Leftovers for the Boy

I do pack lunch for Ruthie's brother on occasion.  He has no food intolerance and our school lunches are pretty good, so he usually gets it.  However, when we have leftovers, especially if it's something he loves, we do send him a packed lunch.  He has a 6-can Steelers cooler bag that he uses when he takes his lunch that I got on Amazon.

Today he is taking leftover chili in his food jar (also bought on amazon) to keep it hot for lunch.  In the Kotobuki Panda Box, he has tortilla chips and leftover steamed carrot coins (this container is microwaveable)  He is also taking a peach (which I put in a round rubbermaid container to prevent being squished) and a small 4oz container with cheese (to put in his chili)  He also has water to drink.

Btw, my son is 11yrs old and in 5th grade.  I did ask him before using the panda container and he said he wanted it.  He used it last year, but I did ask in case he felt he was too old for it.  He said he loves it... that it is kung-fu panda, so he's a warrior, not a cute little bear.

Happy National Punctuation Day!

Did you know that Sept. 24th is National Punctuation Day?  Well, neither did I, until I was looking for ideas of what to do for my daughter's lunch and googled the date.

So, with this being tied into writing and learning, I decided to make a bento for Ruthie featuring punctuation.

Unfortunately, she doesn't eat enough (nor does she eat carrots, which make easy periods or colons) to do a LOT, so hopefully others will do even cuter ones, but I did come up with something she thinks is cute and is excited to take to school.

She has two exclamation points (pb, honey, and strawberry on a hotdog bun cut in half, with two peanut butter crackers) on a bed of salad (lettuces and cucumber), and then we have apple slices that are a comma, dash marks, and a set of quotation marks.

Homemade Ritz-Bits

So when I was growing up, one of my favorite things to eat was Ritz-Bits Peanut Butter Crackers.

Now, as an adult, I know how these really aren't the most nutritious way to eat peanut butter crackers.  Now I still like Ritz crackers with peanut butter, but there is much less sugar and preservatives in them when you make your own.  However, My daughter LOVES bite sized food and has asked me for Ritz Bits several times.  I've told her no and she understood why, but finally, after seeing her dip small crackers in peanut butter, I realized... HEY... I could just make her some at home!

So, we've had the angry birds crackers that I've been putting in her lunches this week and there were plenty left over and I decided to go ahead and use them, but you could use any type of bite sized crackers.

Now according to Nabisco (the Ritz Parent company) a serving of theirs is 12 crackers, but as that is intended as a snack and mine are replacing a peanut butter sandwich, I sent about 18.  Again, this widens the possibilities for kids not only in reducing price for the parent (this was cheaper and if I used all the crackers that came in the box for these, I'd have about 3 boxes worth of pb sandwich bites), but you can use other nut butters, soy butter, or sunflower seed butter if you have a peanut-free class or child with an allergy.  You can get fun shaped crackers to make them cute, you can use homemade crackers, or do rice crackers for a gluten free child.

To round out the meal, she has chunks of peaches and leftover green beans in two of our favorite 4oz round glad containers, each with a cute fork pick for eating them.  Her cracker sandwich bites are packed in the green hello kitty box from her set.  The gorilla bottle standing behind her lunch is filled with cold water.

Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Okay, so my oldest woke up sick during the night and so I totally forgot that today was Talk Like a Pirate Day until Ruthie was already off to school with a very boring lunch of leftover pizza, salad, and crackers (yeah, I didn't take a picture)

In an attempt to redeem myself and because my daughter was not aware that it was today, I decided to get right to work and make her a yummy pirate lunch for tomorrow.  I also topped her containers with notes from mom (held on by tape)

In our big Tinkerbell Sandwich box she has a bed of salad where two pirate skulls rest above a celery X to mark the spot.  She has angry bird "parrot" crackers to go with them.  In the blue hello kitty container from the set of 4, she has "gold nuggets" aka peaches with a cocktail fork pick (100 in a pack at Dollar Tree when you can find them... so awesome and if you lose one, you won't sweat it) for eating.  She'll have strawberry lemonade to drink.

