Category: Yummy

October 22, 2015

Oldies but Goodies Halloween Bento Lunch

Now that I’ve been doing bentos for quite a few years now, I find that holidays become a little harder to make bentos — I’ve done lots and lots of different themes and honestly, I start to run out of ideas! So today, I decided to go back to the Oldies but Goodies… ghosts, pumpkins, spiders, they’re all perfect for today’s bento. Plus I found this awesome butternut squash ravioli at Costco which looks adorable as a pumpkin.

In today’s lunch:

Main Butternut squash ravioli with sprinkles for the face (two circles and a bat sprinkle) and a piece of grape stem for the stem. It has butter sauce at the bottom of the container.
Sides Green grapes covered with marshmallow spiderwebs (melted for 10 seconds in the microwave and pulled apart over the grapes. Black grapes held together with a toothpick for a spider (with candy laces for legs). On the left compartment, the spider “egg sack” is fresh little mozzarella packages. Also, ghost and bat chips.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt and water

Today, I used:

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October 14, 2015

Doctor Whooves and the TARDIS Bento

I’ve been meaning to make a Doctor Who lunch for a while for my kiddo. Today, I stepped it up a bit and made it Doctor Whooves! Because ponies! The kiddo and I love us some My Little Ponies and this was enough for some great lunch fun 🙂

This is the fan video of Doctor Whooves where the fandoms (and the stars) aligned:

One of my favorite little detail of this lunch is the super cool steampunk clockwork gear sprinkles. They’re adorable and were perfect for this Time Steed lunch. I got them from the amazing collection at the Geeky Hostess and they have extended my readers a DISCOUNT! Use code “ONECRAFTYTHING” at the Geeky Hostess’ shop to save 20% off your order!

In this lunch:

Main Triple stacked TARDIS and Doctor Whooves sandwiches. The TARDIS cutter I got from Amazon (link below) and the Doctor Whooves cutter I got from Etsy. Both are outlined with food dye (I used a brush to place the dye).
Sides Green grape trees and trail mix with some fun gear steampunk sprinkles
Also included but not pictured Yogurt and a bottle of water

Today, I used:

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October 8, 2015

Them Bones Bento Lunch

I love October because that’s a time when all the spooky lunches come out. Today’s lunch? A boneyard. I’ve bought a treat last week at the store and have been waiting to use it! It’s the Cheetos 🙂 I don’t ever buy them but as a little treat, once in a while when they’re not bright orange, I’ll get them. This time, I found them in skeleton parts which I wish would’ve looked more like skeletons but eh, my kiddo loved them anyhow.

This is probably the third time we use the OmieBox. Overall impression: I like it, it’s a good box and allows for generous portions. Still bummed I can’t somehow attach a drink to it (besides a juice box) so that it can be self-contained but I found a lunch bag in our stash that’s big enough for it and a water bottle.

In today’s lunch:

Main A skull and bone shaped pair of PB&J sandwiches. I got the cutters at Williams Sonoma, but can’t find them there anymore 🙁
Sides Green grapes with skeleton food picks I picked up one year at Target, bone-shaped Cheetos, an apple carved into a skull, covered with food fresh to keep from browning

Today, I used:

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October 1, 2015

First Day of October Bento

Today was the first day of October and to celebrate, a simple pumpkin lunch. Also, a celebration of the return of the mandarins! So happy it’s starting to really feel like fall here in California.

In this lunch:

Main Triple stacked pumpkin PB&J sandwich with trail mix nuts around it. I used some tiny cutters to make the face (a triangle and a strange cloud-like cutter that I found in my supplies but I don’t know where I got it!)
Sides Green grapes and a mandarin
Also included but not pictured Yogurt and a bottle of water

Today, I used:

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September 29, 2015

Girl Scout Daisies Watermelon

This weekend my kindergartner kiddo (my second) became a Daisy. It was sweet to see her so excited and happy to see her friends and her new troop. The ceremony was a potluck and I promised to bring daisy themed fruit. I seriously considered just making a fruit arrangement but for the amount of people that were there, I figured I should try to merge that idea into a watermelon which served more people. This was the result 🙂

In this fruit bowl, I put in watermelon, pineapple and green grapes. I had a few extra red grapes from our weekly fruit so I used it for the center. I then carved the leaves around the middle. To garnish it a bit, I used green grapes at the bottom to sort of mimic leaves. I used toothpicks to attach the three bottom daisies to the watermelon and then used skewers to raise up the daisies in the back.

In this carving, I used:

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September 22, 2015

Hotel Transylvania 2 Bento

Today I did a Hotel Transylvania 2 Bento! I had so much fun being a part of this blog hop with my buddies from the Bento Bloggers and Friends group. I decided to concentrate on Mavis and her batty ways today, so bats is the theme. We can’t wait to see this movie, we loved the first one so much (well, maybe me more than the kids, but I’m a monster lover).

In this lunch:

Main A PB&J Mavis 🙂 For the outlining I used Nutella and for her teeth, two ghost sprinkles tucked into the bread… the bottoms make perfect vampire teeth!
Sides Bats & Ghost veggie chips and green and red grapes. The bat is made with three grapes — one for the body, one for the head and one cut in half for the wings (with triangles cut out to make them look like wings). I held the bat together with toothpicks. For eyes I use blue circle sprinkles, and for teeth, long white jimmies.
Also included but not pictured Applesauce

Today, I used:

Hop on over to the next lunch in our hop to see more Hotel Transylvania fun!

