Tagged: sandwich

December 1, 2014

Advent Bento for the Holidays

After doing bento for a few years, it’s hard to come up with new themes every year, especially for the holidays. There are some things that MUST be done for certain holidays: Santas, trees, reindeer, etc. are a must for Christmas (since we celebrate it), turkeys are for thanksgiving, clovers are for St.Patrick’s day… And in a way, it’s instant theme, but on the other hand a bit limiting. Well, every year I try to think of a new Advent activity for the kiddos, and I thought it would be a good idea to bring it into lunch 🙂 So this year I’m doing advents bentos! I’m not going to be doing special bento every day, but I had the idea to do one every Monday, and for the lunches in between, I would give the kiddo one snack that would equal the number of days until Christmas. So for example, tomorrow she might get 23 goldfish crackers… I’ll send her a little note to count them!

But anyhow, for today, there are 24 days until Christmas and I thought it would be fun to have a little area with a surprise. So I just cut out a little piece of paper and taped it on top of the small section of our Easy Lunchbox. I had some extra Santa hat stickers from a kid craft we did, so I just stuck it on top to be festive. Can you tell what the surprise was? A little hard to tell, but I found some small coal-shaped pieces of chocolate for fun. I was going to put in a different treat, but honestly, the kiddos were acting up this morning and being difficult (it’s hard for everybody to get back into the swing of things after a week-long vacation), so I thought this was appropriate 😉

Main PB&J sandwich stamped and numbered cutouts. The holly decoration are just sprinkles.
Sides A mandarin orange and a half arranged like a wreath and coal chocolate pieces.
Also included but not pictured I thought this lunch was kind of light, so I included some bunny cheddar crackers, a mango fruit pouch and yogurt.

Today I used:

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November 27, 2014

Happy Turkey Day! Bento

Since there is no school this week, I made this bento at the end of last week. I meant for it to look like the turkey had a plaque behind him saying “Thanks” but it turned out that it ended up looking like a huge turkey afro, which, in retrospect, is really funny. That’s what happens when you’re dead set on using certain elements (the turkey is made out of pumpkin bread with all kinds of veggies in it) and end up with something that wasn’t quite in the plans.

In today’s lunch:

Main Turkey is made with pumpkin bread (loaded with zucchini, carrots, and squash). I baked the bread in a special round pan for cake pops, but they only came up as half-spheres. His beak is a cashew and his waddle is a craisin. His eyes are candy eyes and his tail is made from candy corn that I stuck into a slit in the side of the body (in retrospect, some peanut butter would’ve been good to secure the tail). Turkey afro is just a PB&J sandwich 🙂
Sides Cutie orange flower with a grape for the center. Trail mix with a mellowcreme marshmallow
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

Today I used:

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November 18, 2014

Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman Bento

If you have elementary school kiddos and PBS on TV, you have definitely seen Ruff Ruffman’s Fetch! It’s a great show that I’m sad ended a few years back. It encourages learning and discovery and is an all around good show. My kiddo’s favorite, in fact! I’ve been asked for a Ruff Ruffman bento now for aaaages and today, I got it together! And for those of you who have no idea who Ruff is, here’s a clip on how a search engine works:

Anyhow, here are the details of today’s bento:

Main PB&J Ruff with a blueberry nose. Ruff’s fur is peanut butter on the top layer of the sandwich and the stomach part is just another piece of bread. For the eyes I used large Wilton eyes (backward, so that I could customize the pupil size and add the rim of his glasses around his eyes) and for his eyebrows and mouth, a piece of black licorice.
Sides Fresh blueberries and trail mix with a graham cracker dog house. I drew the “door” on with an orange edible marker.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

Today I used:
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November 14, 2014

Octopus, Octopus, lurking in the water bento

A friend of mine gave cookie cutters as a party favor for her son’s birthday and this awesome octopus was one of them. It’s adorable! So I had to make a lunch out of it. It’s not the first time I’ve done an under-the-sea type of lunch (and most likely not the last!) but it was simple and easy to do with a few little details to make it fun. I made a simple tutorial for the squid here, so that you too can recreate this lunch!