To tie our containers into our theme, I used leftover notebook paper (we're just short on construction and printer paper today) to make her a cute little pirate map and a fun note on the lids.

I missed out on joining this blog hop, but I want to invite everyone to participate in this giveaway that you can enter once you go to each blog in the hop and find each of the clues (there are 38 clues and then two bonus ones that you will need to get your first two entries)  The prize (there are 3 winners) will be a gift certificate for bento stuff!  I'm hoping to win!

Simple and fun School Lunch

So I saw this idea for how to make an apple look like the grapes were a worm coming out of it, but I could not get it to fit properly inside any of my containers... so I will be trying this again later.  Otherwise, for a snack you give your kids out of container or at home with no lid to go on the container, it's a great idea to make fruit cute and fun.

I ended up scrapping my attempts and instead made a similar creature, and one of Ruthie's favorites... a snake.

After verifying with my daughter that this was NOT too much food, I sent her with her "little Ruthie" turkey sandwich and some of the scraps cut into flowers on a skewer.
I then put flower cucumbers and a grape (to fill it up) on another skewer.  The little girl is walking on celery "grass" and there is a grape snake on the grass... the red heart skewer ends up looking like a snake's tongue, which she loved.  And, totally un-cute is the apple, cut in half.  I WILL be redeeming myself from this fail... and I think I know how... I think I will do the grapes coming out of the top and bottom so it is like the worm is coring the apple. - we are out of grapes, so hopefully you will see that next week, depending on the produce at the market.

Water was sent in her funtainer.

Check out this Giveaway on Healthy Eating Starts at Home!

http://i-brownbag.blogspot.com/2012/09/back-to-school-event-part-ii-funbites.html

I'm really hoping to win one myself, but this is such a great tool that I'll be happy for whoever is lucky enough to win.  This would make lunches so fun and easy and feed creativity!

There are up to 8 entries per person thanks to rafflecopter, so go check out her awesome blog!

Lunch to Go

Saturday we went to the aquarium, so of course, I packed lunches for everyone!  Mine and my oldest son's were nothing to write home about as they were not cute, and since everyone had the same things in theirs, pretty much, I just took a picture of Ruthie's and her brother, Jeffrey's.

Yes, my boy LOVES him some bento meals. I kept it on the low-key, though, with two kinds of bread so the star was visible to him, but he could eat it without anyone else who might walk by seeing it if he held it right. The sandwich is pb, honey, and strawberry preserves. He has celery that I cut flowers out of (for Ruthie... I had the rest of her "crusts"... they taste the same, but this one held together perfectly) with two flowers of green pepper in each slot... more celery and some carrots are in with it, along with grapes. Angry bird crackers are tucked around the sandwich. Water in a Spiderman Funtainer

Ruthie has pb,honey, and strawberry preserves. half a sandwich cut into two pieces for easier eating quickly... third quarter is cut (by hand... cutter was just too big to do it with one and I was not using the tiny veggy cutter on sandwiches) a star or maybe a ninja, since she said it looked like one to her. She has angry bird crackers, celery flowers (BIG HIT) and grapes skewered on my Dollar Tree heart picks (a box of 100 for a dollar... YES PLEASE), along with two pieces of cucumber. Water in her dora funtainer (thank goodness for water fountains... we can bring reuseable water bottles and drink the whole time and keep refilling and not overpay for bottled water) 

(Ruthie ate a grape off one pick before I took this picture of her lunch, lol)

 Damian had a regular pbh sandwich, the crackers, grapes, and carrots.  I had pbh and strawberry, I had carrots, celery, and green pepper, a container of nectarine chunks and grapes, and some low fat cheese crackers, which I only got 6 of because Damian ate the rest.