Tagged: food art

Leprechaun bento with a Rainbow side

leprechaun

In keeping with the St. Patrick’s day theme, today’s bento is an Elmo leprechaun. A couple of weeks ago, the kiddo and I were shopping and found an Elmo cutter at the supermarket. Ever so caring, she thought her sister would love an Elmo sandwich and begged me to buy it. So here I am, trying to get some work out of that Elmo cutter! I’m also making use of a Christmas present from my cousin-in-law: a mustache cutter! I love this mustache cutter– so fun.


Sandwich PB&Jam as usual. The eyes have (dried) blueberry pupils and a mellowcreme pumpkin reshaped nose. The mustasche is the crust end of the sandwich.
Sides Green Grapes and kiwi cut into shamrocks; in the additional container, I put strawberries, clementines, green grapes and dried blueberries.


Today I used:


St Patricks Day Theme Food - Fun Bento Lunch

Three days to St. Patrick’s Day Bento

stpatty

With three days until St. Patty’s, I thought a bento to commemorate was in order! In the full sized Steeltainer container, the Kindergarten Kiddo got a shamrock (PB&J) sandwich along with a couple of little treats — some gold coins and a third of a rainbow sour belt! Despite the little bits of candy making up some of this bento, most of her lunches are fairly healthy. For sides today, she had a stick of fresh mozarella and a little bowl of green grapes.

stpatty_mini

My Preschooler Kiddo often talks about how I only make “pretty lunches” for her sister and it’s true; Preschool Kiddo gets her lunch from the preschool, so there is no need to pack a lunch for her. I think that makes her feel left out so since she doesn’t have school today, I packed her this extra little bento (in the snack size Steeltainer ) with my shamrock scraps.

On to the details!


Sandwich PB& Jam as usual. I’ve been trying to include other types of non-sandwich lunches on non-bento days and sometimes they get eaten and sometimes not… still experimenting. To build the four-leaf clover, I just cut hearts up and gave them a smaller heart-shaped “window.” The peanut butter has a little green food coloring and the jam is on the inside part of the window part of the sandwich, so that it doesn’t show through. Nesting heart cutters were perfect for this! The little four leaf clover was made of my window scraps.

Sides In the large bento, a sandwich ball wrapped with a Rainbow Sour Belt and 3 chocolate coins (the funny thing about these coins is that they’re actually not just generic coins but in fact they’re Euros! That cracks me up.) Not pictured in the large bento are the extra green grapes and the stick of fresh mozarella that I put in her lunch as well.

In the small bento, a cutie orange broken up into the classic orange flower, with a green grape middle.


Today I used:


St Patricks Day Theme Food - Fun Bento Lunch

Phineas and Perry!

phineas
I’ve been wanting to do a Phineas and Ferb bento for a while now, since my kiddos are big fans of P&F. For this one, I tackled Phineas and Perry the platypus.

For this bento, I did a little experiment and found out you can actually microwave a candy corn pumpkin and it becomes pliable enough to shape into a platypus beak! Just a little tip — don’t overheat the candy because it becomes MOLTEN CANDY LAVA inside and will tear the top three layers of your fingertips off as soon as you try to touch it. I’m amazed I still have fingerprints. Apparently, the difference between clay-like candy corn and Mt. St. Candy Corn Pumpkin is merely seconds. The first (and most painful) time I microwaved it, I did it for 10 seconds. Yeouch! The second time I did it for 5 and it was still too hard. Third time was a charm at 7 seconds and was much easier to handle at that point being a little hotter than warm and not fire-pits-of-Hell hot. Microwave times may vary, though, according to your microwave.


Sandwich Back to PB& Jam (Peach this time!) on whole wheat. Unfortunately, my grilled cheese Dr. Seuss was a bust for the kiddo. She just didn’t like cold grilled cheese. I don’t blame her. Hair is cheddar cheese (enhanced with some food marker); eyes are two white melting wafers with blue mini-m&ms.
Side Dried blueberries with shaped white melting wafers for the eyes (topped with brown mini M&Ms) and a re-shaped candy corn pumpkin for the beak 😉


I also thought it would be fun to show you the sketches I make to plan out my bentos (sorry for the funky colors, it’s a quick phone shot).
IMG_7072

Today I used:

Dr. Seuss’s Birthday is tomorrow!

drseuss

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss’s birthday and we wanted to commemorate with a Fish (grilled cheese) sandwich! Fish is my favorite character from the Cat in the Hat. Honestly, there were a few more things I wanted to do but we ran out of time. I spent too much time trying to get the fish’s eye right, I think. It’s ok though because I call it a subtle hint of Seuss 😉


Sandwich Woo hoo! We’re off the PB&J and today it was grilled cheese! The fish I made with a template from a print out used on sliced cheese. The eye was a flattened out piece of Marshmallow Bit(s). The fish was outlined and drawn in edible markers, as was the goldfish bowl.
Sides Fuji apples and (not pictured) a mandarin.


Today I used:

A Mermaid and her Pearl

IMG_3534

Today’s mermaid bento gave me a chance to do a couple of things: first, it was a chance for me to use two different cutters to bring them together to form something else. I’m always looking to see how I can get more mileage out of my cutters, so here I used a Lunch Punch fish cutter (cut out only one fish) and then a gingerbread man cookie cutter of the same size for the top. The second thing was to use the almond scales again! Last time when I did the fish bento, I didn’t completely cover the tail with the almonds. This time, though, I really wanted a full-scale effect. My favorite part of this bento? The fennel greens as hair — I think it makes her look more like a sea witch, which is more my thing, anyhow.


Sandwich PB& Blackberry Jam; fennel greens for the hair, heart and round sprinkles for the eyes and mouth and bra, almond slivers for the scales.
Sides Goldfish crackers, of course! The “pearl” is actually a fruit called longan that my kiddo adores — not very common but similar to lychee.


Today I used:

Mickey Bento

mickey

We went to Disneyland last weekend and to remind her of some fun memories, I made the kiddo’s lunch into an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse. There are big fans of Mickey and Minnie here and I’ve done a Minnie bento before as well as some Minnie cupcakes for the Little Kiddo’s birthday.



Sandwich PB& Blackberry Jam with craisin eyes and nose; I also used the jam for his ears.
Sides (Body) Dried blueberries with a fruit roll up pair of pants with marshmallow buttons; (Shoes) Carrots