Main PB&J Octopus. His tentacle-suckers were little pieces of cereal that I stuck in between the sandwich. It was tasty and it gave a plain cookie-cutter sandwich some nice detail, along with the candy eyes. I just broke the little cereals in two to get such even suckers.
Sides Goldfish crackers (naturally) and strawberry squid (tute here) on black grapes. The eye on the squid was just a little piece of bread on which I colored an eye with an edible marker.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt

For this lunch, I used:

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October 29, 2014

Monsters of Halloween Bentos!

Today, I’m part of the Bento Bloggers and Friends Hallowe’en Hop! Halloween is an awesome time for bento makers because of all the fun themes that arise from the season! And today is also special because it’s a two-fer 😉 I made one for my older kiddo to take to school and one for my preschool kiddo to eat at home, because she has very sweetly been asking for “pretty” lunches like her sister. She wants in on the fun too 🙂

The first one is for the older kiddo!

In the bento above:

Main Really, the “main” is three PB&J mini sandwiches shaped like bats! I used these for Halloween last year but love them so much that I brought them back… also, it goes with the “vampire” theme of one of the sides.
Sides Pomegranate seeds for a bloody vampire grin :), green grapes, and a 1/2 pear Frankenstein. His hair and eyebrows are an avocado skin that was well cleaned out (I had avocado for lunch yesterday and kept the peel) and his eyes are pre-made candy eyes. Teeth are just some mandarin skins (I had mandarins, too) I tucked into his mouth. His “bolts” on either side are a bit hard to see but they are also green grapes.
Also Included but not Pictured Yogurt

And for the preschooler, I made a slightly younger version of the above, but with some snacky changes that she would like. This was lunch:

Main 2 bone-shaped peanut butter sandwiches (no jam).
Sides A mandarin (with a jack-o’lantern face drawn on), a 1/2 of a pear Frankenstein (with smaller eyes and avocado hair), a banana ghost with chocolate chip eyes/mouth, six baby carrot sticks.

For more amazing Hallowe’en lunches, continue on to the next awesome bento blog on our hop! Just click on the image below!

Today, I used:

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September 17, 2014

A Farm Day Inspiration: A Peacock Bento

Every week I take my middle and youngest kiddos to the farm while my eldest is at school. It’s a fun and safe place to play and explore and they have story time and a session of cracking corn as well as feeding the animal of the week. It’s a good time to be had while waiting for the eldest kiddo to get out of school. Every week my eldest asks when she gets to go to the farm. So this week, I tried to give her a little farm in her lunch! It may not seem like peacocks are very farm-like animals, but our farm has a nice-sized flock (or an ostentation, as they are collectively called) of peafowl (cocks, hens, and chicks included).

In today’s lunch:

Main PB&J pocket sandwich with Nutella and sprinkles details. To pipe the bird, I put it in a sandwich bag and snipped the corner, for a makeshift icing bag.
Sides Tail feather made with galia melon, watermelon, and a grape: I used some nesting oval cutters to nest the watermelon in the galia and then the small one to cut a notch out of the grape. Around it, cantaloupe, galia melon, and watermelon balls (finally found a use for my tiny melon baller!). Also more grapes in the other compartment. The grapes were called peony grapes on the package and they’re very fleshy and sweet, perfect for hot end-of-summer days.
Also included but not pictured Even more melon (my leftover scraps). I have a ton of melon here, and it needs to be eaten!

Today, I used:

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July 18, 2014

Lego Bento

So I haven’t been making very many bentos. I know, I know. But it’s summer and hardly any take away lunches are needed. But this week has been a week of simple bentos (I didn’t photograph them) for summer camp culminating in this! I didn’t see the Lego movie but my kiddos did and they yelled “Everything is AWESOME!” for a really long time after that. And then this past weekend we went to a lego birthday. I ended up saving one of the cupcake toppers (hehehe) for my best bento of the week but lo and behold, it got smushed. Anyhow, since my friend was the party host, she lent me her mold and I made another little lego man for the last day of camp lunch. Anyhow, I ended up making the girly main character Wyldstyle and Unikitty. My kiddo loved this lunch and it was pretty easy to make — just cut the head with a knife and some straight cuts. Also, the hair! I had planned on making my own modeling candy clay from this tutorial for the hair but ran out of time. I, once again, have to give the credit to Lunchbox Dad’s WyldStyle lunch for inspiring me to use Wilton’s Edible dough for the hair. I’ve been trying out several different doughs out to see what works (marzipan, bread dough, etc.) and this stuff is great — just like play dough but edible! I have it here in black and dyed up some white in pink and blue for the hair. On to the lunch!

