Tag Archives: grown-up lunches

Mar12

Lotsa’ Leftovers!

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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!).

Leftover Chicken Bento - RachelsRandom.com

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!

Leftover Lo Mein Bento - RachelsRandom.com

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.

Leftover Pasta Bento - RachelsRandom.com

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.

Grilled Chicken Bento - RachelsRandom.com

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.

Shamrock Planetbox - RachelsRandom.com

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:

This lunch is linked at:

Grown-Ups Gotta EatBento LunchFollowing In My Shoes

Nov9

Beep Beep! Snowy Truck Lunch & Spacey Preschool Bento

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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:
Following In My ShoesBento Lunch

Oct12

Random Lunch Round-up

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Random Lunch Round-up

As usual for a Friday, I am out of food and scrambling to throw some kind of lunch together.  We get our produce delivery on Friday afternoons and do our grocery shopping on the weekend, so our resources are depleted by the time Friday rolls around.  However, by that point everyone is excited enough for the weekend that they really don’t care!

The kids have their kotobuki panda and frog lunchboxes today with apples and peanut butter, cheese, and crackers.  Little Dude has Chobani Champions in his lunch bag.  Girlie has a “shamrock smoothie” that is not green!  She still calls it a shamrock smoothie because it has the kale that we typically use in making the green version, but we added too many berries and this smoothie is purple!  It contains ice, kale, milk, banana, orange, Greek Yogurt, and berries.  I make big batches and freeze in the ball jars for days like this when I need to get some extra greens in her diet.

This completely crooked photo is yesterday’s hurried lunches.  They got Tofurkey and Cheese pinwheels (the tofurkey is better than it sounds and has a smoky, jerky kind of taste to it), goldfish, plums and kiwi, and applesauce.  Little Dude has a babybel cheese with a star cutout in his lunchbox and girlie has carrots and sugar snap peas.

I also packed lunch for my husband in the Lock & Lock system.  He got celery with laughing cow lite, kiwi, and plum slices in one container.  The other container has BBQ beef on a bed of sugar snap peas, carrots, and a small compartment of ranch for dip.  He said it was delicious!  He loves to eat out, but I am trying to get him at least 2 homemade lunches a week.  It turns out that the bento strategy works just as well on him as it does the kids, if not better!

We’ve got a jam-packed weekend planned, as usual.  Activities on top of activities, and possibly a play-date at a pumpkin patch.  I am hesitant to get the pumpkins with 3 weeks to go still, but I see a lot of our neighbors already have Halloween decorations up!  Do you decorate for Halloween and when??  And is it too early for pumpkins?  Even if we don’t carve them, can they last 3 weeks without rotting? I appreciate your feedback!

These are the products I used in this post:

Oct9

Four Lazy Lunch Ideas, New Lunch Box Fun, and Crockpot Cooking!

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Four Lazy Lunch Ideas, New Lunch Box Fun, and Crockpot Cooking!

Work has been very busy and the kids have been keeping me on my toes!  I have not had time in the mornings to make the really creative lunches or blog them daily, so I’m bringing you a roundup of four very lazy lunches from the last few school days.

All four lunches are packed in EasyLunchBoxes. These are lunches that should take less than 5 minutes to throw together, using minimal special tools.  Read on for descriptions of each:

Above are MOMables Egg Salad Sandwiches for both kids.  Girlie’s was cut with a Flower Lunch Punch and the center was stuffed with grape tomatoes.  Dude’s was cut with a Millennium Falcon sandwich cutter and since he is more Halloween obsessed than Star Wars crazed, I added a cheddar cheese jack-o-lantern to the top of his sandwich. They both have cheddar cheese, plums, and pomegranate seeds. Girlie also has some carrots with a mini egg salad sandwich from the flower cut-out.  Little Dude has pirate booty.

