Daily Bento – Finally!

30 Dec

Hi Everyone!
It’s been a while. I took a break from posting to relax and enjoy my family. I hope you were able to do the same over the holiday.

I hadn’t been making bentos for Camryn due to the fact that we were either eating with family during lunchtime, eating out, or eating leftovers so there was no need.

I did make a snack bento for Cam to munch on while she was playing this afternoon.

I used a toothpick to write a quick message on her banana. The message will get darker as time goes on. This is only after about 15 minutes. I also cut a slit up the back of the banana to make it easier for her to peel.

She has clementines and grapes in the same tier with her banana.

In the other tier, she has a cheese stick sliced in half, Annie’s Bunny Friends and strawberries.

Daily Bento

21 Dec

He’s Coming!


Today is Camryn’s last day of school before she is off for the holidays for the next two weeks. Her class is going to be watching Polar Express today while they sip hot chocolate with marshmallows and munch on popcorn. She also got to wear her pajamas and slippers to school. Best day ever? I’d say so.

For lunch I packed her two gingerbread man sandwiches (one filled with chocolate hazelnut spread and the other with chicken), clementines, strawberry Santa hats, candy cane Hershey Kisses, and egg nog cookies.

The Santa hats are super easy to make. I just cut the leaves from each strawberry & blotted dry with a paper towel so that the chocolate would stick. I dipped them in melted white chocolate and sprinkled white sparkly sprinkles over the top of the chocolate before it set. Then I cut a marshmallow in half and stuck it on top. If you didn’t want to mess with melted chocolate you could use banana slices or you could use the bigger marshmallows, sliced horizontally & just stick them to the bottom.

Egg nog cookies are just sugar cookies with a little cinnamon and nutmeg added to the dough before baking. When the cookies are cooled, I add egg nog to powdered sugar a teaspoon at a time and mix well until it becomes thin enough to drizzle over the cookies. I drizzle over with a fork and then add some sprinkles.  That’s it.

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Daily Bento

20 Dec

It’s a Christmas bento!

For lunch today I packed 3 gingerbread man cookies, clementines, 2 muffins that I added sprinkles to just before baking to make them more festive, 2 Christmas tree sandwiches decorated with sprinkles, and a candy cane Hershey Kiss.

I used a small star-shaped cutter to make the star for the tree. Then I smeared a little hazelnut spread on it and covered it with sprinkles. Voila!

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Daily Bento

19 Dec

It’s a piggy bento!

Cam requested a pig bento today since she had a panda bento yesterday.

In this one, I packed a piggy sandwich along with two tiny flower shaped sandwiches. I had a little bread left from cutting the pig shape out and I didn’t want it to go to waste.

I also packed clementine wedges, Ritz Bitz cheese crackers, and 3 mini marshmallows in the tiny box. I had to include the mushroom box, pigs love mushrooms. Actually, pigs will eat anything. They’re not picky. I speak from experience.

I’m really not sure if those pink animals in the clementines are supposed to be pigs. I think they look more like frogs but Cam swears they’re pigs.

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Daily Bento

18 Dec

 

It’s a panda bento!

For lunch today I packed a panda sandwich, clementines, carrot and celery slices and a few panda friends to sweeten up Cam’s lunch.

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Daily Bento

17 Dec

 

For lunch today I packed some leftover mac and cheese from dinner last night in Cam’s Funtainer Thermos. The trick to keeping food warm in these thermoses is to pour hot water into the thermos and let it sit for several minutes before you add the hot food. Cam only has to wait a couple of hours before lunch time but I know that this method keeps food warm for several hours.

I also packed some Space Adventures Goldfish and chocolate chip cookies with red, green and white sprinkles in one tier. In the other tier I packed tomatoes and celery slices.

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17 Dec

I went back and forth for a while over whether or not to mention anything about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary on this blog.

