapped snack cakes for a dollar, so I decided to let her have one in her lunch for a fun treat.  Having tasted one myself, I must say these are so cute, but you can FEEL the sugar in them when you eat one, so I didn't give her a drink choice and sent water in her funtainer to help dilute all that sugar.



And for anyone wondering how big she is to be eating this little amount (this is on the bigger side for her being there are pretzels and a treat), she is in the 25th percentile for height and 50th for weight... she's 52" tall and weighs about 55lbs.  She wears size 8 in pants/skirts and size 10 in shirts.  She is going to turn 9 in March.  She's healthy and active.  So when packing lunch, we have to remember that every kid is built differently and requires a different amount to fuel their bodies and pack accordingly.  With her brothers, I always worry I'm packing too much, until it all comes back emtpy... with her, I worry I don't pack enough on some days, then days like today I worry I pack too much... but again, it all gets eaten most days and days it doesn't, if she's not hungry when she comes home, I don't worry.  Appetites go up and down on everyone.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

7 Days Until Halloween!

So today is totally leftovers day.  In our house, we love chili, but two of the kids don't like it... Ruthie is one of those... so with it being toward the end of the month, but still needing lunches for her, we decided to make her and her oldest brother pizza... and made enough so that she could have some leftover for her lunch.

She has three favorites for her sides - green beans, mandarin oranges (kept separate by putting the oranges in a silicone baking cup), and halloween pretzels.  I drew faces on the pizza so they can be mummies or just smile at her for the sake of smiling, I tucked her skeleton finger puppet and a skull ring in the green beans, and there is a bat ring between the bottom two pizza slices.  In her kitty silicone mini cup, there are some candy corns.


Now, I totally meant to get a picture of her brother's (the middle child) lunch as he always takes leftover chili and thought I had, but after he left, I found out I had failed.  He had the same container as she did, with oranges and a bag of pretzels in the side, 3/4 of a can of green beans (seriously, this boy EATS) and two tupperware smidgets in the main compartment - filled with some candy corns in one and cheese to put in his chili in the other.  He had his food jar filled with chili topped with a hot sausage (he loves spicy) leftover from a couple of nights ago when we had burgers and his dad made some hot sausages.

Both kids are taking water to drink.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

8 Days Until Halloween - Breakfast For Lunch

Kids with allergies/food intolerance issues have to miss out on buying school lunch... sometimes that's good, because the school in question doesn't provide good lunches, but in our case, the school provides a lot of variety and options and it would be nice if she could buy on some days.  One of the times she feels left out are when they have breakfast for lunch.  So, when I can, I send her that.  Obviously, some foods simply don't work out due to her own preferences for temperature.  Eggs, for instance... she likes them HOT, not just warm, so I don't send them.  Now with only milk being an issue I know someone would think, well, why can't she have lunch at school then?  Well, because of all the milk you wouldn't even think of looking for.  Sure, she can have stuff made with milk and be fine, but not when it's in large amounts and certainly not when it's in almost every part of the meal.

Here is an example of a typical breakfast for lunch at our elementary schools - pancakes, egg OR pork sausage patty, and then whatever fruit/veggie sides they pick.  They then have the choice of white, chocolate, or strawberry milk.  They can have water (which means the water fountain.. yeah, it sucks and isn't sufficient for her) instead of the milk, but between the tempting milk flavors and how the water is available, it just doesn't work.  the pancakes have milk, the egg patties have milk.  I'm not saying the school doesn't provide safe options, I'm saying that most times, the option to have her have a milk-free lunch at school just isn't practical.  As she gets older and can remember what all of their foods have milk in them and which ones don't, it may be possible for her to get lunch at school sometimes, but it's just easier to pack it and send it.

So, since my best friend picked up a pack of 4 jumbo muffins on sale and brought them over to share, I decided to save half of one for Ruthie's lunch.  (The other half was devoured by her brother for after-school snack).

Yes, the muffin has some milk in it, most likely (when I make muffins I use a recipe that doesn't call for milk or I use soymilk or other "milk" instead), and so does the nutella on it, but again, because it is an intolerance and not an allergy, I can monitor and adjust her diet accordingly.  I can't do that when I have to trust her to tell me absolutely everything she puts in her body at school and when the milk is in such high quantities there. Since the nutella is samples, I'm using it, but in future, we're going to buy a different brand of chocolate spread that is milk-free.  Jif has to-go packs of a chocolate peanut butter spread, for instance, that are milk free.  However, that's more waste than I want when I'd be using it at home, so I'm still finding what to buy next... reading labels is so crucial.



