Xylephone Sandwich!

This was inspired by More Than Your Average Mom - it was a fabulous idea and made me think of doing some music theme bentos.  It would be better if I had music note food picks like she does, but maybe I will sometime in the future.

For now, this is what I did (Ruthie is requesting I do DRUMS in her lunch next time... lol)

Her sandwiches are egg salad with spicy brown mustard mixed in (she tried a bit on some chicken last night and found out she likes it)

I made the rectangles by using a pizza cutter to first trim the crusts/edges off the bread, then slice them into thirds.  I paired up two of the pieces from the first slice together to be the biggest piece before moving to the next slice of bread... I paired up two more, trimmed, then the third set became the last two "keys" of the xylephone.

Food-Safe Markers were used to color the keys and make the dots for the pegs holding the "keys" to their board - which in this case is a bed of salad.

For the Mallets, since I not only don't have mini marshmallows, but Ruthie has decided she only likes them roasted, I took two peas and put them on the ends of white heart picks (100 in a pack at dollar tree)

She has apple stars and a package of halloween pretzels to finish off her lunch.

Our next musical lunch will have to be Monday, since one egg easily makes two meals for her when done in egg salad and so I already prepped tomorrow's lunch - look for that tomorrow!

Pre-Thanksgiving Bento

Okay, so I woke up totally unsure what I was going to do for her lunch today, but then I saw the deli turkey in the fridge, remembered thanksgiving was next week, and it all came together.

I had ordered the turkey pics (pack of 6) last year from amazon and this was a great excuse to use them, as well as a turkey cookie cutter that I have no clue where I got it... it's big and red and it's awesome for Thanksgiving lunches!

So she has a Turkey turkey sandwich on multigrain bread (which I had already flattened before I realized that it was not the most cutter-friendly... so it took a lot of moving back and forth to get the edges done, but, totally worth it.  I obviously don't have the proper colors to color in a turkey, but I went to color the waddle of the turkey (the red flappy thing) red and decided to do the beak... and the color scheme hit me... red/blue/white (okay, beige cause that's the color of the bread) for the USA!

It's resting on a bed of salad and she has apple slices, MORE halloween pretzels (I still had 6 bags left... so cool that halloween keeps giving two weeks after it's gone), the LAST TWO tootsie rolls, and two turkey picks walking around in her lunch.

Yes, she's been having apples almost every day, but they're AWESOME, really cheap this time of year, and she LOVES them.

Angry Birds - this time, without a fail!

Okay, so my daughter HATED the fruit snacks the last time I made her an angry birds lunch... she apparently does not like fruit snacks not made from real fruit... can't blame her on that one.  So considering that and the fact we didn't have any angry birds crackers, this lunch is all about the sandwich.

I was about to buy a sandwich press until I discovered, when using a coffee mug to cut a circle sandwich for the first time, I discovered that the coffee mug will make a sealed pocket sandwich just as easily... and then you can fill it with your coffee/tea/cocoa after you wipe the bread remnants off it!

So Ruthie has a PB & Strawberry (if you haven't figured it out yet, this is my daughter's FAVORITE sandwich... and Strawberry is her FAVORITE fruit spread) red angry bird - the red bird is her favorite, by the way.

To go with the sandwich, she has a pack of halloween pretzels underneath to help the sandwich really catch attention and make it easy to pick up.  Also, since I somehow managed to choose the pb side to color, this also prevents moisture from collecting and having the strawberry spread start soaking through.

Her other sides are apple and cucumber slices.  The lunch is packed in our Hello Kitty Containers... I'd originally thought I was going to do a Hello Kitty lunch, but then after I cut the circle, I remembered I wanted to do a second go at angry birds... the big container is perfect for holding the sandwich and with less juicy sides tucked underneath, it probably could have held all (or almost all) of her lunch... if I left the pretzel pack separate in her lunch bag.

She has orange juice to drink today... poor girl is getting a bit bound up again... so hopefully the whole grain bread and all the fiber from the apples and OJ will help.

Soup again!

The last time I packed Ruthie soup, I clearly packed too much, as she ate all of it, but ate nothing else in her lunch.  The only soup she really likes is Ramen Noodles, so we make them rarely, but when we do, we use a bouillon cube instead of the msg-filled season packet.

This time, I was careful to use one of our small 9oz coffee mugs and not pack down the noodles at all, so I made only about half of what I did last time... it's easy to forget sometimes that she only eats so much and that soup takes longer to eat, too.

