Bento Archives - Page 2 of 3

Earth Day for Kids – Earth Day Pancake Lunch

April 15, 2013 By Deirdre

Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks and the Earth Day related Tissue Box Challenge starts here tomorrow. I decided that JDaniel needed to have an Earth Day breakfast for lunch in a bento. He just had to have one.

I had a hard time deciding how to make the Earth as main dish. I even asked the members of a bento bloggers Facebook group for their thoughts. They came up with several great ideas in no time. These ladies are experts on making food creations. They suggested that I cut out shapes of the continents out of sheets of fruit chew material, dye noodles blue and green, draw the continents with food markers and more.

I decided to try to make blue and green pancakes. The pancake looked great in the pan until I flipped it over. While it was cooking the pancake had browned and you could no longer see the continents of North and South America I had tried to make. When the pancakes were done, I had to cut off the brown cooked area. With the cooked area removed I was able to display the continents.

After the pancake adventure, I decided to go with two easy side dishes. The first is blue yogurt with slices of grapes placed into it. Normally we have blueberry yogurt, but someone has been inhaling it lately. (The little snacker and not the big snacker this time.) I had to dye plain white yogurt blue for this breakfast for lunch Earth Day Lunch.

The scrambles eggs turned out to be the easiest part of the meal. I literally just made scrambled eggs in the microwave. When they were cooked, I dyed some of the green and some blue.

Earth Day is wonderful celebration of all we have been given on this planet. Whether you decide to create a special themed lunch or serve leftovers to celebrate recycling, I hope you will take a moment to share a meal, and talk about Earth Day.

More Earth Day for Kids Meals

Earth in Fruit

Leftover Signs of Spring

Easter Bunny Salad With Leftover Easter Eggs

April 1, 2013 By Deirdre

We love to dye Easter eggs at our house and we showcase them in bowl on the kitchen table for a short time. I love to look at them, but I want to make sure we eat the boiled eggs that are in them. One way I have found to use them is in salads.

I made JDaniel and I both Easter Bunny Salad Bento. They were filled with delicious salads that contained dyed Easter eggs, fresh spinach, bacon, egg shaped American cheese pieces, and bunny shaped toasted croutons.

How We Made Our Easter Egg and Bunny Bento

The lunch also included bunny shaped marshmallows and a bunny trail mix. The marshmallows disappeared first. I bet you knew that they would. The croutons went next although JDaniel announced they didn’t taste as good as the ones that come in a box. (I guess I need to work on that.) The trail mix of three types of raisins, tropical dried fruit and Annies Bunnies cookies went next.

JDaniel picked around the fresh spinach literally. He moved the spinach around to get to the parts of the salad that he really wanted. He ate a little of the egg and all of the bacon along with the cheese. I was shocked that he didn’t inhale the spinach. JDaniel has been known to inhale a bowl of fresh spinach.

Maybe he was full. He did eat all of his dessert first. Next time I need to save the dessert for later. I ate my dessert after my salad, but I guess five year old boys just don’t do that. I confess I felt full after eating the trail mix and the marshmallow for dessert. Maybe I put too much of it in our bentos. Oh! Well, I will have to try it a little bit differently next week.

I am thinking a boring dessert and an exciting main dish. Stop by next week to see what I end up serving JDaniel for lunch.

What do you do with your hard boiled Easter eggs?

Healthy Lunch Ideas – Bounding Bunnies Bento

March 18, 2013 By Deirdre

I really try to give JDaniel healthy lunches. Sometimes I am more successful than others. Lately he has gotten in a rut as to what he wants to be served or make for his lunch. ( He is big on making his lunch all by himself right now.) American cheese sandwiches are what he has decided he likes. I won’t mind much, but he also wants American cheese on a flour tortilla for breakfast. I needed to do something to shake this up a bit. I needed to come up with some healthy lunch ideas!

Wait! I know what you are thinking. This lunch has cheese sandwiches in it. Yes, it does. It has two colors of American cheese in fact. What you can’t see is that under the bunnies are several pieces of pepperoni. Pepperoni isn’t my favorite source of protein, but it is one that he will eat in his lunch. Having some type of protein in the lunch was one of my healthy lunch ideas.

Cheese crackers are another popular lunch item for him to request. I did include a couple cheese crackers in a carrot shaped Easter egg in this lunch, but not many.

