Category Archives: Cooking

Mar21

4 Fun PlanetBoxes

Posted on March 21, 2013 by rachel.beard

Last night was “Taco Night,” a family tradition since we moved to Pennsylvania. I cook a giant batch of this awesome chicken taco mix in the crockpot and my parents come over and let us host for once! We all hover over our tiny kitchen table and make our own tacos (crispy and soft). Even though the eating seems endless, it is relatively healthy (low-fat ingredients and lots of veggies) and there is always a lot left over!

Girlie took a little burrito made with fat-free refried beans and low-fat cheese and she has lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and a little dipper of low-fat sour cream on the side. She also has some cheese shapes, strawberries, golden plum slices, and a bit of my mom’s sopapilla dessert. Delish!

This lunch is full of fruit and dairy goodness. She has a large serving of fruit salad, composed of strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple. She also has mini peppers, cheddar cheese tortilla pinwheels, a yogurt-covered pretzel, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube.

I can’t resist packing Cute-Z-Cute sandwiches in all of our lunchboxes. She had a frog that was surrounded by blueberries. She also had mini peppers with a laughing cow lite wedge, grapes, a chocolate quarter, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube.

This lunch was a leftover from Pi Day last week! She had a slice of apple pie, strawberries, grapes, cheddar stars, mini peppers, and tortilla and cheese pinwheels.

I like the versatility of the PlanetBox because it has sections of varying sizes and shapes, which naturally causes the layout to be dynamic and fun. Even though I pack relatively similar ingredients within the same week, the lunch always looks different. It looks neat and clean and the stainless steel makes the food color “pop,” which gets my kids more excited to eat a variety of foods.

Do you have a PlanetBox? What dishes do you like to pack in the big dipper? I’d love some ideas on how to use it!

Here are the products I used in this post:

This lunch is linked to:

Mar12

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

Posted on March 12, 2013 by rachel.beard

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

I have not posted any great themed lunchboxes lately, but I do have a mixed up post of leftover bento lunches to show off today. None are creative, but they’re nutritious, filling, and got us out the door quick when we overslept (thank you daylight savings!).

I’ll start with my husband, who had some grilled chicken left over from a playdate/BBQ we hosted on Sunday. He has two pieces of chicken, surrounded by celery, sweet baby peppers, pineapple chunks, and two wedges of laughing cow lite. This is a nice lunch that has some color and low-fat protein to help him stay full and hopefully avoid the snack truck at work!

Girlie has leftover LoMein from the Chinese takeout we had over the weekend. We very rarely do take out, but we were working in our garden, and by 5:30, we realized we were too tired and too late to start cooking someting and too filthy to go out. I dialed up some Chinese food and we kept working in the garden right up until the delivery guy pulled into our driveway. The kids loved the Lo Mein and I sent the leftovers with Girlie in her Tinkerbell thermos along with a Kotobuki box full of ants on a log, sweet baby pepper, honey crisp apple, and grapes. YUM.

Little Dude has some leftover pasta in a thermos, grapes and pineapple, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. I heated up the pasta and then just dumped the frozen peas right in the thermos and stirred it together. The peas defrost this way, without getting wrinkly and overcooked. I added some fresh Parmesan cheese on top.

My husband had another round of grilled chicken leftovers, this time with a slightly Irish twist. He has the orange peppers, white chicken, and green celery to represent the colors of the flag of Ireland. He also has some of the leftover shamrock ravioli from Costco and pineapple chunks.

Girlie also has the shamrock ravioli, along with crackers and cheese, apple slices, and edamame. I included a valentine heart (yes, I am STILL doling out candy, even after I purged a bunch of the really bad stuff) and a poem for her to go with this week’s -IGHT word family. She loves this new tradition and I found this notepaper that is perfect for writing short poems on. Today’s poem is: “You are a star, your light so bright. You keep away the fright at night. Snuggle up to me. Hold me tight. When I’m with you, I feel all right.” She is probably reading it right now at kindergarten lunchtime. Awww. Her reading is improving quickly and she loves reading everything she sees now. It is so fun to be able to bond over books together!