Main PB&J with edible dough for the hair, eyes, and mouth. Dragees for the eye highlights.
Sides Goldfish crackers, blueberries, a candy lego minifig, and a marshmallow Unikitty. I used a stacking smore marshmallow, which comes in a rectangle shape) and used foodwriter markers for the face details. Some more edible dough make up her mouth, nose and horn. Candy eyes doctored up with edible markers for the eyes. Little bits of marshmallow for the eye highlights.
Also Included (but not pictured) Two mandarins

Here is a nice closeup of Unikitty, too, which I particularly loved!
And today I used:

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March 27, 2014

The Magic Schoolbus

I’ve been on a bit of a bento-making hiatus… I’ve been making lunches, no doubt, but “pretty” lunches, as the kiddos call them, were beyond me for a bit there… too much to do at work and such. But One Crafty Thing is about doing it when you can, so here’s today’s lunch! I had a request from a while ago to make a Magic Schoolbus lunch. We love Magic Schoolbus here. So today, I tackled it. It took me a bit longer as I’m a little rusty, but here we go.

In today’s lunch:

Main PB&J triple stacked mini sandwiches. I have one here in the main lunchbox but I added one to an extra little container so as to not disrupt the composition (but not let the kiddo starve, either!) The two triple stacked mini sandwiches all equal one regular sandwich.
Sides Mandarins and strawberries, along with string mozzarella cheese stars (the rest of which went in the other container with the extra sandwich). The logo letters were made with a slice of American cheese. Also, there’s a graham cracker below the bus, to give it a background (and a little treat).
Also included (but not pictured) An applesauce pouch

Today I used:

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February 28, 2014

Pinkie Pie

My bento friend, Lunchbox Dad, and I were talking about our affinity for My Little Pony and how our kiddos really like them. And we really like them. Since we’ve both done a pony or two (we’ve both done Rainbow Dash! Here is his and here is mine), we thought we’d tackle the same ponies around the same time. Up there is my Pinkie Pie and here is his. So cute. He really did a great job with the raspberries — a stroke of genius, really!

So here is my humble try at Pinkie Pie. In my kiddo’s lunch:

Main PB&J on whole wheat (white). Pinkie Pie was made with melting candy wafers — I first did an outline of Pinkie and filled it in with candy. The details on her face and body are done with food writer pens (pink and black) and her cutie mark is actually some Mickey Mouse sprinkles, missing one ear! Her hair is the same pink melting wafers with additional gel food coloring.
Sides Mandarin and grape (with a little alligator pick since Pinkie’s pet, Gummy, is a little alligator). Green and red grapes on heart picks.
Also Included but not pictured Yogurt

Today I used:

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February 20, 2014

Girl Scout Cookie Mania

My kiddo, like so many little girls out there, was plunged into the world of sales and salesmanship in the last couple of weeks, due to cookie mania. Yes, we are selling Girl Scout cookies! I knew people liked them, but I had NO idea that people adored them with a passion like that! It’s been sale after sale. It’s been fun. But most of all, it’s been great to see my slow-to-warm-up kiddo get the courage to approach perfect strangers and ask them to buy some cookies. I’m sure the fact that she’s on the younger side (she’s a Daisy) and the pigtails helped too 😉 So here we go, an ode to cookiepalooza, this year’s cookie sales.

In this lunch:

Main PB&J on whole wheat (white) decorated to look like a Samoa. Stripes done with Nutella and eyes are candy eyes (I bought them in a pack that was for cupcakes so they’re bigger than the small eyes for cakepops). Eyelashes are black licorice and the mouth is a pink Mike&Ike. The rainbow daisy, the symbol for the Girl Scout Daisies, is made with candy-coated sunflower seeds (for those die-hards, I know I’m missing a petal… sorry! It wouldn’t fit!)
Sides Girl Scout cookies (Trefoils) and two strawberry roses.
Also included but not pictured Yogurt, bunny crackers, and a mandarin.

Today I used:

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