Below is a lunchbox of leftover pizza (Dude loves to eat cold pizza), oranges, and kiwi.  He also has a side of cheerios with craisins.  The EasyLunchbox on the right contains PB&J pinwheels, a babybel cheese (with a little fish cut into the wax), goldfish, grapes, and apple slices.  Simple, but full of Little Dude’s favorite foods.

This week I also tested out a new lunchbox that I bought at Daiso Japan in San Francisco last month (for $1.50!) and a sandwich box that came in my most recent BOC from woot.com.  Check out the new gear inside and out:

Girlie has her orange vanilla Chobani Campions for protein and calcium.  She has the happy face sandwich box (which she’s been begging to use) with a fairy Sand*Wishes LunchPunch made of SunButter & Jam.  I colored the fairy’s face with food markers.  She has the small bento box stuffed with a plum, some carrots, and sugar snap peas.  This was a good sized lunch for her and she was excited about her new containers.  The new bento says “Clapping march picnic” and features some animals marching off to a picnic.  It also says “Have you prepared to go on a picnic? It’s fine! Let’s go out!”  It is just too cute!

Finally, I have a grown-up lunch to show off, too!  It was a rainy day yesterday and I made a crockpot full of chicken curry for our home’s sole carnivore.  The rain continued, so I made him a nice hot lunch to take with him to work today.

The chicken smelled great, even to us vegetarians!  It was just perfect comfort food for fall.  I did not follow a recipe, but here is how I made the dish: Place a couple of frozen chicken breasts into the crockpot with a jar of simmer sauce (I used Trader Joe’s Masala Curry) and set for 8 hours.  Five hours later, stir and add some other chopped veggies. I added garlic, onion, red bell pepper, chard, and some Garbanzo beans. One hour before serving time, I used forks to shred the chicken inside in the crockpot so they’d soak up some more of the cooking juice.  Then I just let it cook a while longer.  At dinnertime, I warmed some frozen Garlic naan from Trader Joe’s and served those together.  It looked and smelled delicious!

For leftovers, I placed the hot chicken in Little Dude’s Superman thermos (he was kind enough to loan that to his dad) and served with a Lock & Lock box full of celery, laughing cow lite cheese, and a plum.  I am sure Nate will be thrilled to have a hot lunch today.

Do your kids eat leftovers in their lunchboxes? I’d love some new ideas for vegetarian dinners that can easily be re-purposed into lunches the next day.  My kids are such adventurous eaters, but I am a lazy chef, especially when 6pm rolls around and I’m wiped out from work and out of ideas.  If you have any good suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Here are the products I used in this post:

Sep24

Happy Birthday Bento!

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Happy Birthday Bento!

My girlie turned 6 today.  What?? How?? Even though it feels like my life revolves around her and I have tried my best to take in every little moment, I still don’t understand how I could possibly have a 6 year-old in my life!  I know that this is a universal experience of time flying with your little ones, but I am just floored by it anyway.

We had a big BBQ party for her yesterday and there was a ton of leftovers.  To save time and ensure the leftovers were consumed, I packed the bento lunches as I put away the rest of the food.  I packed the kids in their Easy LunchBoxes and my husband got his Lock & Lock.

Here’s Girlie’s birthday BBQ bento:

She has this amazing pasta salad that my mom made with some cubes of white cheddar cheese.  I added picks to spell out the word SIX for her. I’ll have to do a proper six bento later this week, but this will have to do for now.  She was so exited to have a lunch made of “party food” as it was!  She has a fruit salad of pineapple, grapes, and strawberries and some veggies with low-fat ranch in a mini-dipper container.  This will be a healthy and filling lunch for her.

Little Dude’s lunch is similar. He has pasta salad, cheese and crackers, fruit salad, and 2 small slices of tomato pie.  I added some animal fork picks to give him a smile.

My husband got one compartment of the leftover burger toppings and a hamburger.  I threw some extra cauliflower in there too.  The other compartment has pasta salad, fruit salad, veggies, and ranch dip in a small heart container marked “XOXO.”