Here are the products used in this post:

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Mar6

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by rachel.beard

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!

Have you tried the CuteZCute sandwich cutter yet? It has been out of stock on Amazon.com, but it is now back! To help celebrate its triumphant return (they are made by a mom-friend of mine), I have been making CuteZCute lunches all week! I made one of each animal. Check them out:

This one is an all-time CuteZCute favorite. I used the frog template and then cut bones out of white cheddar to make a froggy pirate flag. I added blueberries and cheese for the border. He has strawberries and some leftover cookie from the huge batch I baked over the weekend. I wish I had captured Little Dude’s face when he saw this thing! His face lit up and he was jumping up and down. And then, of course, it was some kid’s pizza-lunch birthday at school and he didn’t get to eat it there. Fortunately, he hated what I made for dinner that night (some quinoa casserole) and he got to eat his lunch then instead!

For this CuteZCute pig I packed for Girlie, I dyed some of the cutouts with beet juice that I had left after roasting beets for dinner. I dipped them in the beety goodness and then left them out to dry overnight. They were probably too dry to eat, but they sure looked cute! He also had cheddar and jack cheese cubes, sugar snap peas, strawberries skewered with heart picks, blueberries, tomatoes, and cucumber.

Little Dude’s new favorite trend is asking for two sandwiches every day. He wants a peanut butter sandwich and a cheese sandwich. Today, he has a CuteZCute cat PB&J sandwich and a tiny flower cheese sandwich that was cut out from Girlie’s sandwich (which will be featured in my Lunch Punch winner announcement, coming soon). He has a mini-dipper of trail mix, strawberries, and pineapple. I added some cute picks just for fun. Little Dude helped me pick the pineapple at the grocery this weekend. As we were going through the store, he held it and kept talking about “Spongebob’s home.” I let him help me chop up the pineapple chunks this morning and I tried to reinforce knife safety: “When is it OK to use a knife, Little Dude?” And instead of answering something about having a parent to help you to be safe, he answered “when you’re cutting up Spongebob’s home!” Gotta love preschool logic!

This last lunch is a CuteZCute panda in a Panda Kotobuki bento box. He has the Panda, cheese slices, a strawberry and blueberry flower, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube. Cute, fun, and easy to make!

Do you have a CuteZCute cutter yet? They are only $9.99 for the set of all four animals I showed above. They are very cute and easy to make. They will produce a lot of leftover bread, but you can use that for bento scrap muffins, egg in a hole, breadcrumbs, and endless other recipes that don’t end up wasting too much food. For more CuteZCute lunch ideas, check out this pinterest board!

Products used in this post:

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Feb26

Totally Tortellini!

Posted on February 26, 2013 by rachel.beard

Totally Tortellini!

The kids have a new favorite dinner and it is tortellini! I made an entire package for dinner on Sunday night and intended for them to have leftovers, but there was not much left for lunch. I was looking for some creative ways to serve the remainder in small portions and this is what I came up with:

Girlie’s lunch was served on heart picks with a small container of tomato sauce in her little dipper. She also had sugar snap peas, strawberries, blueberries, a Chobani Champions yogurt tube, and a small Valentine’s Day chocolate. I got the skewered tortellini idea from this pin, but tried it with red sauce instead of pesto. Please take a minute and use this link to vote for me in the Planetbox photo contest. I’d love to win another one for Little Dude to use!

Little Dude is also tortellini-crazed and he had his leftovers in his EasyLunchbox Mini-Dippers. He also had strawberries and blueberries, including a heart-shaped strawberry in his yogurt. We found these great new rocket crackers at Trader Joe’s this weekend and he was happy to have those in his lunchbox as well.