For her breakfast for lunch today, she has a banana, cut in half, and decorated with food-safe marker to look like ghosts... between her ghosts is her treat... a snack sized bag of skittles that her brother brought home yesterday and traded in for the reward of nutella spread on his snack... she has a spider on it for fun... then she has the half muffin cut into 4 pieces with some nutella on it and a ghost coming up to go BOO!... in the small container she has two pieces of turkey bacon.  She decided to have lemonade to drink... weird child... she didn't bat an eye after having OJ with her chocolate yesterday... so I believe her that she'll drink it.

It is all packed in our kotobuki panda and one glad 4-oz round container... or, as Ruthie called it... her kung fu-panda box and a little bowl of bacon.

Monday, October 22, 2012

9 Days Until Halloween!

So my theme for today's lunch was Trick or Treating.  Going from left to right, we have two apple jack o'lanterns (we often see jack o'lanterns trick or treating) with a bat ring, a silicone cup of green beans (Ruthie has decided they are witches' fingers and we do see people dressed as witches when trick or treating) with a toy spider, a bag of Halloween pretzels (the kids got 8 at her school's Fall Family Fun Day on Saturday and I have 6 left for her lunches... SCORE!)... she often gets these trick or treating, too.  A toy spider sits on the pretzels.  She has two bat pb & nutella sandwiches (they also got two samples of nutella... I used half of the first one making these and giving her brother two pb nutella cracker sandwiches before he left for school... I'm definitely going to buy more... though I'll buy Kroger brand... because it's a big hit and you don't have to use much to taste it really easily on a sandwich... great for a treat!  She has another bat ring on her sandwiches and the sandwiches are decorated with food-safe markers by Wilton.  Finally, in a mini muffin/cupcake wrapper (turned inside out so she can see the inside) that has ghosts on it, she has 3 small tootsie rolls (another thing she often gets trick or treating... we got these Saturday, too... another SCORE!


This bento is all packed in her betty crocker container and I also sent her funtainer with OJ/water because she asked for that to drink.  She's very excited about this lunch and said she can't wait to tell her friends that she has chocolate in her sandwiches!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

13 Days Until Halloween!

Today's lunch ties the spooky Halloween with other things we see in the fall.  Ruthie has a pb & strawberry sandwich on honey wheat bread (I used a coffee cup to cut a circle, then cut out the top bit with a knife)... yes, my owl is blue... yes, his eyes are green... she loves this... she wanted him to be colorful and look spooky like she might see at nighttime (like she's ever seen an owl then... or anywhere other than the zoo or aquarium).  He's resting on a nest or pile of leaves (depending on who you ask... I said he was flying over a pile of leaves... Ruthie swears he's sitting in his nest)  And a pumpkin is popping out of the bottom of those leaves (henceforth my interpretation) to surprise the owl.  He's hunting candy corn and even though I colored his beak yellow, he also has a candy corn as a nose because... well, it just looks cute.  She also has green beans and mandarin oranges (hey, it's time to go to the grocery store, I know!) in silicone baking cups... with a spider and two skull rings for decoration.

This was the first time I'd tried using a coffee cup... I found out after I'd already cut out my first circle that it's likely I could have made a pocket sandwich simply because it was a thick enough cup that it really squished the edges... but that bottom piece doesn't look as nice, so I wanted to hide it rather than make a third slice.

I added two of our favorite cocktail fork picks from Dollar Tree after I took the picture.


14 Days Until Halloween!

Okay, I skipped yesterday because I couldn't think how to make her lunch halloween-themed with what I put into it.  Of course, once she left for school, I realized it would have been so easy... so today, I cut myself no slack and even though it's a pretty normal lunch food-wise, it's a halloween lunch now.

By the way, Ruthie is totally loving our countdown... she's now asking every morning how many days are left until Halloween.  I know I'm going to have to do this for Christmas!

Today, she has a nice warm lunch, for the most part.  I heated everything up extra warm except for her fruit. In her food jar, she has ramen noodles (we make it healthier by using a bouillon cube instead of the included seasoning... and we don't have them often... everything in moderation).  In her Melissa & Doug Bella Butterfly Snack Container, she has a leftover oven baked breaded chicken leg, green beans, and mandarin oranges.  She does not like using the same fork for different foods and that's never a battle I choose, so she has two cute kitty fork picks for her oranges and green beans and a regular fork for her noodles.  a spider ring, rubber spider, and skeleton finger puppet make this a fun Halloween lunch.



Monday, October 15, 2012

16 Days Until Halloween!

Today's lunch is a Haunted House theme... featuring some of our favorite things we might find in a haunted house.  Because of this theme, the lighting of the picture is dark to give a spooky effect.

I got the food safe markers I used to color her sandwiches at Party City... they are a wilton's 5-pack and were on sale for 4.99!  SCORE!