I was traveling the whole week prior to her party and did not have a lot of time to put together a big bash for her.  We decided on a simple BBQ, but it grew and grew until we ended up with around 50 guests!  Our plan was to have a Pinterest party and attempt some of the pins from our Birthday Parties board, but a lot of those got lost in the chaos of 17 kids running around like crazy!  The kids mostly played in the bounce house, beat up on the piñata, and did some arts and crafts I set out for them (painting and decorating building blocks and foam bookmarks).  The crafts were actually a huge hit and the kids were very creative with their projects.  I was impressed!

Some of the pins I had planned on never even got started.  I wanted to make these ice cream hearts and a star walkway to our backyard party.  I also wanted to do this simple trick with the water bottles.  I just did not have time leading up to or during the party.

We did try to explode watermelons, but all the big ones were gone and it didn’t seem like it was going to work on the tiny ones we found, so we abandoned that too.  I think the only pin we successfully re-created was the terra-cotta-pot-s’mores.  Here is a picture of Girlie with the man she has identified has “the love of her life” making s’mores together:

She is absolutely certain that she is going to marry him when they’re older! Here is my Little Dude going wild on the piñata:

All the kids had fun with that and the scramble for candy was intense!  Finally, here is a picture of my beautiful girlie basking in the glow of the Happy Birthday song:

Aaaaaah! I love how much she grows and changes, but I get very sentimental at birthday time.  I just could not keep my cool when I tucked her in last night, knowing she’d never be 5 again.  Of course, she hugged me and told me not to be sad and that she will always be my baby no matter how old she gets.  And she will.  But not like this.  Not like she is right now.  Sigh.  Oh well, I did sign up for this roller coaster!

She was so gracious at her party and tried to look after her guests and her little brother to make sure everyone was having fun. She loved opening all of her presents and even though we did so privately, she still oooohed and aaahed and exclaimed over each one and made sure take time to appreciate it all.  We take a picture of her with each present to include in thank you notes.  It adds a personal touch and we know the kids like to see their friend enjoying the present.

Girlie also loves passing out goodie bags at parties and this year was no exception.  The only change was that I picked up favors at Daiso Japan while I was in San Francisco last week.  I bought this huge stash of bento supplies and put together bento boxes for each kid:

I did not get a picture of the individual favor boxes, but they each had a yellow or pink 2-tier bento box, a cookie cutter, a fork and spoon set, and 2 bento picks.  I tied them with ribbon and attached a paper that explained our love of Pinterest and my profile name if they wanted to follow me or see more bento ideas.  The kids seemed pretty excited.  I hope they like them!  It was not a toy like they probably expected, but hopefully this will get used or at least not be stepped on by a parent at 2am.

And as soon as our guests were out the door and gifts were opened, I got right back to work on making the Madagascar 3 Afro Polka Dot Circus Cupcakes my girlie specifically requested for her school birthday treat!  We usually do rice krispy treats, but this  was what she really wanted.  The look of the kids faces when they saw them was priceless, they were laughing as they remembered Marty’s song and dance from the most recent movie. Thanks again to BentOnBetterLunches for that great idea!  These are easy to make and consistently come out great!

Do you go nuts over parties like I do?  This was a “small and low-key” party for me and it was still a ton of people and a lot of work.  Girlie actually asked me for something for her birthday gift and I said “NO! This party is your gift!”  She accepted it pretty easily, which helped my cause.  I’d love to say that next year’s party will be smaller, but I know me and I can’t help myself.  If you have any advice on managing this issue, please send me your suggestion! I need help!

I used these products in today’s lunch:

Sep13

Pink Pinwheels & Smart Dogs with NEW ELB Mini-Dippers!

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Pink Pinwheels & Smart Dogs with NEW ELB Mini-Dippers!