I’ve mentioned before that I am looking for new meal ideas for my vegetarian kids. I’ve seen a lot of people having success from group boards on pinterest. I just created a new board called Vegetarian Food for Kids. Comment or e-mail me if you’d like to be added as a pinner. I would love some broad new ideas. We are really stuck in a mac-and-cheese / quesadilla rut. What is your most common dinner entree?

I used these products in my post:

Jan18

New Planetbox & Pinterest Craziness

Posted on January 18, 2013 by rachel.beard

New Planetbox & Pinterest Craziness

There is something really scary going on in my house. I’m in a Pinterest frenzy! I’ve been cooking up a storm and organizing stuff and making things…very out of character for me. I did not nest like this when I was pregnant, but somehow taking care of a sick Little Dude all week really brought it out in me. It was a busy week juggling caring for a sick baby, my crazy workload, and this crazy compulsion to make things. The arrival of our new PlanetBox only fueled that fire and I had fun making new foods in a new layout!

Wednesday’s PlanetBox had a zucchini tot with a small dipper of ketchup, mango and kiwi, blueberries, fried rice, and a Chobani Champions yogurt tube.

Thursday’s lunch was a cheese-filled crescent roll, mango & kiwi, granola, Greek yogurt with berries mixed in, veggie kabobs on heart picks, and a chocolate quarter.

Today’s lunch was edamame, mango, kiwi, and blueberries, trail mix, a Chobani Champions tube, and a pasta salad made with tomato, red bell pepper, and white beans.

I am finding myself more and more jealous of Girlie’s lunches (and Nate’s too when I pack them). I kind of want to start making my own lunch in advance instead of trying to rustle something up between conference calls. Good idea, right?

Here is a list of crazy stuff I made from Pinterest this week:

White Bean & Sriracha Dip

Beet & Yogurt Salad with Yogurt & Mint

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

Baked Brie (Served with Apples & Grapes)

Breakfast Cookies

Cheesecake Bars

Slow Cooker Sesame Chicken

Zucchini Tots

On top of all of that, I also cooked a giant pot of soup to eat all week and baked some delicious cinnamon raisin bread in my bread machine.

I also had Girlie help me with a Pinterest craft of DIY Air Freshener! She was actually very handy with a hammer and nail!

So that about catches me up on my week. This is the first day this week that everyone is at school or work and nobody got sent home sick from either. Well, it is only 4pm, so I may be pushing my luck by stating that!

Are you as pinterest crazed as I am? If not, what do you do when you’re cooped up at home with a sick kid?

Here is a link to an PlanetBox on Amazon, if you’re interested in learning more:

Jan16

Weekly Round-Up

Posted on January 16, 2013 by rachel.beard

Weekly Round-Up

I finished last week’s goal of a different lunchbox every day of the week for Girlie! I cannot believe that she has 10 different styles of lunchboxes now. Clearly, I am a bento addict! Luckily, she appreciates my mania. It was fun to keep mixing things up all week and trying new foods too!

Thursday’s lunch features a whole lot of pink! I roasted some beets for myself and kept some of the beet juice to dye a hard boiled Hello Kitty Egg and to mix with cream cheese for super pink cream cheese and jelly pinwheels. I also gave her strawberries, grape tomatoes, a slice of beet, and Very Berry Chobani Champions. I was proud of her for tasting the beet slice, but I was not surprised that she did not like it!

Friday was a Hello Kitty fun day! Girlie had yogurt mixed with berries and a side of granola to sprinkle in. She also had a cheese and veggie bacon crescent roll, red bell pepper, sugar snap peas, cucumber slices, and ranch dip in a mini dipper. I also gave her some milk in her Hello Kitty thermos and put all of it in her Hello Kitty lunch bag.

