Week in Bentos - the first ever!!

I have a confession to make. I have mother's guilt in a big big way.  I'm a working mom who is a teacher and though I have my summers and major holidays off, in my off time I don't really have the energy to being more like the SAHM mom I wish I could be.  But because I believe in making the best of any situation, I've joined the ranks of Bento making.

Bento boxes are something I discovered over five years ago at one of my favorite DC lunch places called Teaism.  It's a Japanese teahouse and they serve reasonably authentic Japanese food stylings and beverages.  One of my favorites is the bento box.  This is a little what it looks like...

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The idea of bento boxes is to have a fresh made, balanced, and visually appealing meal.  The foods included should definitely be "whole" in nature and I like that a lot but what I really like about them most is the packaging.  I'm a sucker for cool packaging and clever presentation.

When Miss A was at her previous daycare/second home, she was served hot meals and lunches that you might normally not get in a box lunch.  Because of this, she can be a finicky eater if the food served isn't a hot lunch.  And because I'm a mom and I worry about stuff like what people are or aren't eating, I started researching sure-fire alternatives to hot lunches months ago to prepare for her start of pre-preschool this week.  That's how I found myself making bento boxes!

Most of what I have found is VERY impressive so much that how could a kid NOT want to eat it? This is one of my favorite examples...

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To be fair, the above example is from a very advanced bento maker (for kids) and though I'd like to think I could pull off something like that someday?  I'm far from there today.  But... we build to that, people!  We build to that.  And with that in mind, here's where my week of starting...

Radiatore pasta with peas, baby carrots, sugar snap peas, and turkey/colby jack roll-ups.  She ate the pasta but chewed on everything else.  Oh well.  It was only the first day.

Pigs in a blanket, Mac-n-cheese, sugar snaps, and grape tomatoes.  The pasta was a hit (of course) and the pigs in a blanket were consumed as well as a few tomatoes.  Wednesday was a duplicate of this less the pasta and I learned that when all else fails, I need to include pasta of some kind.

The sandwich was a PB&Jam (illustration with a Wilton food marker), club crackers, fruit, and all of this accompanied a hot thermos of chunky beef barley soup (that she ate all of).  See?  She's got to have some kind of hot lunch component.

Scrambled eggs, sausage links, and fresh peeled apple slices and raspberries.  This is for breakfast because I discovered Miss A really hasn't been eating the continental one they serve to the kids.  I might do more of these to make sure she's eating a better breakfast.  She ate all of this. (Of course!)  Breakfast is her best meal.

Turkey and American cheese roll-ups (I found the American slices rolled better - so much for trying to eliminate processed foods), an natural apple sauce cup, baby carrots, and goldfish crackers.  This accompanied a hot thermos of mac and cheese from earlier in the week.

All in all, I feel like the week went well with the exception being that I didn't have nearly the variety from day-to-day that I know would have been a little bit more encouragement to eat (since she wouldn't have gotten bored with it all!  In time I hope to master the bento packing style a little more easily so to include more fun elements - like making the food look more like objects/animals/things - with greater ease but, like I said, we will build to that.  I'll try and keep posting these at the end of the week as I make them.  I have had fun making them and though they seem a little time consuming, they were really only about 20 minutes a piece to conceptualize and assemble and I think that's reasonable.  I might also branch out and do adult ones (for D and myself) and D has been encouraged to join in on the overall bento efforts so that should help cut down on the labor and also make it a fun activity for the whole family.