Wednesday and Thursdays lunches for this week are all about showing off my new EasyLunchboxes Mini-Dippers!  These new containers fit inside an EasyLunchbox and are leakproof, so they are perfect for holding a small amount of sauce, dressing, or ketchup.  Here’s the lunch I sent for Girlie on Wednesday:

She has PINK pinwheels!  I got this idea from Kendra at Biting the Hand That Feeds You.  I took the dark red juice from roasting beets earlier in the week and added a small amount to some low-fat cream cheese to make an awesome pink cream cheese that is free from synthetic dyes.  You can’t taste any beets mixed in.  I spread the cream cheese on a tortilla and added some jam.  These would be great for a Pinkalicious party! She has pears and pluots in the small compartment and carrots, snow peas, and red bell peppers to dip in a small amount of low-fat ranch dressing.  She also got a few yogurt-covered star cookies in another mini-dipper.  The dippers held the extra foods perfectly and I did not have to worry about anything spilling over or getting mixed up.  These will definitely become a lunchtime staple around here.

Little Dude’s lunch was basically the same, but packed in his Goodbyn Bynto:

Instead of veggies and dip, he has his favorite food: yogurt!  He got an Orange Vanilla Chobani Champions.  I also separated his fruit into heart-shaped silicon cups.  I was a little worried he might not eat so much pink because he’s becoming very aware of the fact that pink is for girls, but lunch is lunch and he pretty much cleaned out that Bynto!

Today’s lunch also features mini-dippers, but this time for ketchup.  Here is Girlie’s EasyLunchbox:

She has a “California Tommy,” which is my vegetarian take on the Texas version (which is actually a Philadelphia food). My version uses crescent roll dough, a smart dog, sliced cheese, and some vegetarian bacon strips.  This recipe was featured in the new Cooking with Trader Joe’s – Easy Lunch Boxes cookbook!  Today’s lunch has the California Tommy with ketchup, cheese stars, the applesauce we made this week, and a veggie mixture of cucumber, red bell pepper, and grape tomatoes.  Little Dude’s lunch is the same, except that he got trail mix instead of veggies.

Have you tried the new mini-dippers yet?  They’re available on Amazon now for $7.95 for a set of 8.

Check out my friend Stephanie’s website, A Pocket Full of Buttons, for a collection of mini-dipper bento lunches.

And now for the exciting cookbook news: Cooking With Trader Joe’s – Easy Lunch Boxes is out this Saturday!  I’ve already pre-ordered from Amazon, but I am definitely going to try to snag a copy at Barnes & Noble too!  To give you an idea of how fabulous this book looks, here is a screenshot of my California Tommy recipe and photo:

Pretty cool, right?  I got an advance copy online to review, but I just can’t wait to get my hands on the real thing!  I have three recipes in the book: California Tommy Dogs, Turkey-Day Pinwheels, and Heart-Shaped Pizza.  These are all real recipes that I regularly make for my family.  Easy and fun to do!  The California Tommy Dogs and Heart-Shaped Pizza are generally made for dinner and then re-used in the lunchbox.  Both can be frozen and defrosted overnight for more convenience. If you try these, please let me know if you liked the recipe.  No comment necessary if it was a flop! :)

There are over 80 amazing recipes in this book with great photographs to give you some inspiration.  Here’s a list of the sections to give you a good idea of what you can expect from this book:

  • Pack it (Really) Fast!
  • Pack it Early!
  • Pack it Kid-Friendly!
  • Pack it Playful!
  • Pack a Snack!
  • Pack it Yummy!
  • Pack it for Work!
  • Pack it Veggie!
  • Pack it Vegan!
  • Pack it Gluten-Free!

My kids made the transition to vegetarian a few months ago and I am excited to try some of these recipes in their lunches.  We’ve also been toying with the idea of going gluten-free, and this book would be an excellent resource for starting that change. I am thrilled to be a part of this new cookbook along with many of my bento-blogging idols!

Here are the products I used or wrote about today:

Sep7

Today is Flying Friday!

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Today is Flying Friday!

I can’t say enough about how excited I am about this school year!  Both of my kids seem really happy with their new classrooms and their new teachers are awesome.  Drop-off has been a breeze for both kids, without the typical clinging and whining.  A whole week of excellent school behavior is definitely something to celebrate!

