Weekly Bentos - #3

What a super-duper busy week for us despite the fact that we this past Monday off and then a surprise snowday on Tuesday!  Despite the craziness, I still made plenty of bentos because it's becoming so much of a habit for me that I almost instinctively start assembling one whenever I'm putting together a meal for Miss A.  This coming week is abbreviated for D and I but Miss A will be going to school on Monday so we'll be back to a regular schedule of bento boxing for a full week for her.

This past week I think I was really able to step up the complexity of the visual design because I've found how much more decorative I can be just with the edible markers alone!  I feel like it might be cheating a little bit as opposed to the 3D sculpting that so many other bento artists/designers do to make little pigs or bear faces but in order to keep within the time that I have in my schedule to even bento box, I gotta do some "hacks" to be the most efficient I can with the art of it all.  One thing I've discovered is pitas are WAY easier to illustrate on than regular bread AND the overall design is so much prettier and clearer when its done.

This one was actually one she ate at home.  Mini pita turkey and cheese with edible marker illustration on a bed of grape tomatoes (can't seem them because I used them to lift the sandwich so the presentation was more classically bento), steamed broccoli trees with raw carrot "flowers" and a fresh berry cup

Another mini pita sandwich, sugar snap peas, and fresh berry cup

Leftover Mac n Cheese with a fruit-roll up cut "A" (will use real fruit leather from here on out because the roll-ups were so fake tasting/feeling and they did not cut nicely at all) with a side of steamed broccoli and raw carrot "flowers" and some fresh raspberries.

PB&Jam heart sandwich on a bed of veggie crisp chips, sugar snap peas, and  mandarin oranges and fresh berries.  A hot thermos of beef barley soup was served with this.  Also, one of old colleagues noted that this one looked a little scary perhaps because of the color palate of the picture?  I might agree and the sandwich was kind of a "hack."  The other side of the heart I tried to make into a bumble bee but it looked so bad I just tried to save it by doing a quick heart.

Here's a breakfast one!  Mini pita sandwich with egg and cheese and decorated with food marker, fresh berry stripe and a side of breakfast sausage.

Mini pita ham and cheese with butterfly (edible marker) on a bed of cheez-its, sugar snap peas, fresh berries with canned mandarin sections and decorated with sprinkles.  This one was NOT from a school day and I threw this together this morning because we were running around doing errands!  Bento boxing is proving to be an awesome thing for us to just have a meal to "grab and go" for Miss A if we are every on the run.

Overall I feel like I'm making some really big strides with bento boxing since I started three weeks ago.  Today I picked up about 25 cookie cutters from a fellow freecycler and there are lots of fun shapes that I'm going to start using that will lend themselves to some really cool/fun designs I think!  Will (of course) keep you updated on how it all goes.