I don’t think I’ll be able to articulate into words anything profound enough to do justice to the grief that our nation as a whole is feeling for the families who have lost their precious loved ones. On the other hand, it didn’t feel right to just write up my daily bento post and move on without mentioning it when our nation as a whole is mourning and searching for answers.

So I’ll just say this and leave it alone.

As a parent of a child who is close in age to the victims, this one hit me hard. I can’t help but think of my daughter when I look at the faces of the young victims who were gunned down Friday morning. I know parents who picked their kids up from school early on Friday when news of the shooting broke. Just so they could hug their children and keep them close as they processed this horrifying information. And to be honest, I think we all hugged our children a little tighter as we picked them up from car circles or bus stops all around our nation on Friday afternoon. Our sons and daughters were safe but there were other parents in Connecticut that would never again get to ask how their child’s day was or what they learned in class or who they played with on the playground that day and knowing that was heavy on our hearts.

Sandy Hook Elementary was a school that had done everything right. They had a security system installed, they had an action plan in place, and they did drills on a regular basis. It was a great school in a great town that was full of good and decent people. They did not deserve this. No one does, especially not small, defenseless children.

Life is precious. Our children are precious. Every moment we have with them is precious because as we all saw on Friday as we sat and watched helpless and horrified, it can all be taken away in an instant.

I can only hope that in the coming days, the families and friends of the victims who lost their lives in this tragedy will be able to somehow find some comfort and peace from their grief. That the support and prayers of the entire nation will help to heal their broken hearts. And that the deaths of their children will not have been in vain, but will instead be the catalyst for positive, peaceful change so that no other parent ever has to experience the same grief.

This isn’t to debate gun laws or how mental health issues are handled in our country. I only wish to express my most sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims and my hope that their dear departed loved ones may rest in peace.

Cass

Daily Bento

14 Dec

 

Happy Friday!

Mr. Wiggles is no longer with us. He was taken in the night by the Tooth Fairy. No need to worry though, she left a note and a dollar so all is well.

The expulsion of Mr. Wiggles was pretty uneventful too. We were eating dinner last night and all of the sudden, Camryn stopped chewing, looked right in my face and with a mouthful of chicken said “Mom, I have something to tell you.” That was it, no tears, no freaking out. I cleaned up the tooth, rinsed her mouth out, and she went right back to eating. That kid is a maniac.

For her lunch today, I used the butterfly Lunch Punch from the “Critters” set to make her a pretty chicken sandwich. I used a butterfly fondant cutter to make smaller butterflies out of swiss cheese. Next to that I made flowers out of celery, carrots and tomatoes. I just used a knife to split the celery almost to the bottom, to cut notches out of the carrots, and to slice ends off of grape tomatoes. Easy peasy.

I packed strawberries and clementines in the larger section and pretzel sticks in the smaller section.

 

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Daily Bento

13 Dec

 

For today’s bento, I used a cutter from my new “Critter” Lunch Punch set. I’m not sure if that’s a whale or a dolphin you’re looking at because I threw the package away without checking. Cam says whale so in our house – it’s a whale. Either way, the “whale” Lunch Punch actually cuts two whales out of one sandwich and leaves very little bread behind.

I also packed Space Adventures Goldfish, half a stick of string cheese and some grape tomatoes.

Daily Bento

12 Dec

It’s 12/12/12. Had I been a little more with it and planned ahead accordingly, I probably could have come up with a themed bento today instead of a hodge podge bento. Oh well.

I made a quick pasta salad last night that consisted of veggie pasta, broccoli, peas, olives, tomatoes, chicken and mozzarella cheese. I threw the frozen broccoli and peas in with the pasta during the last minute of boiling time. Then I drained the pasta and veggies and mixed in everything else. I drizzled just a tiny bit of Italian dressing over the top and gave it one more good mix.

I slapped it into Cam’s bento along with some clementine wedges and a homemade carrot and pineapple muffin.

Lots of fruits and veggies going on today.

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