Little Dude’s preschool class is definitely “bigger” than last year’s toddler room.  He gets a lot of the same programming that Girlie gets in Kindergarten, with classroom jobs, weather, calendar, and most importantly, potty time!  They have a fun tradition for reinforcing days of the week using themes.  The days are referred to as Marching Monday, Tapping Tuesday, Wiggling Wednesday, Thumping Thursday, and Flying Friday.  I’ll have to find some creative ways to work these day themes into my lunches from time to time just for giggles.  Today’s theme was easy because I already had a Lunch Punch to match Flying Friday:

Little Dude’s lunch is packed in an EasyLunchBox and he has a PB&J airplane sandwich with cheddar cheese cubes.  I used some alphabet picks to spell the word “FLY” and I colored in the airplane cutout with food markers.  He has apple slices with a star cutout and his favorite trail mix.  I’d guess that he’ll be playing with his lunch today!

Girlie loves her new hot pink Goodbyn Bynto and I made her a great lunch to take in that container today:

She has a Chobani Champions and some trail mix in the largest compartment.  She has mini pita sandwiches that are stuffed with cream cheese, cucumber, and tomato in the middle compartment.  Her small compartment contains mango and blueberries.  I’ll be honest with you; I really wanted to keep that lunch for myself.  It had all of my favorite foods in it too!

I also packed my husband’s lunch – that’s 3 times this week!  The new Lock&Lock Lunchbox set is working out great for him.  He can easily microwave the hot stuff separately from the cold foods:

He has leftover chicken and vegetable coconut curry that I made in the crockpot earlier in the week.  The other container has garlic naan, mango and blueberries, and cucumber, tomato, bell peppers, and a laughing cow light cheese wedge.  That should be filling and delicious.  I also cut a star out of the naan to put on the chicken curry because it just looked to boring without it.  Yes, this has become an illness for me.

I am trying to mix up the kids’ lunches more to give them lots of good vegetarian options (they are both vegetarian by their own choice).  If you have a favorite kid-friendly vegetarian lunch to share, please send it my way!

I hope your first week back to school went as smoothly as ours did! Have a great weekend!

These are the products I used in today’s lunch:

Sep4

First Day of School!

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First Day of School!

Today is the first day of school!  I can barely contain my excitement! Check out my cuties all pumped to start their first day:


Girlie is starting Kindergarten today and Little Dude is in the 3 year-old room at the preschool.  Girlie has been looking forward to school starting all summer, but Little Dude is more in-the-moment.  I don’t think he really understood that school was starting up again until I got out all the bento supplies to get ready for today’s lunch.  I was organizing everything yesterday and he came over and started going through all my sandwich cutters, cookie cutters, lunchboxes, and picks. He got very excited and asked me to make him a “choo-choo sandwich” with an “elephant decoration” (a pick) in his lunchbox for his new classroom. How could I say no?  I did my best to make it relevant to first day of school, by including the number 3 for being in the 3 year-old room.  I thought it was funny that the re-emergence of his lunchbox made school starting more real.  After he made his lunch requests, he could not stop talking about going back to school, and his drop-off was remarkably tear-free.  Girlie was much more laid-back and gave me creative license for today’s lunch.   She was much more focused on seeing all her friends.

This is my Girlie’s back-to-school lunch for kindergarten:


She has a K-shaped cheese sandwich, grapes, and a hard-boiled hello kitty egg in the large compartment.  She has pineapple, blueberries, and star-shaped watermelon chunks in the fruit compartment.  She has baked acorn squash that I mashed with some butter and cinnamon sugar in the small compartment.  It is like baby food, but everyone in our family loves it!

This is what I packed for Little Dude:

He has his requested choo-choo PB&J sandwich. which I decorated with cheese stars and a cheese #3.  The first number I put on came out perfectly, but it mysteriously disappeared after he came to take a peek.  This one was a little blurry, but he will love it anyway.  He also has grapes, blueberries, pineapple, and watermelon stars.  My kids love fruit! He also has the acorn squash mash.