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September 17, 2015

Ocean Friends Bento

A leftover day! My kiddos love love love lobster. So once in a while, I buy wild rock lobster and make lobster rolls/lobster and butter pasta for dinner. It’s great for everyone because those who don’t want pasta eat it on a bun and those who love pasta can have it mixed in their noodles. Win-win! (And that’s a sort of rarity at my house, that I don’t have one or another kiddo complaining about dinner). My eldest kiddo begged for a lobster roll lunch so I made her an ocean friends bento today. I think the picks really help with this one as I’m not sure my whale-bun translated very well this time. Oh well, bet it’s delish for lunch.

As for the OmieBox performance, it performed well last time and served its purpose. I now send it in a bag, though, because my kiddo needs the water bottle. A small fork did fit in the container though!

Main Rock lobster sauteed in butter and garlic. Served warm. The roll is supposed to be the head of the whale (with blueberry eyes) and the tail is sticking out of the lobster.
Sides Blueberries, red grapes and the brown things on the top left are longan fruit, which is a little bit like lychee but more delicate. My kiddos love those too!

Today, I used:

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September 14, 2015

Tropical End of Summer Watermelon

For the end of the summer, some good friends threw a potluck pool party. I’m a potluck one-trick-pony by this point and decided to take advantage of the possibly last of the good watermelons of the summer. I wanted something slightly summer themed and found a great image of a pineapple parrot on the web. A MUST DO! So here it is, an end-of-summer, tropical themed fruit plate.

First, an up-close of my favorite part, the parrot!

As you can see, it’s made from the top of a pineapple. This is how I did it:

Cut the top of the pineapple off the body. I cut about 4 inches down to be conservative in allowing myself enough room to make a head.
Carve away the pineapple into a dome. Remember, this is the parrot’s head, so I made it slightly oblong so that it flowed into the beak.
Using kitchen shears, cut off all the leaves closest to the head. Try to cut some long because we will be using those later for the wings.
Carve a small carrot into a beak-like shape. I used a curved carving knife. Remember that parrots have hooked beaks so try to make sure you curve the beak. I also added a bottom beak from a small piece of carrot.
Attach the carrot with a half of a toothpick (or if you have 2 pieces, two halves of a toothpick). I put the pointy part into the carrot and the blunt part into the watermelon.
Place the long pieces of the cut leaves in the position of wings. I cut them so there was a small, medium, and long one. To place them I simply tucked them in between the cut pieces.
I was going to use blueberries originally for the eyes, but they were huge. I used candy eyes. I made a little cuts into the pineapple for eye sockets. Careful if you use candy; they don’t do well in wet places (the black middle could run) so be careful when you place them. They held up throughout the party though, until my kiddos ate them 😉
Place the parrot on the watermelon bowl with two toothpicks.

Here is the fruit salad with bowl; I used watermelon (balled), strawberries, red grapes, and green grapes. I used soem of the green grapes too, to look like leaves around the watermelon bowl.

For this fruit salad I used:

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September 3, 2015

Goldilocks and the 3 Probiotic Bears (and a small OmieBox review)

A while ago, on Kickstarter, I backed a project called OmieBox. It’s a new lunchbox that allows you to pack both hot and cold items in the same box. I thought it was genius!

Today I used my OmieBox for the first time, to pack a warm/cold lunch for my kiddo. For the first time, I have learned a bit more about how I’m going to use it.

The great stuff: I loved the insulated dish because it held more than I thought it would (a bowl’s worth of mac and cheese). The whole lunchbox is pretty deep so there are four slices of cheese up in the top container, here I think I could’ve put an entire ball of fresh mozzarella cheese in there! Overall, the concept is still awesome, too, so I’m liking the ability to put the warm foods and cold foods together.

What I’m still working out: When I put in hot food, usually, this will mean I need to put in a fork or some sort of utensil. Problem is that the OmieBox is supposed to be one contained lunchbox (with a handle and everything) and it’s hard to get that fork in without sacrificing food space in there. Today I sent it in as a lunchbox and wedged the fork in. I also realized at that point that our usual Thermos water bottle wasn’t going to fit. My kiddo said she would just use her “desk” water bottle (they’re allowed a plastic water bottle at her desk as opposed to her metal lunch water bottle). The easy solution to all this is to put the OmieBox into a large-ish lunch bag, but kind of takes away from the whole contained lunchbox thing.

Well, we’ll see how it performs today! I’ll report back.

Main Goldilocks is made of mac and cheese with a tortilla face painted with food coloring. A little bow food pick for her hair 🙂
Sides Fresh mozzarella cheese with sweet basil leaves for the tops of the tree. Raspberries and 3 Probiotic gummy bear vitamins.

Today, I used:

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August 26, 2015

The First Day of Third Grade Bento

It’s the first day of third grade! I have to admit, it snuck up on me. We went abroad this summer and we’re still jetlagged so really, I feel like this minute it’s 3 in the morning. But alas, the kids are in school and the bigger kiddo is in third grade. CRAZY. I wanted to remind her that she has someone fun waiting for her at home, so I did a dog lunch for her today. We just got a puppy and the kids are insanely excited about her. So here’s to another year of bentos!

Main PB&J puppy shaped with with circle cutters and triangles for ears. The brown stuff is Nutella; the eyes are Wilton large eyes. The nose is a blueberry.
Sides Blueberries and a 3rd made out of cheddar. A chocolate chip protein bar I shaped into a dog bone.
Also included but not pictured Applesauce and water.

Today, I used:

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