What he got more of were carrots and red grapes. He says he doesn’t like raw carrots, but I put them in anyway. JDaniel ended up eating half of them along with all the grapes. When he got home, he had just the two carrots in his bento box. Later when he asked for a snack I required he eat the two remain carrots. Having carrots on the menu was another of my healthy lunch ideas.
He made face while he at the carrots but, he did eat them. In fact he said they weren’t that bad.I keep telling him that healthy bounding bunnies who eat carrots have wonderful eye sight. My husband isn’t big on carrots and he has worn glasses for years. I am hoping JDaniel will make that connection between the need to eat carrots or decide he would like to see the world the way a bouncing bunny can.

Here are some more fun lunches and snacks filled with healthy lunch ideas:

Apple Chicken Salad Bento

Butterflies in a Bento

Christmas Tree Themed Bento

Disclaimer: If carrots really made him sick, I won’t keep trying to get him to eat them.

St. Patrick’s Day Recipes for a Mother and Son Lunch

March 4, 2013 By Deirdre

When JDaniel wandered into the kitchen to see what I was making for lunch, he said, “Yuck!” He really doesn’t like peppers. When he saw me cutting them up for a green pepper and tuna salad platter, he just couldn’t hold back his feeling about it.”This isn’t a lunch for you,” I told him, “This is a lunch for me!” I was glad I had planned for two St. Patrick’s Day recipes for lunch. This recipe wouldn’t have gone over well with him.

He seemed satisfied and relieved to know that he wasn’t going to have to eat it and headed back into the living room to look at library books while I got his lunch ready.

I personally thought it end up looking delicious. The tuna salad had a little sweet pickle and mayonnaise in it. The pepper mixed with the salad was yummy. I love a little crunch in my tuna salad. The orange cheese shamrocks cut up into small pieces and mixed with the pepper and tuna were wonderful.

What was the second of the two St. Patrick’s Day recipes for lunch?

JDaniel got a cold pizza made of butternut squash spaghetti sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and fresh spinach. JDaniel loves fresh spinach. He eats it by the handful.

He also got a serving of a lime and mandarin orange jello salad with marshmallows. We made it together. I love that it has all the colors of the Irish flag in it. He just loves its taste. He will ask for it for dessert until the jello bowl is empty. I knew he would be thrilled to get it in his lunch.

Applesauce with green sugar sprinkles was also added to the lunch. Foods just seem to become special when you add sprinkles to them. JDaniel just loves to find them in his lunch.

Well, when he saw the lunch he was so happy! He loved every bit of it. Not only was it filled with favorite foods. I didn’t have any peppers in it.

Here are some more St. Patrick’s Day recipes:

Spinach Hummus with a Pepper Rainbow

Fruit and Yogurt St. Patrick’s Day Parfait

Irish Symbols in a Muffin Tin Lunch

What would be in your children’s St. Patrick’s Day Recipes for a delicious lunch?

Valentine’s Day Ideas for a Kid’s Lunch

February 11, 2013 By Deirdre

On Monday JDaniel came home from school and asked if I had made him a muffin tin lunch. For a long time he had a special muffin tin lunch with a theme a couple times a week. I have moved on to bento style lunches this past fall and I guess he has been missing them. I told him that I hadn’t made him a muffin tin lunch, but I would dig around in the refrigerator for some foods we could have to create one. You want to try come up with Valentine’s Day ideas for kids lunch they will enjoy.

Valentine’s Day Ideas for a Kid’s Lunch

Once I assembled a wide variety of foods, we used some heart shaped cookie cutters to transform a few of them into hearts. Others were red in color and were just placed into a heart shaped muffin tin that we have.

JDaniel ended up with cornbread hearts. (I tried to get rid of all the breadcrumbs, but as soon as I got rid of some others fell of the bread.) Red grapes also ended up in the top row. The second row contains a pumpkin bar cookie cut into a heart shape and strawberry yogurt with sprinkles. The bottom row has leftover chili and a slice of American cheese cut into a heart.

As I mentioned, I have started to make themed bento lunches for JDaniel to have when he stays for Lunch Bunch at school one day a week. Below is the lunch he took to school last week. It too has a heart theme.The bento lunch contains a slice of ham, a corn tortilla, and a chunk of Laughing Cow cheese all cut into heart shapes in the main compartment. The top compartments contain dried cranberries and a heart shaped apple along with a heart shaped tomato.