While I was at it, I even packed for my husband!  This from our new Lock & Lock lunchbox set:

He has leftovers from our BBQ this weekend.  He’s got a salad of romaine, cucumber, and orange bell pepper with a Trader Joe’s chili lime chicken burger and some carne asada.  I gave him a small container with light ranch dressing.  A second Lock & Lock box (the bag holds up to 3 boxes, but I needed room for ice pack, napkins, and utensils) has blueberries, pineapple, and cantaloupe in one compartment, pretzel slims and cheese cubes in another, and celery with roasted peppers in the large space.

I already received glowing reviews of my husband’s lunch via text message.  I am excited to see how the kids ate at school… that’s usually the best testimony!  I am already plotting ideas for the rest of this week’s lunches. I am so happy to have my bento-obsession back in full-swing!

In other news, we hosted a birthday party for my one-year-old cousin over the weekend.  I was talking about wanting to make a fruit salad in a watermelon bowl and Girlie came up with idea of her own!  She wanted to buy fresh strawberries and make “hula girls” by placing a canned pineapple ring on top of the berry and adding a pick for the face.  I was very happy not to be asked to make rice krispy treats or cookies (knowing there would be plenty of cake and ice cream at the party), so I quickly agreed and added canned pineapple rings to my list! You can see both of our creations below:

Her hula girls are cute, right?  I was very proud of her creativity and more than a little pleased that my playing with food seems to be rubbing off on her a little!  Everyone at the party oohed and aaaahed over her creation and she was beaming.   She’s getting so big now and impresses me with her ideas all the time.

Did your kids start school today?  I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for keeping up the momentum for being excited about school.

Here are the products I used in packing lunches today:

Aug16

Pinwheels and Veggies!

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Pinwheels and Veggies!

Last night we were in a hurry to get to an event at Newtown Athletic Club (our home away from home), but naturally, I was running late from work.  This always feels ironic to me, since I work from home, right upstairs in my loft office, but I frequently am running late to work, or am late “getting home” from work. It was also raining like crazy outside, which added to the chaos and almost caused me to change my mind about going.  I mulled it over for a minute or two and decided we could all use some fun and exercise, so I threw a couple of bento dinners together and rushed us into the car.

I really only had about 5 to 10 minutes to make 2 meals, so no characters or special cutouts.  Just by adding a variety of colorful fruits and veggies, I made kid-pleasing bento that could be eaten in the car. Check out this EasyLunchBox:

I made veggie bologna and cheese tortilla pinwheels.  My kids love these much more than regular sandwiches!  I simply place a slice of cheese on a tortilla and microwave for 30 seconds to warm the tortilla and melt the cheese a little.  Then I add a slice of bologna, roll, and slice.  I made rows of veggies using red bell pepper, sugar snap peas, carrots, and cucumber.  I have grapes and cherries in the fruit compartment and trail mix in the small compartment.  Girlie ate every single bite of this (though she did eat it on the way there AND on the way back).

The kids had fun playing at the gymnastics open house and showing me all their skills.  I am amazed at how much they can do!  Girlie is fearless on the high beam now and is a tumbling pro!  Little Dude was working on some floor moves, but mostly preferred the bounce track.  He could bounce all day.

What activities are your kids signed up for during the school year?  So far we only have gymnastics.  I am wary of adding any more to our already hectic schedules, but I do remember lots of good times at T-Ball.  I am thinking maybe we’ll start that one next year.

Welcome to all the new readers who found my blog this week!  I hope you’re enjoying my posts and finding new ideas.  I love to hear from you with comments and suggestions, especially if you try something new!  I do get some ‘fan mail’ from time to time from people who have tried making a healthy bento lunch for their kids and had great success.  Check out this one from Maria in Sprinfield, VA:

Maria packed heart sandwiches for her preschoolers, spicy noodles for her adventurous kindergartener, and chicken lettuce wraps for her hubby. Check out the sriracha heart on his chicken! <3

 

Send me a picture of your bento lunch creation and I’ll gladly share it on my page too!  You can post it on my facebook page or email it to me at rachelbeard1111 @ gmail dot com.   Or tag me @rachelbeard1111 on instagram.

