The Missing Fruit

Here, at long last, is the fruit bento that went with the teddy bear whipped cream and sugar bento! Strawberries, blackberries and blueberries are arranged much more prettily than I had planned. I was running short on patience and on time that day and originally determined to just throw the food into the boxes and run. But when it came time to do it....I couldn't stop myself from trying to make it pretty!

On the bottom tier is a huge bunch of mini pita breads, some tomatoes and the Mei tin filled with black olive hummus, yum!

Bear Stack Bento

It isn't truly a bento, but it works like one perfectly! Supposedly it's another thing for restaurants to use for kids' servings just like the Koala tray/box. But I only know that because I bought it from a Restaurant supply store, lol. The only drawback was the lack of a lock or closure system of any kind. A tightly wrapped kitchen towel furoshiki did the trick, though.

Here is the secret to toddler & parent happy snacking all in one. This is my standard 'going-to-a-party-with-children' offering. Whipped cream on the bottom, red sugar in one bowl and green in the other.

It is meant to be served with fruit like strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, things that can be easily dipped into the whipped cream and then into the sugar for a lovely snack bite. The fruit roll-ups flowers were really sweet cause the sugar stuck to the bottom of them! The whipped cream did a similar trick with the bottom of the next tier when I put too much in at once.

I served the same thing at A-chan's birthday last year and the kids were more interested in dipping the fruit than in eating the other sweets!

Balloons Bento

This is the first time that I had an excuse to use my new picnic bento - a humongous 3-tier box that I bought to make a full family picnic easier to pack and to carry. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so big and I had some trouble finding enough food to fill it up! But I absolutely love the huge expanse of rice for making pictures on, and the ease of carrying just one bento instead of three while we hike out to a good picnic spot.

Summer Soba noodles with cucumber, carrot and onion cubes, black sesame seeds & a cherry tomato flower, sauce on the side in little bottles. (Recipe here )

Steamed baby corn, bunches of grapes, carrot flowers, steamed broccoli, mangosteen in the blue cup (canned but yummy), bamboo skewers of baby corn flowers and black olives, more steamed broccoli, Parmesan not-chicken strips, lemon slices, cherry tomato.

Jasmine rice canvas with cheese bunny (she kind of melted a bit cause I put her in before the rice was fully cooled - I'll know better next time!) with origami face and sugar star hairbow, soba noodle balloon strings, lemon peel balloon, tomato peel balloon, cucumber balloon.

Here is the box all wrapped up and ready to go. It did not come with anything to close it so I used an old Kumihimo cord that I had made a while back. It's only a cotton one and not a proper silk cord, but it worked very well to hold the box closed and made it easy to carry.

Koala Cuteness

This new bento box's original intended function was to be a toddler plate for restaurants to stock, making parents and young children happy to eat at their establishment. I saw it online and had to have it cause it's so unique (to me, anyway!). It definately got a fantastic "Oooohhhhh!" reaction from my daughter who proceeded to eat every scrap of food and it made me very happy indeed.

Left to right: Sesame carrots, jasmine rice, grapes with 1 baby tomato, green peas, corn croquette ears.

The bear face tray can be lifted out for use seperately or to let the box underneath be used alone.

Mei Bento!

My daughter absolutely LOVED her new Mei Bento box! (I have to admit that I like it quite a lot...) She giggled all through her lunch, it was so cute :)

Rice with peas, carrots & black sesame seeds for face and necklace, udon noodles for hair with a pink heart sticker hairbow. More peas, baby tomatoes, udon noodles with carrot ribbon and black sesame seeds.

Beautiful day for a picnic

My daughter's godparents came to town for the day and it was a grand excuse for all of us to go have a picnic at the botanical gardens. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. Here is my part of the menu, packed into bento boxes for transport.

Background: 2 boxes of crackers, 1 box of fish shaped cookies.

In the pink bento: three cheeses - gouda, babybel & white cheddar, grapes and mango with a green smiley face pick.

In the green bento: Parmesan Not-Chicken Strips (morningstar farms chik strips with parmesan coating)

In the blue bento: Cachumber! The bestest thing ever for a picnic on a hot day. The one on the right is without onions.

Our friends brought spinach packets, blue corn chips, fruit chips and perfect blondies. It was an awesome picnic!

Recipes for the Cachumber and Parmesan Not-Chicken will follow soon.

LCE #43

Not very cute for a Lunch Cuteness Experiment, but I tried to make it attractive at least. The green lion tray we purchased at Target for $1 along with 3 other designs and they make great stay-at-home lunch plates!

Left to right: Two triangle FakeBLT sandwiches, black olive, extra Fakebacon pieces (Morningstar Farms Bacon), 5 pickles, grapes, tomato wedges and half a babybel cheese, garlic mashed potatoes.