OK, well, I ended up doing one more because I had put aside a muffin and stuff already for this one.
Ham and pineapple skewers, lemon pepper for beans (in apple), oatmeal-raisin cookie, string cheese, ham and cheese corn muffin, green beans with a couple carrots stars.
What I learned: Kidlet didn’t like the cold corn muffin, even though he scarfed them when they were fresh and hot.  He ate the beans cold though. I expected it to be the other way around!
Probably the last practice bento — Kindergarten starting this week, so its the real thing next ;) I have a couple of days to go, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time to bento. Besides, Kidlet said “OOoh, I like this one the best! Can I have rocket lunches every day?” so I may end up having to make rocket sandwiches for a few days!
Ham and cheese rocket sandwich, blueberries, carrot stars and a black cherry tomato / cheese ring planet.
What I learned: It takes a LOT of blueberries to fill a 650ml box. I switched to a smaller one and left out the other planets and moon I had planned, so we’re a little veggie light.
Hard boiled egg, broccoli, sungold cherry tomatoes, sweet bell pepper flowers, fresh mozzarella balls. Lemon peper in the little soy sauce bottle (kidlet loves it on his eggs). Strawberries, ranch dressing, banana pound cake and a banana snake.
What I learned: I didn’t put enough lemon juice in the acidulated water and the bananas got dark. They were also pretty mushy by lunchtime. He didn’t like the pepper flowers, even though they were a nice sweet pepper from the farmers market that I think are delicious!
I should have bought some blueberries to plug the holes around the strawberries. You shouldn’t be able to see the bottom at all. Still, this is my favorite so far.
Blurry Picture today. After snapping the photo (and bento in process of being devoured) I discovered that the camera that I’ve been using for oh, I don’t know, but years anyway, has a focus setting for close ups. I’ll try that for the next one 😉
Jicama, carrots and celery. Honeydew and mango stars. Cream cheese and jam on whole wheat flatout rolls. I ended up having to give him a little bit of dip (duh!) so next time I’d likely leave out the celery so a dip cup would fit. As much as I like jicama, I’d never actually given it to the kidlet. He ate it all up.
What I learned:Â Jam rolls are disasterously messy. I may need an oshibori container for a damp cloth!Â
This is also a smaller box than I’ve been using (460ml instead of 650). This size is what is recommended for the 3-5 year old, but my 5 year old has quite a healthy appetite. He is used to eating a small snack between breakfast and lunch, and I’m guessing they don’t provide that in Kindergarten, so I’m worried he will be starving by lunch.
I’m having trouble controlling my bento spending habit. I don’t have the money to spare. But I keep getting sucked into the cute things. Especially adorable are the various soy sauce bottles. They don’t hold much; basically a single serving of soy sauce or vinegar, etc. Since the traditional japanese bento will have rice, etc, I guess soy sauce containers make sense. However, we aren’t eating traditional food in ours — just american style lunches, packed in the bento style. Soy sauce bottles are nearly useless to us (He does like lemon pepper as a seasoning, and I can put that in them, carefully. They make specific containers for shaking seasonings though).  But I have like 50 of them in from plain to some little animal lids and others in cute little shapes. They are usually very inexpensive, so its easy to justify to myself, but cheap doesn’t really matter if it won’t even be used! So I keep finding myself having to exert true willpower not to buy any more soy sauce bottles (or any other bento accessory for that matter). Although I will admit that if these little ribbon, crown and hat picks  were ever back in stock, I’d snap them up in a heart beat. I’ve seen folks using them in thier bentos and they are ridicuously adorable stuck in the top of an egg with a smily face, and so on!
Kindergarten looms ever closer. We visited the school  on Wednesday, for kindergarten assessment. We should find out a couple of days before he starts which classroom will be his. I have to wonder what exactly they were assessing since we weren’t allowed in the room. And what will they DO with the assessment? Do they sort out the kids putting all the bright ones together, etc or do they go for a balance? I’m already feeling like I need to protect the kidlet from some kind of judgement, which I know is silly!