I know some kids are already back to school or are going back next week!  I hope you’re all off to a good start.  I am a bit nervous for school to start up again on Sept 4 for my kids.  It seems like a big  year for both of them.  I’d love to hear any tips for adjusting a 3 year old to a new preschool classroom as well.   Thank you and have a great weekend!

Aug14

Work Lunch Upgrade: Hubby’s Lunch Makeover!

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Work Lunch Upgrade: Hubby’s Lunch Makeover!

You would not believe my shock when I stepped into the kitchen this morning and discovered that my husband had packed his own lunch! He said he threw it together “in about 8 seconds” and he chose an Easy Lunchbox, so I was very proud of him. My guy likes to eat out. He’d eat out 3 meals a day if it was realistic to do so, but thankfully for our waistlines and budgets, having 2 small children makes that impractical!

While he generally likes to go out for a hoagie, an authentic Philly cheesesteak, or a Chipotle burrito, he’s become inspired by recent weight loss to make a diet change and pick up some momentum to lose even more.  We’ve been doing P90X together for about two weeks and he’s already lost 7.5 pounds without even making a change in his eating habits.  Meanwhile, I have been strictly following a nutrition plan and doing the workouts, and I have lost 6.5.  Not fair, right?!?  Well, I am very close to goal weight and I have less to lose, so it is actually a victory for me too!

Back to today’s lunch… I was expecting that he’d go out as usual, but then I found this sitting on the table:

The ‘Before’ Lunch

My first thought was “Wow! I am so proud of my man for doing this!” and my second thought was “Where are the veggies???”  Since he was trying to turn a new leaf, I just couldn’t live with sending him off with a boring 2-color lunch (white chicken and cheese, pink peach).  While he was getting himself ready to go, I snapped a before pic of his lunchbox and then got busy working on the makeover.  Check out the after photo:

The ‘before’ lunch was so light comparatively… this lunch is a bit of a clunker. For having added a mere 60 calories or so, I added a lot more nutrition, eye-appealing color, and fiber for satiety.  The upgraded lunch has 3 pieces of grilled chicken breast on top of a bed of lettuce.  I added carrots, 2 laughing cow lite wedges, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and cheddar cheese hearts.  This should make his lunch a little happier today and keep him out of the company’s cafe looking for more.

I keep lots of ‘easy’ prepped veggies like this on hand, so it really took only a minute to drop it in the lunchbox and maybe 30 seconds to cut some cheese hearts with a cookie cutter.  So, with a combined effort of 2 minutes, he’ll have a nice and healthy lunch instead of a greasy hoagie!  Score!

A lot of my bento blogging friends pack grown-up lunches all the time.  Here are some fun examples for you to check out if you want to make one for yourself or your partner:

What’s in Mom’s Lunch Bag: Clerks 2

Beneficial-Bento: Greek Salad

Lunches fit for a Kid: Pasta

Bentoriffic: Rice and Beans Wraps

Biting the Hand that Feeds You: Spinach Salad

Keeley McGuire Blog: Typical Work Lunch

iPackLunch: Stunning Salad

Keitha’s Chaos: Turkey & Cream Cheese Roll-up

What’s For Lunch at Our House: Sushi Bento

BentOnBetterLunches: Super Cute Salad

Mommy & Me Lunch Box: Taco Salad

Pretty impressive, huh?  You can click on any of the images to go to their corresponding website. I hope you found an inspiration for something new to try.  Who do you pack lunches for?  I’d love to see any of your exciting creations too if you want to comment with the link.

Want an EasyLunchbox of your own?  They’re 4 for $13.95 at amazon.com.