I was >< close to skipping bento today and having the kidlet get a hot lunch.  My mom is coming to town to watch Baby L and I’m going to be volunteering at his school right before lunch and I thought I might stay through lunch and help him figure out how to use the card system they have in place for paying for the meals.  We put a chunk of money on his card for “just in case”, but of course haven’t used any of that yet.  If “just in case” happened, he would be clueless on the process of getting a school lunch and paying for it. I was all resolved to suffer through a “turkey hot dog and mini cheese pizza with fruit and veggie bar”.  (yuck!)

Then he woke up before five (egads) and I ended up with plenty of time to make lunch.

Turkey and colby-jack window pane sandwich shaped like an acorn, baby bell cheese, cold polenta cut into leaf shapes and then fried to give them a nice crisp outside (wonder how this will fare, sitting until lunch), raspberries and checkered apple.  In addition to the leaf cheese and polenta there are carrots, parsnip and sweet potatos cut into leaf shapes as well. 

The sweet potato and parsnip are cooked just until soft enough to eat, but still firm enough to pick up and manipulate.  I find its easier to cut my shapes from the raw root and then cook it.  It’s a lot tougher to get a crisp edge from a cutter on the cooked veggie.

It took an hour from start to finish.  That includes cutting all the shapes, cooking the vegetables and polenta and time for them to cool down completely before packing as well as making the apple.  Had I planned on a bento today I would have done all the veggies and apple last night.  In that hour I was also cooking breakfast and took a quick shower.  Hands on time was probably about 25 minutes.

Posted by Kristen in Bento