The morning “preschool” hours on Disney channel contain no normal commercials.  They have ads for thier own shows, and small (usually educational) shorts to fill the space at the end of programs until the next hour.  A few years ago, they aired a series called “This is Daniel Cook“. Daniel is a cute little red head that explores the world and has little mini adventures.  He might be making paper one week, learning to fly an airplane the next, riding with police officers in the following, etc.

In one episode (“This is Daniel Cook Trying New Fruits”), we are introduced to the Dragon Fruit.  After that, kidlet wanted to try it, but we could never find any.  Until this week!

I didn’t realize that there were multiple varieties available.  I thought that they all had white flesh with little back seeds, but apparently the fruit comes in 3 colors: 2 have pink skin, but with different colored flesh (one white, the other red), while another type is yellow with white flesh.

Ours happened to have flesh that is a lovely shade of pink.

I think it was a little overripe. It was juicier than I would have expected.  There is no way it was grown around here, and I guess the fruits do not ship well or have a long shelf life.  I don’t know if that affected the flavor, but for the most part, I found the flavor to be at odds with the exotic appearance of the fruit. I expected it to be a bold, bright flavor, which is not the case.  It is sweet, with a very subdued flavor.  It’s hard to describe — sorta like a cross between a kiwi and a pear, but more muted in flavor, like a melon. I do like the crunchy texture of the seeds with the flesh.

Kidlet and I liked it.  I don’t think I would spend the money on it as a snacking fruit, but for a change of pace, a shot of color (or not?) in a bento box, I would buy them again if they show up at the market.

Posted by Kristen in Bento, Brain Dump

This day was exhausting!  My mom comes every other week to spend the day with baby L and let me volunteer at kidlet’s school.  Today was thier Harvest Party, and I was running one of the tables (we set up 4 stations and they rotated around to each). 

I had them making bookmarks.  I have SO many scrapbook embellishments from when I was selling pages on eBay, so I gathered up all the halloween and leafy apple-y pumpkin-y ones and took those along with card stock and patterned papers cut to size as well as ribbons for the tops.  I have a mini laminator so I took that as well; bookmarks should last a little longer that way at least.  They turned out very cute, and every one was so different; the kids were very creative.

Aside from that hour, I also spent another 3 hours at the school, an hour of it working with the kids and the rest while they were in activities out of the classroom (PE, etc), doing some preparation (cutting out die cut pumpkins, changing out bulletin boards, making closets out of construction paper for a monster activity, etc).

Kidlet didn’t eat very much of his lunch today.  The harvest party ran until 15 minutes before lunch time.  Snack table (they made ghost or pumpkin bagel halves with cream cheese and raisins, and had apples with caramel dip) was the kidlet’s last stop in the rotating around the room, so he just wasn’t that hungry at lunch.  So much work for so little eaten!

Ham chunks, overcooked english muffin “mummy” with ham and pepperoni eyes (it wasn’t too done to eat even though it looks awfully black in the picture, just so melted that you can’t tell that there were “bandages” out of cheese on it), bologna, cheese and nori monster, grapes (more under mummy), pear, broccoli, asparagus, carrot and jicama ghosts.

Time taken: 40 minutes total.  I did make bologna monster last night, but really he didn’t take very long.  Most of that was this morning, making the mummy, (over) broiling it, steaming the veggies, etc and assembly.

Posted by Kristen in Bento, Brain Dump