On Monday, we got back to our tried and true EasyLunchboxes. I made these ridiculously delicious cheesecake bars over the weekend (primarily made from crescent roll dough and cream cheese) and they were a huge hit with Girlie, so I included one in her lunch, but with lots of fruit and veggies to balance it out. She got a pattern of carrot, sugar snap peas, and grape tomatoes in the large compartment. I added grapes and blueberries in one small compartment and greek yogurt in the other.

Yesterday’s lunch was a simple PB&J, but made with the cinnamon raisin bread I baked in my new bread machine. I served that with grapes, blueberries, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, some low-fat Ranch in a mini-dipper, and an Orange Vanilla Chobani Champions. I added her glass water bottle for the photo – it is a Lifefactory bottle and this is what she brings almost every day.

Little Dude and I have been sick off and on and he’s barely been at school this month. I’ve been keeping him busy with TV, games, and cooking projects. He’s back again today, so let’s hope he doesn’t get sent home with another fever! Does you have any kid-tested immunity boosting recipes to recommend? I’ve been trying to force liquids and vitamin C, but the colds just keep coming. I’d love any other ideas you can share!

Here are the products I used in this lunch:

This lunch is linked at:

Jan9

Shaking It Up (a little)!

Posted on January 9, 2013 by rachel.beard

Shaking It Up (a little)!

Like the rest of the world, I am doing my best to start the New Year right. I have cleared out all the holiday treats and I’m back to trying to eat as cleanly as I can and encouraging the kids to do the same. I am lucky because I have full control of one of their meals every day. They are required to sit at their lunch table and eat. I cannot get the same result at home sometimes! This week, I am introducing smoked gouda and parsnips! Girlie also got to try out a new lunchbox set that I received as a gift from my friend Shannon at BentoLunch.net.

Monday’s new foods included carrot chips (which were a huge hit) and a heart sandwich baked on bread from our new bread machine. Girlie helped with both projects and I think that helped a lot with her wanting to eat the carrots in particular. She also has sugar snap peas, tangerine, blueberries, and trail mix.

Tuesday’s lunch was packed in this adorable new bento set from Paperchase. I included granola bites, tangerine and blueberries, vegetarian bacon and cheese crescent rollups, yellow bell pepper, carrots, and 2 small wedges of low-fat smoked gouda. she also got a frozen smoothie, packed in a ball jar. This was Girlie’s first taste of smoked gouda and she said her first reaction was “yuck,” but then “YUM” and ate the rest of it! Now I am scared she will turn into an addict like me! She also loved her new boxes with their adorable and girlie design!

The lids have adorable girls in kimonos and the boxes came with a strap. We used the smallest three boxes yesterday and here is how it all looked in her lunchbag, with the smoothie, cloth napkin, reusable spoon, and a straw. I included a note to say “I love you my little cub!” because this week’s word family is “-ub.”

Today’s lunch features a CuteZCute pig with two types of cheese on my homemade bread. I also put some pinto beans that I cooked yesterday with the sandwich. The other side of this kotobuki panda container has carrots and parsnips that I sauteed with a little bit of butter and cinnamon and then glazed with maple syrup. Yeah, it was more like candy than vegetable, but it was her first time tasting a parsnip and she loved it! I am excited to have given her two new foods already this week! I also packed the largest of the Paperchase containers with strawberries and blueberries and I included Chobani Champions. I am a little jealous of her lunch today.

So, I am 3 for 3 on mixing up lunchboxes for the week and I’ve introduced 2 new foods and carrots prepared in two new ways. I ran to the farm store by our house and picked up even more fruits and veggies for the rest of the week. I am not sure what new food I will try next, but I know I am going to keep mixing up lunchboxes for the week and make sure she gets a different style each day. Any suggestions on a new food to try?

Here are the products I used in this post:

This lunch is linked at:

Nov20

Random Round-up: Bentos & Cookies!

Posted on November 20, 2012 by rachel.beard

Random Round-up: Bentos & Cookies!