I have to confess that JDaniel did a much better job on the muffin tin lunch then the bento lunch. The bento lunch returned home with the cranberries, tomato, and ham still in the box. JDaniel likes tomatoes, dried fruit, and ham usually. I guess they just weren’t foods in loved on that day.What are some of your Valentine’s Day Ideas for kids meals?

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday!

Angels We Had For Lunch- Christmas for Kids

December 24, 2012 By Deirdre

I have been reading the parts of the Bible that lead up to the events of Christmas to JDaniel. Each night’s set of verses seems to mention an angel. Joseph and Mary both had angels visit them. Zechariah had an angel come to tell him about the birth of his son John. Angels came to tell the shepherds about Jesus’ birth. This week I thought I would make JDaniel an angel themed lunch.This Christmas for kids lunch idea was a hit. He really seemed to enjoy it. I gave him an angel with a pickle body, an apple body, and a grape tomato head. Then there was an all fruit angel. It consisted of an apple body, clementine wings, and a grape head. Finally there was an ornament sandwich with an angel them. The ornament was made of ham, cheese and whole wheat bread.The idea was so use simple foods that I know he likes to create angels. Each of the angels has more of an outline than a full angel with facial features. Honestly that was to keep the angels in the Christmas for kids lunch from looking goofy. I did brainstorm ideas for the eyes, noses and mouths, but they really didn’t seem to look right.
I hope you will take a few moments to read the angel verses to your children. They are filled with wonder, joy and brightness.

If you like this Christmas for kids lunch, here are some more bento lunch ideas for kids:

Butterfly Bento Snack for Kids

Bounding Bunnies Lunch for Kids

I am Thankful Bento for Kids

Fall Bento Lunch

Olympic Symbols Bento for Kids

If you like these bento lunches, you will find more food creation for kids on my Food Creations board and my Serving Lunch with JDaniel4’s Mom board on Pinterest.

How to Make a Gingerbread Man Lunch

December 17, 2012 By Deirdre

The links below are affiliate links.

The Virtual Book Club is celebrating Jan Brett this month. She has written several books featuring gingerbread people. I decided to create a gingerbread lunch for JDaniel to celebrate her books Gingerbread Babyand Gingerbread Friends

This is the time of year when gingerbread men and women are trying to runaway from being served at lunch, dinner, and snack times. I made JDaniel a gingerbread man lunch to take to school last Wednesday. His gingerbread man seems to have left his shadow in the slice of bread.

The gingerbread man didn’t get very far though. He has only made it to the upper right hand section of JDaniel’s bento box. Although he has squished himself down. He will probably still be found. He does have supply of marshmallow snowballs to throw at anyone that gets to close. The gingerbread man has them hidden behind him. JDaniel will have to watch out for them. Actually he might like it if the gingerbread man threw some marshmallows right into his mouth.

When our sandwich man has finished throwing marshmallows. He may have to move to the left and grab some red grapes and chow mien noodles. JDaniel would love the grapes being thrown. They would be soft to try to catch. The chow mein noodles are a little pointy and may hurt. I hope the gingerbread man doesn’t try to throw those.

JDaniel was hungry like the fox in the gingerbread story and he ate this meal right up. There were no leftovers this week.

If you like this gingerbread man snack, here are some other snack ideas:

Christmas Tree Snack

Chewbacca Wookie Cookie Snack

Kid Friendly Recipe- Teepee Snack

Scarecrow Snack Idea

You will find more bento lunch snack ideas on my Food Creations board on Pinterest.

The Hobbit- Read.Explore.Learn

December 14, 2012 By Deirdre

The links below are affiliate links.This week we looked a simple children’s book that looks at a section of The Hobbit . It has amazing illustrations and only looks at brief section of the book. JDaniel really seemed to enjoy it. I think he will like reading or having the whole book read to him when he gets older.

JDaniel is a little like a Hobbit. He doesn’t have fur on the top of his week like they do, but he really like to snack like they do.

Here is the hobbit meal schedule:

1. Breakfast2. Second Breakfast

3. Elevensees

4. Lunch

5. Afternoon Tea

6. Super

What did we do to explore The Hobbit?