Regardless that is done, his immunizations up to date, school supplies purchased (and we had to get the entire years worth of items, like EIGHT gluesticks, several boxes of crayons and so on right up front for the first day. It’s always some unexpected expense, isn’t it?), a few new clothes to replace the hopelessly stained and small ones I’ve weeded from the closet. Now I’m just waiting for word on his class so I can join the PTA, and working out more kinks for his lunches.
Ham & cheese skewers (the kidlet put those together; he is really enjoying the “fun lunches” and wanted to help), carrot flowers and boccoli, honeydew melon and oatmeal-cranberry animal crackers.
What I learned: One little grass baran couldn’t keep the moisture from the honeydew getting into the cookies and they ended up soft, but not so much they fell apart – kidlet still ate them. I’d put the crackers in a silicon cup next time.
In preparation for packing bento lunches (kidlet starts Kindergarten on the 10th!), I’ve been doing some practice runs. I’m learning to use the tools, how to really pack them tight. how MUCH to pack in there to suit his appetite, if certain traditional things will get eaten (like nori decorations), and so on.Â
The first one isn’t worth looking at, I promise you. This one is number 2. If I’d had lettuce to line the outside to make it look a little more packed, I would have and I think it would have looked better. But I had a flat tire this weekend and we missed the farmers market and I haven’t had the energy to drag both kids to the store (kidlet isn’t doing any more preschool now).
Ham and cheese dino sandwiches (ugly eye done with a food safe marker meant for coloring sugar cookies), little cheese suns, pluot, broccoli, cherry tomtoes that the kidlet grew on the porch this summer and ranch dressing in the apple container.
What I learned: 1. those little mayo cups don’t hold enough dip for that much broccoli. While I don’t think dip is especially great — if that is what it takes to get veggies in him, so be it. 2. Most small containers (ie gladware and such) are too tall for a bento box and all my bento specific condiment containers are as small or smaller than the apple 3. The food coloring eyes freaked him out and he ate all the dinos except for the heads which he left in the box (creepy!) 4. He prefers lightly to well cooked broccoli over raw. I’d have to have to spend time blanching vegetables every morning though, yipes.
Of all the many things I should be doing to prepare for the new arrival in a few months, one of the most important is finding more time to spend with the kidlet. I can only imagine it will be rough for him to adjust to suddenly sharing mom and dad’s attention once his sibling arrives; extra time now won’t make it any easier, but I still want to cherish those moments that we have now, while we can. To that end I cut back one of his days at his Learning Tree preschool class.Â
Last week we hit the zoo; this week the Kidlet asked to go to the Children’s Museum. We went right when they opened. It’s a great place, with lots of different areas to explore and lots of things to learn, but it gets ridiculous when it gets crowded. Especially so on weekdays, when its mostly younger kids, 2ish seemed to be the norm. Nothing is as much fun to a five year old as kids half your age grabbing your blocks/trains/magnets/dressup clothes, etc out of your hands! And there are always a few parents who are terrible at monitorring thier children. The *place* might be safe for your kid, mister, but when your 2 year old tries to take something that my child already has in his hands, and then starts hitting him when he fails, don’t be shocked that my five year old (my giant 5 year old, who towers a head above every other kid in his class) can hit a lot harder.   Of course I was right there, and didn’t let the kidlet retaliate physically (though I was tempted since the brat was a problem repeatedly in multiple areas. We kept leaving to find something new, and they kept showing up after us).
I packed us a nice little bento box snack. I forgot to get a picture, but I put in a row of folded pepperoni, some sugar snap peas and stars cut of of zucchini discs, and a little mayo cup shaped like a car with ranch dressing. The side dish had cottage cheese over diced tomatoes.
I’m not sure what we’ll do next week; I’m sure he will think of something! 😉
One of the bento groups that I follow is Bento Challenge over at livejournal. Every Saturday (in theory, sometimes she misses one), she posts a theme for the week, and the community of posters puts up pictures of thier bentos in that theme. So far I have only posted one, which was for the “Under the Sea” theme back before the trip to California.
The mermaid on the tinted rice in the left tier came out very pretty, but her components aren’t exactly in keeping with the rest of the flavors (she is bologna, cheeses and snow peas). The coral is bell peppers. On the right is a spinach salad, a grape tomato skewer, and shrimp and clams (in keeping with the under the sea theme). The sea stars are from a recipe I picked up at Family Fun.