Girlie woke up with an exciting idea to make her own lunch. I don’t need a lot of convincing, so I stepped back and watched her get to work! Here is her finished creation:

She used a critter cutter lunch punch to make a dolphin cheese sandwich and colored in the dolphins with smilies, using food markers! She added a candy eye for extra cuteness. She gave herself pretzel sticks, pears, and carrots, all packed in her EasyLunchbox.I love when she packs her own lunch because it is always creative and healthy.

Next is an easy and snacky lunch for Little Dude. He got PB&J Pinwheels, pretzels, cheese triangles, yogurt, and pears. This lunch was very fast and easy to put together and features many of his favorite foods.

The kids had matching lunches on Friday of last week. I gave them both this super protein lunch that features egg, cheese, peanut butter, and greek yogurt! There is also crackers, apples, and mixed berries. This lunch was very filling and they ate almost everything – there were just a few broken crackers left in the bottom of the lunchbox!

Next up: Halloween Cookies! We went to a Holiday Cookie Swap party this weekend, and my husband had the excellent suggestion that our Holiday could be Halloween (since I prefer it to Christmas anyway!) and that we could use our leftover Halloween Candy in the cookies! We had bought a huge bag of candy from Costco and then Halloween was cancelled by Frankenstorm. Instead of buying chocolate chips for our recipe, we just chopped up a whole bunch of snickers, twix, and kit kats and had a blast putting a new spin on an old recipe! Girlie did most of the work, and sadly, I did most of the sampling! They were delicious!

Halloween Candy Cookies Recipe
Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup softened butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
12 oz Halloween candy, chopped

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in bowl and set aside.
Combine brown sugar, granulated sugar, softened butter or margarine, and vanilla, and then beat until creamy.
Add eggs and beat.
Add dry ingredients and mix well.
Stir in Halloween candy chunks.
Drop mixture by rounded teaspoonfuls onto parchment paper on cookie sheets.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes.
Recipe yields approximately 2 dozen cookies.

Do you still have candy leftover? These cookies would be good to bring to Thanksgiving as well! Let me know if you try it and like it!

Do you have any big plans for the holidays? I am taking a much needed break and will not be posting next week. I should have some fun things to share when I return the week of 12/3! Happy Holidays!

I used these products in this post:

Nov13

Bento Scrap French Toast Muffins Recipe!

Posted on November 13, 2012 by rachel.beard

Bento Scrap French Toast Muffins Recipe!

I always laugh when I post a recipe, because I think of myself as someone who “doesn’t cook.” One of these days, I will have to admit that I do. This most recent creation was inspired by my bento blogger friends who have made all kinds of fun stuff using their bento scraps. I realized that since I have become obsessed with the CuteZCute sandwich cutter, I am making smaller sandwiches and leaving more bread scraps behind. The CuteZCute sandwich size is perfect for my kids, but it does leave some excess bread that I feel wasteful throwing away. I remembered great bento scrap french toasts recipe by More Than Your Average Mom and Mamabelly and I decided to give it a try.

I made a few adjustments to their recipe ideas and decided to make muffins instead of a casserole. This recipe yielded 12 very filling muffins. I will definitely make a double batch next time, now that I know to start saving all my bread scraps!

Ingredients:

4 Cups of Bread Scraps (mine were roughly ripped into pieces, frozen, and then defrosted in the microwave right before use in recipe)

4 Eggs, beaten

1 Cup of Milk

3 Tbsp Maple Syrup

1/4 Cup Applesauce

1/3 Cup Pancake Mix

1 tsp Homemade Vanilla Extract

2 Tbsp Butter

Cinnamon Sugar (from grinder)

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Spray muffin tin with non-stick spray and put just a tiny sliver of butter in the bottom of each muffin cup.

Defrost frozen bread on a microwaveable plate with a damp paper towel covering the bread, about one minute.

Divide the bread evenly among the muffin cups and press down so they will stay under the the rim of the cups.