Well, I looked at a number foods mentioned in The Hobbit along with recipes for them. Pork pie was mentioned as one. I wasn’t sure I could convince JDaniel that he really wanted to try it. Biblo , the main character, was fond of seed-cakes. Again I wasn’t sure how he would feel about them. Buttered scones are a favorite of mine and I found that they were probably served during tea in the Shire where Biblo lived. I am great a buying scones but, I am not great a making them. My scone are a little rock like.

Rather than make a dish from the book I decided to make a bento meal with symbols from the book.

I made Gandalf’s hat out of a cracker and a cucumber. The “Precious” ring is made of Colby Jack cheese. There is a Hobbit’s door made of crackers, cheese and pickle. Biblo’s door was green from some reason. Finally there are Hobbit feet. The feet are made of whole grain bread, nut butter, a toasted coconut marshmallow and raisins. Hobbit’s have fur or hair on the top of their feet. I think that coconut looks a little hair like.

If you would like to see more Hobbit themed meals, you can head to Biting the Hand That Feeds You! They are the next part of the Hobbit hop that this post is also apart of .

Here are some wonderful non- Hobbit posts that linked up last week.

I love the little owls that Like Mama~Like Daughter made after reading Little Owl’s Night. We read Little Owl’s Night and loved it too.

Fantastic Fun and Learning read One Snowy Night and then made the most adorable hedgehog. I bet Bilbo might have seen these animals on his travels in The Hobbit.How have you explored books this week?

Christmas for Kids- Creating a Reindeer Lunch

December 10, 2012 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links.I usually share with you JDaniel’s reaction to lunches I have created or how I put them together. Today I thought JDaniel and I would walk you through how we put this reindeer lunch together in a bento box.

JDaniel used a barely sharp plastic knife to cut antlers out of Swiss cheese. He ended up cutting out about four antlers for our reindeer. Why? Well, he kept eating the antlers. I thought it would be a good idea to cut everything we needed first before we constructed the lunch. That turned out to be a very bad idea.

Cutting out the bread didn’t pose the same problem that cutting out the cheese did. We had scraps we didn’t need and JDaniel was able to snack on them.

Slicing the tomato for the nose was a little tricky. The tomato kept rolling around. Finally I started out the cut and JDaniel was able to finish it.

Once the foods we needed to cut out were done, we started to construct the sandwich. The cheese antlers when into the box first. The bread head was placed on top of them. JDaniel’s favorite sausage slices leftover from dinner were placed on the head for the eyes and the tomato slice was placed on as his nose.

Black olives were added to the deer for his pupils. I gave the reindeer lunch. JDaniel didn’t think kids would like them for Christmas and even reindeer might not like them. I put them in anyway. The reindeer was also given homemade granola and an abstract art bell.It turns out reindeer eating children eat everything, but the carrots. I guess JDaniel was right!

If you like this reindeer lunch, here are some more food creations:

Star Wars Breakfast

Watermelon Cookie Cutter Cutouts

You will find more food creation for kids on my Food Creations board on Pinterest.

Snack for Kids- Christmas Tree Themed Bento

November 26, 2012 By Deirdre

I have been trying to give JDaniel more veggies and fruit as an afternoon snack. He loves to eat them at mealtime and has been sneaking them out of the fridge lately at other times during the day. I thought maybe he had a need for the vitamins and nutrients in them and by serving them as his afternoon snack he won’t sneak them.
JDaniel loves spinach. It is one of his favorite vegetables, but I discovered that he doesn’t like this spinach dip. He ate almost everything else. He loved the mini crackers! He ate a few cucumber shaped trees, and the tomatoes though.

He did try the dip which I was thrilled to see. The cracker did actually end up with a rather large glob on it. Once it made it to his mouth he announced that it was not good.I grabbed one of the large grape tomatoes and tried the dip just to see what it tasted like. It tasted good to me. The flavor wasn’t too strong. There wasn’t a garlic or strong onion aftertaste.

Maybe he would have like it if I had added a little melted cheese on the top. He seems to love everything covered in melted cheese these days. I can’t blame him I love melted cheese too.I am thankful that he like the cucumbers and tomatoes. He didn’t eat all of them, but that just left something for me to scoop the remaining dip up with.

Bento Making Tip: A cookie cutter placed in the Bento box is a great area to hold a thick dip and it can help illustrate the theme of a snack or lunch time meal.

If you like this Christmas tree snack, here are some more snack for kids ideas:

Star Wars Food Creations for Kids

Bento Lunch with Cracker Sandwiches

Summer Sunshine Bento Lunch