Crispy Cheese Stars
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Flour tortillasÂ
Sliced cheese (cheddar, provolone, or mozzarella)Â
Chili powder or paprikaÂ
2 Star Cookie Cutters, in graduated size
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Heat the oven to 350°. Use the larger cookie cutter to cut out stars from flour tortillas (about 5 per 10-inch tortilla). It’s easy for kids to do if you use a rolling pin to roll back and forth over the cutter. Bake the stars on a foil-covered cookie sheet for 5 minutes. Use the smaller cookie cutter to cut out an equal number of cheese stars from the sliced cheese and place them atop the tortilla ones. Bake the stars for 2 more minutes or so until the cheese melts. Sprinkle the stars with chili powder or paprika and let them cool before serving.
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Instead of chili powder or paprika, I used a furikake seasoning on some of the stars. It gave them a more rugged-y appearance, I thought. Plus, the seaweed fit with the theme. 😉
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“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.â€Â ~Abraham Lincoln
Bento is a relatively new interest of mine. While the Japanese term “bento” roughly translates to “box lunch” in English, and I guess even a happy meal would qualify, a typical traditional Japanese Bento is not an average packed lunch. It’s really a craft, an art. The goal with bento is to assemble a meal that is just as appealing to the eyes as it is to the taste buds.  It’s ruled first by the concept of Goshiki (five colors) which calls for the cook to include at least one item from each color group (Red or Orange, White, Black or Purple or Brown, Yellow and Green).  Food is divided proportionally, 3 parts rice to 2 parts fruit and/or vegetables to 1 part protein. Bento boxes are packed tightly, wedging the food into place so it maintains its visual appeal until lunchtime.Â
Beyond that, they can get pretty crazy. It’s not uncommon for Japanese mothers to prepare an elaborate, playfully and creatively decorated boxed lunch to entice their children to eat all of their food when they’re at school. Some of it is so artistic, its hard to believe that its all edible.
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And while I admit, I have seen some beautiful bentos, that’s not its only draw. I stumbled on to it while researching lunch boxes for the kidlet and hubby. Hubby wants to start taking lunches instead of purchasing them at the deli so that he can work on his health as well. And while the kidlet doesn’t need daily lunches right now, as his preschool provides meals and I am satisfied with thier nutrition, it doesn’t hurt to start looking now, when I was looking for the hubby anyway! I wanted a “green” solution, in the materials used for the box, and in reusable bits for storage and I came across Laptop Lunchboxes, which are often called the “american bento”. One thing led on to another. I love the no waste concept, the portion control imposed by a bento box. Even if I’m not interested in building Grand Masterpieces of Design with elaborate characters and such (“Kyaraben”), the art of building a bento appeals to me, balancing it in food types and color, creating a nutritious, yet attractive lunch appeals to me.
Besides, bento box accessories are just so CUTE! 😉
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. ~ Buddha
The title? Oh, well, imagine me squealing like a little girl. Not very diginified, I know, but my last package of bento box goodies that I’ve ordered arrived today. Ever since I first saw the “Ringo” (Apple) line by Shinzi Katoh, I just had to have it! Katoh is a zakka artist. (Zakka refers to super cute, often utilitarian, objects designed with an English or French vintage influence. Mushrooms and polka dots and adorable little animals. Decole. If that helps at all.) At any rate, neither the english version of his site nor the UK supplier site had the ringo line available. Digging everywhere online, I couldn’t seem to get my hands on anyone that still had the bits in stocks. I finally located one Japan-based Ebay store that actually had the mayo cups, sauce bottles, furikake shakers, picks and hard, reusable cups. They weren’t conveniently listed as ringo or shinzi katoh, but with much digging and searches for bento + apple + bottle and whatever combo I could think of, I stumbled on them! I ordered those and a couple other goodies, and they finally came. My haul:
I won’t link the store — turns out that her stock was rather limited. The only thing I could still find there today was the picks. Eek, just in time for me I guess!
I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~Thomas Jefferson