She has a spider web and bat made from our honey oat bread and honey peanut butter (YUM)  the spiderweb cookie cutter doesn't indent much into a sandwich, so until now, I hadn't used it for a sandwich... now I think we will be using it more often in the fall.

She also has some pretzels with a rubber spider crawling on them and a bat ring flying over them.  Spiderwebs, spiders, and bats are favorites in a haunted house.

She also has a jack o'lantern with a spider ring crawling on it...and a monster's mouth with it's green rotted teeth... monsters and jack o'lanterns are so much fun in a haunted house!  They are Gala Apples, btw, which are a favorite in any house.  Also, sometimes in a haunted house, you bob for apples.  The pretzels could also be the treat (since some people give out bags of pretzels for trick or treaters) that you get at the end of the trip through the haunted house.

She also has some extra celery tucked under the apples.  She has peach mango kool-aid (because she's been needing miralax more regularly to keep her softened and prefers a flavored drink.  Juice fills her up and you get better fiber from whole foods than you do from juices, so I water down some kool aid and everyone is happy.


Friday, October 12, 2012

19 days till Halloween!

Yes, it's another halloween theme bento... lol... I just can't get bored of these... Christmas will be the same... lol... and I have ideas for valentine's day and St. Patty's Day (and two st. patty theme cutters) that you just don't want to hear about yet.

Today Ruthie has 6 pb & honey cracker spiders with celery for the features (she doesn't like raisins or carrots and I had no pretzel sticks... but she was excited... I want to try to get them more uniform), cucumber chunks, apple/pb/celery mouths, and two halloween butter cookies... she has a spider crawling on her cucumber, a ghost popping out in the big compartment (it's a finger puppet... the variety pack of 6 is a dollar at Dollar General), and a bat is hanging out by the cookies.  She has OJ/Water to drink.

Wax paper helps keep the crackers from sliding around.



Thursday, October 11, 2012

20 Days Until Halloween!

This lunch is pretty simple, somewhat leftovers, and super cute in my opinion.  I know Ruthie was totally excited.

First, we have a leftover crescent roll hot dog from supper last night.  Sadly, I don't have candy eyes (MY BAD) and didn't have anything to really use for eyes, but when I put the ketchup on the way I did, I realized it's okay... instead of a mummy, it's a finger/arm that has been scratched by a werewolf!  Either way, the ketchup makes it look bloody, which Ruthie loves.  I put wax paper underneath, even though it wasn't getting moist, just to make sure the bottom stays dry.

In the big compartment she has 4 apple mouths with celery teeth... she also has extra teeth to nibble on.

Along with this she has some leftover barbecue chips (in a separate container not shown) and mango/peach kool-aid to drink (watered down)... so not the healthiest lunch, but not bad in the grand scheme of things.


Of course, now that I'm thinking of it, I probably could have made the apples stay in position more easily by putting the extra "teeth in a silicone baking cup or two... but ah, well.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

My first bento!

Bento Bloggers and Friends is hosting a linky party celebrating our first bentos/blog posts, so I thought I would share mine.

This was not my first blog post, but it was my first bento lunch I made for my little girl that I took a picture of.  It is from last year in Sept.

The small compartment holds canned peaches with two fork picks for decoration and to eat them, the big compartment holds celery, pretzels, and a container of peanut butter for dipping.  I don't remember what she had to drink.



22 Days to Halloween!

Today's countdown lunch very subtly pays tribute to our good friend, Count Von Count from Sesame Street, who turns 40 today.


As the Count lives with bats in his castle, I made pb & strawberry bat sandwiches on a bed of salad.  Since he's turning the big 4-0, I put 4 bat rings in the salad for decoration to count.


Because he is a vampire, I packed mandarin oranges (the other half of the can I used for yesterday's lunch) with a white "vampire teeth" fork pick.

I did have more direct ideas, but some little girl was worried that her friends would think that it was too babyish, so I went for sublte references instead.  I did not take a picture of the label for her sandwich box, but I drew vampire mouths, bats, and a spooky cat to help tie into the theme.

I still don't have food writing pens as the surrounding stores that carry them are out, or I would have done a basic vampire sandwich.  Ah, well, I may still do one for another halloween lunch.

Monday, October 8, 2012

23 Days to Halloween!

Another week brings another round of lunches counting down to Halloween.

Today is still wet from yesterday with more rain predicted, the weather is cool enough to bring out long pants and long sleeves, so a hot lunch was in order.  We made baked spaghetti this weekend, so leftovers made this lunch really easy and quick to put together this morning.

In her food jar (I charged it with hot water first) she has spaghetti all nice and hot... it fits the halloween theme as it can be called bloody worms.  We also have some green beans (or green fingers) with a bat ring and cat fork pick and mandarin oranges (kidneys going by shape) with a finger puppet skeleton (from Dollar General) and the matching cat fork pick.  She has lemonade in her gorilla bottle.