With that last bit in mind, it brings me to her box of things to go with the nice hot soup (always remember to charge your food jar/thermos... it just keeps everything so nice and warm... heat some water to boiling, put it in the jar and put the lid on... you can leave it sit while you get breakfast and other lunch items ready... then heat up your soup, dump the water and replace with your soup (or other heated items you are putting in it) and it will stay nice and warm for lunch)

I put in things that I know she'll eat and I made sure that her protein was easy to eat and not messy. (that was her other complaint... that the chicken was softer and the breading was too messy to bother with at lunch time)

I cut up an apple... it was HUGE, so she had half of it with her french toast for breakfast, and the other half went into this tinkerbell sandwich box.  The silicone baking cups are perfect for holding four thin slices of deli ham (I folded them and rolled them and put two on each of the little picks to make for easy eating) and yummy sweet peas.  I tucked one long tootsie roll in there for a treat.  The other plus to the choice of using this box is that I always use a rubber band to hold the box shut (for those who also need to use them to hold cheap sandwich containers like this one closed, I have found the bands that come on celery to be PERFECT... they are just the right size and hold it really tight), so I tucked her silverware (I put both a spoon and fork in, in case she needs the spoon to help her eat her peas more quickly or wants to use it for the "juice" of her soup) in it to keep it in place.

Smile - it's simple!

Today's lunch is really simple... just salad, leftover pizza, and apples.  I stacked the pizza with toppings put together, though, and wrote a little messsage with food-safe markers on the pizza, because Ruthie woke up grumpy today and I wanted to give her a reminder to smile.  Besides, if pizza doesn't make you smile, what can?

QUACK QUACK! - what do you do with a duck?

Months ago I got a bag of 12 yellow duck cupcake toppers from amazon.com using a swagbucks giftcard, unsure of how I would use them, but determined that they were too cute and inexpensive to pass up (at the time they were $3.21 w/ free shipping).

Well, I figured out one way to incorporate them into the lunches... I did a zoo-themed lunch!

So first I put down a bed of grass, then colored a circle sandwich filled with turkey and pepperoni blue to be the duck pond/lake... I added pretzels for logs/sticks on the ground (it's fall, after all), and a silicone cup of cucumber flowers.  She also has a separate container of apple slices.  To make the theme come together, she has one duck on the pond (I had to cut the actual pick portion in half, but for a child with a bigger appetite, two sandwiches stacked in a taller container/box would work fine... it was rather easy, though... I used a regular pair of scissors), a pink "wolf cub" in the cucumber flowers, and a monkey in the apples (since they do enjoy eating fruit)  This makes me want to get another set of picks from allthingsforsale.com just to get a lion and elephant... which we have at our zoo.

To go along with this, she is taking water in her gorilla-shaped bottle that we originally got at the zoo!

Her lunch is packed in her tinkerbell sandwich box and a 4oz round glad container.

Well, Halloween is over, but the treats continue for awhile.  I said I was probably going to try a Hello Kitty bento, so I decided to do so.  Being as it was Halloween AND the end of the month, groceries are pitiful, so when I decided that I wanted to throw lunch together the night before, I knew it was a good idea, so I could figure something out.

In the main compartment is Hello Kitty (I know, she shouldn't have a mouth... I couldn't remember and instead of looking at one of my other containers, I drew one just in case.  Of course, I doubt my daughter will care, but it bothers me.  To make her, all I did was flatten out two pieces of bread, then I used a big soup cup (which is why you may notice there is some crust on one side... there was also some up top, where I scooped to make the ears) which used so much of the bread that there wasn't enough left to bother giving to the dogs... I gave it to the cats.  Inside, I put ham... now the ham was bigger than the bread, so I quartered it and layered it... 3 pieces was plenty, but you could fit in more or do less if you wanted.  Then, because the lip of the soup cups is so thick, I pressed as much as I could on one side, then flipped the sandwich to do the other... it might also be easier if you cut out one side in advance, but I wanted to ensure a good seal, and this is how I know it to work best with a cup.

I think it's a pretty good, cheap, way to do it if you think your kid might like homemade uncrustables, but you don't want to go buy a sandwich press right away.

Above the sweet hello kitty is a rainbow of sweets for my sweetie... yeppers, she loves skittles, so I put a pack from the trick or treating in there.  Her silicone cups hold sides of peas (with a kitty fork pick to be cute... I will probably pop in a spoon.. she was so busy talking she didn't eat all her peas last time) and the contents of one of MANY single-serve bag of halloween pretzels she and her brother brought home. (they also brought home 7 bags of chips, but those are just enough bigger that she doesn't finish them... and especially not if there is another treat.  So for non-messy fingers and not overloading her lunch, I save the chips for treats on weekends.

Again, I'm going to be picky... my kid tends to be stopped up pretty easily and regularly, so I like to have a fiber-rich diet for her... and what are we missing in this otherwise yummy and healthy lunch?  Yep, FRUIT... however, we do have orange juice, so I think that's what she's going to get in her lunch (watered down, but should still help keep things moving along).