Believe it or not

I'm still doing bento-style lunches for D and Miss A!!!

Since the beginning of the year, I've made over 80 bento lunches/breakfasts. I've taken pictures of most of them and have been posting them on facebook as often as I can. (Which means not very often because how much time do you think I have anyway!)

(BTW - sorry about the excessive use of asides and/or remarks in parantheses lately. I know it's annoying. And perhaps I shouldn't have indicated an apology in the very fashion that which I'm apologizing for. Anyway.)

I started posting the bento pictures here and then it just started being a bit excessive since I wasn't posting anything else for a while and it was seemingly all bentos, all the time. Well, allow me to make up for lost times and feast your eyes on some of my faves since I started making them at the beginning of the year...

"Bentos"

As I said before, I've done well over 80 since the start of the year and this is literally only a small sampling but thought you'd enjoy being caught on them just the same. The good news of it all is that I'm getting so much faster at making them and I've also got some handy-dandy special tools to make things a little more efficient and I can make a decent bento box in a solid five minutes if need be!!!  Also, Miss A  remains a huge fan of them on the whole and her omnivore diet is continually expanding with the help of the bentos!

Weekly Bentos - #4

It's like all I ever post are bentos anymore, eh?  *shrug*  It's been crazy around these parts and we've all been under the weather and not even close to camera ready!  Thankfully, we're finally starting to feel better. :)  Anyway... here are this week's bentos...

Ham blossoms, cheese trees on a bed of pita chips, fresh fruit cup of mandarin oranges, blueberries and topped with strawberry hearts

Hello Kitty mini pita PB&Jam on a bed of sugar snap peas, cheese cubes, and mini yogurt.  This went with a hot thermos of beef barley chunky soup. 

This was breakfast.  Breakfast pilaf mixed with craisins and garnished with cherry fruit flat that said "I *heart* you"  Miss A hated the fruit flat and threw them to the side.  I know because I watched her.

Pucca ham and cheese pita sandwich on a bed of veggie chips, side of craisins and koala chocolate creme cookies, and a mini yogurt

Deconstructed sandwich of turkey and cheese roll-ups and pita chips, sugar snap peas, and a fresh berry cup topped with a strawberry heart

Made this for myself.  Is that bad?  It's a chef-style salad with turkey and ham blossoms,  pepper jack cheese strips, baby carrot rounds, and grape tomatoes, side of pita chips, and fresh fruit cup of kiwi, blueberries, and raspberries

I'd say I'm definitely improving week to week, wouldn't you?  Now watch.  We'll have another snow day or something tomorrow and I won't be able to show off my pretty bento box salad at all. :(

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.

Weekly Bentos - #2

I feel like I'm getting faster at assembling and organizing in bento-style but in terms of getting a little more creative beyond just adding some colorful sprinkles, I need a little help.  Not bad for week two though.  And since practice makes perfect, imagine where I could be by next year at this time!

Another thing I've found is that I used to skip meals during the day all together and just run on coffee.  I know.  So sad.  Since I've started bento boxing for our whole family though, I'm enjoying it on the end of eating them as well!  I look forward to lunch and I want to eat lunch!  Last night I went to be early because I just really really needed it and was only able to throw together a bento box of leftovers (see the pierogi one) for Miss A at least.  I woke up at my usual 5AM wake up call intending to assemble the rest of her lunch, do my scripture study and devotionals and ended up having just enough time to eek out two lunches (one for D and one for me).  Not sure how it happened but it did and I feel like I made some of my best adult bentos yet! Anyway, here are the bentos from this week.

Turkey/cheese roll-ups, steamed broccoli, goldfish crackers, canned pears with sprinkles

Grilled chicken pasta with broccoli and bacon bits, apple sauce cup, dark chocolate M&Ms

Broccoli and bacon pasta, mini hot dogs, cheese squares, sugar snap peas,  and sweet yellow peppers

I don't know if the breakfast one really counts but I'm including it anyway because I feel like at this point, any practice I can get will help me.

"Baby" bagel with cream cheese (writing in edible marker) and sausage links

Turkey/Cheese sandwich cut with a Christmas cookie cutter on a bed of popcorn  goldfish pretzels, baby carrots on the borders.  She also got a hot thermos of "noodles" - more like cheeseburger macaroni.

Cheese scrambled eggs with cheese heart cut outs, sausage links, canned pears with sprinkles

"Little girl" sandwich on a bed of goldfish with raspberries and sugar snap peas

Leftover pierogi with flower illustration on a bed of steamed broccoli with apple sauce cup and baby carrots.  This accompanied a hot pot of chicken and dumplings. Not sure why the picture posted this way.  It was supposed to be landscape orientation.

Deconstructed turkey and cheese sandwich into roll-up style with club crackers,  orange cut sushi-style.  This was my lunch and the more I do this the more I am encouraged to NOT skip lunch and actually want to eat it.

"Little girl" french toast slices with sausage links and raspberries

Breakfast slider with egg and cheese and raspberries

D's lunch - Pasta with sauce, raw sugar snaps and carrots and orange cut sushi-style