In a large bowl, mix eggs, milk, maple syrup, apple sauce, pancake mix, and vanilla.

Pour the egg mixture evenly over the bread scraps.

Grind cinnamon sugar onto the top of each muffin and add another thin slice of butter to each one.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until brown and crispy on the outside.

If you have scraps of fruit, you could add those too. We are fruit-a-holics at our house and there is rarely any leftover.

The kids went nuts over the muffins and it definitely fueled them for all the fun of the day. In the photo above, they were just about to head to gymnastics and I snapped a shot in front of one of our trees. After the Wednesday snowstorm, we had the most fantastic weekend weather and spent lots of time outdoors!

The muffins are long gone now, but my freezer bag of bread scraps is filling up again. I will definitely make this recipe again and again. It is a new family favorite. Please let me know if you try it and like it too! I’d love to hear any ideas about what you do with bento scraps too!

Today is the last day to enter my Footsteps2Brilliance subscription giveaway! Click here to enter! Thank you!

Nov9

Beep Beep! Snowy Truck Lunch & Spacey Preschool Bento

Posted on November 9, 2012 by rachel.beard

Beep Beep! Snowy Truck Lunch & Spacey Preschool Bento

It snowed! I could not believe it when I saw a tiny snowflake drift by my window and then a few more and then some real snow flurries! All of a sudden it was snowing and the snow was accumulating. Just for fun, I took a picture of Thursday’s bento on our snow-covered patio table, but you can’t really see the snow in the photo.

I made this lunch for Little Dude because he has been talking more and more about trucks and stop signs. It is a PB&J that I cut with a transportation Lunch Punch. I made the stop sign out of grapes and strawberries. The truck is driving on a cheese road. I added a little bento pick to be the driver. He also has grapes and strawberries in the fruit compartment. The smallest compartment contains yogurt and a strawberry W.

This morning, I was feeling less inspired. I said out loud (but to myself!), “What should I make for lunch today?” I was very surprised when Little Dude got up and walked over to the drawer where I keep cookie cutters and sandwich cutters and picked out space-themed cutters and a Star Wars Tie Fighter sandwich cutter. He had a great time helping me make the lunch and cutting shapes out of cheese!

This is a Star Wars tie fighter sandwich made with SunButter and Jam. I added the spacey cheddar shapes for accent pieces. If only I had blueberries, I’d have a full rainbow of fruits and veggies in the small compartments. They have strawberries, carrots, pineapple, sugar snap peas, and grapes. I loved that both kids worked on this lunch with me this morning. I was really excited to see Little Dude being so creative and practicing fine motor skills with trying to pop out tiny pieces of cheese without them crumbling! It is a lot of fun to work in the kitchen together.

I also made a couple of leftover hot lunches for Girlie and my husband this week. Girlie got tomato soup, bread with margarine, cheddar cheese, cucumber, strawberries, and orange slices. Nate had leftovers of a sour cream and bacon chicken recipe that I made from Moms with Crockpots. I packed it in a Lock & Lock container without a divider so he could easily heat that for his lunch. His other Lock & Lock was a lot like Girlie’s except that I ran out of strawberries!

They both loved their hot lunches, especially with the extra chill in the air! I am still looking for more hot lunch ideas if you have any to share.

Have you entered my Footsteps2Brilliance™ giveaway yet? Definitely check it out – it is a great prize for any techie kid! Click on the icon below to go to my contest page:

Products used in this post:

This lunch is linked to:

Rachel's Random Ramblings

Bentos and My Adventures in Parenting!

Category Archives: Cooking

4 Fun PlanetBoxes

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

4 CuteZCute Bento Lunches!

Totally Tortellini!

New Planetbox & Pinterest Craziness

Weekly Round-Up

Shaking It Up (a little)!

Random Round-up: Bentos & Cookies!

Bento Scrap French Toast Muffins Recipe!

Beep Beep! Snowy Truck Lunch & Spacey Preschool Bento