Thursday, October 4, 2012

26 Days to Halloween!

Well, I failed yesterday at making a mouth with apples and banana, but I'm happy to report that my aha moment caused a success!

I realized that CELERY could be used as green teeth... which is cool for halloween... and my daughter loves peanut butter on celery and apples, so I could use it to hold them together!

In addition to her mouth of apple slices, pb, and celery, she has BOO written in cucumber twice, on skewers (sadly, these are hearts as I am still sick and so have not made unnecessary outings for things like halloween stickers to make the picks festive)  Her jack o'lantern is half an apple and celery is used for the stalk (two pieces, placed where the core was removed).

In the smaller section (with wax paper to prevent it getting too moist from sweating on the plastic container) is what is technically a ghost (the ghost of my set of cutters), but I think looks like Boogie Oogie from Nightmare Before Christmas.  Boogie/the ghost is a pizza sandwich... I had a nice stick of pepperoni and cut some of that, spread ketchup (because I didn't want to open a jar of tomato sauce... I'm lazy), and put the (dairy free)  cheese on top of each piece... and microwaved to melt the cheese.  That is how he got a little bloody... lol... because some of the sauce and cheese discolored him a bit... but I had the face on the down side so it would show.  By putting it together warm, it will stick nicely.  The bread is honey oat and it's nice and thick, so I didn't have to toast it prior to making the pizza sandwich (other, softer, breads I do this to make sure it holds shape)



I didn't show the top of her container yesterday... but here is the one for today... 


27 days till Halloween!

This is another one of those "do I really wanna post this?" lunches, because it isn't the prettiest, but I like to be honest with my lunch making process, so here it is.

I've been wanting to do those cute apple mouths, but Ruthie doesn't like almonds or uncooked marshmallow, so I finally decided to try banana... she doesn't care for pb on her banana, so I used toothpicks to put them together.  Now this morning I woke up with this AHA moment of how I could have done it without the toothpicks, so I'll be doing that shortly... on the brighter side, Ruthie was pleased and saw them as mouths right away.  In the main section she has "BRAINS" aka... shredded chicken, then she has some bones of carrots and celery (trying to get her to eat carrots by sneaking small bits into some of her meals), and then a silicone cup of lettuces and another of cucumber jack o'lanterns... sorry that you can only see one, but there it is.


Tuesday, October 2, 2012

28 Days till Halloween!


Yes, it's day 2 of counting down till the day we go trick or treating in fun costumes around here, so another halloween theme lunch is in order.

As I did yesterday, I made a cover for the box I used.  Today, I used her pink hello kitty box, the largest from her set of 4 and I decided to use her gorilla bottle from the zoo for her drink... this kind of shows the size of the box compared to the 10-12oz bottle.  It is taller than the bottle lying down, though... and holds a surprising amount.



In her lunch, we have a pb & strawberry witch on honey wheat whole grain bread supported by celery "bones" (yeah, she doesn't eat a lot of raw veggies), two halloween chips a'hoy cookies because the kids' aunt bought a package on sale as a surprise for them, and a silicone cup of orange chunks with a spider ring for decoration.  She has water to drink.  Now that she's not caring if her foods touch like she used to, I can pack more tightly and use the smaller containers more often, and this also means she gets to take her favorite my little pony lunchbox more often.  This lunch could fit in even the smallest lunch bags with no problem.


Monday, October 1, 2012

Halloween Countdown Bento #1

Halloween is coming!  We love this holiday and so I decided we will do a countdown to it in Ruthie's lunches!  Today is the first bento... 29 Days till Halloween!

I made it in her Tinkerbell sandwich box which still surprises me on how much it holds.

Two bat sandwiches filled with peanut butter and strawberry fly at the top of the lunch which holds a green silicone bakign cup of cucumber chunks with a skull ring for decoration, a pink silicone cup of orange chunks with a cocktail fork pick (from Dollar Tree) because they are so juicy.  Surrounding the two cups are bite-sized celery sticks (also called BONES during halloween... hehe), and I used my BOO cookie cutter (plastic, so required both hands to push down) to make the word from orange peel.  Above the bats is a sour apple laffy taffy that I found hiding in a drawer... leftover from one day or another... so she even has her first TREAT along with her lunch of yummy tricks.  A note on the top of the box helps her count down, too (it's only held on by the bands that keep the box closed, so she can pocket it if she wants... she did that with her pirate map from our pirate day lunch)

Her other treat of 8oz (in a re-used Motts Juice bottle from an 8pack I bought last year) of watermelon/cherry kool-aid (50/50 with water) is not pictured.


The cutters used for this lunch are from a Wilton set I got from ebay

What fun things are you doing to get ready for Halloween?