The theme for this week’s Open Ended Art project was simply “black and white”. Once again I wanted to go with the spirit of the challenge and provide only materials to him, without any specific project in mind, and without assisting or correcting in any way. He is old enough that it works.  When he was younger I think he would have been at a loss on his own like that.
We started out upstairs in my office / the playroom and he was asking to “make a project”. I said of course and hey, do you think we could make something cool if we only used black and white? and he said yes we can! He started rummaging (my scrapbook stuff that isn’t packed up is all over the place), dug out some buttons and some patterned paper. He asked for scissors and glue. Then he went to work.
SEE, this is the dipped in dye thing I was talking about when I was complaining about my camera the other day. Oh Honey, if you are reading this, I need a new camera! All the in progress shots ended up like that or worse. At least one of the finished pictures came out!
Once he had everything glued down the way he wanted, we set it aside to dry, but he very earnestly informed me that it wasn’t finished and he needed to “draw in the lines” when the glue was dry. He had a very clear vision, apparently!
What is it? It’s a “jungle at night” of course. He even spelled out “jungle” with scrapbooking stickers all on his own!
I really have enjoyed these open ended art projects. If you haven’t tried one with your kids, I highly recommend it!  The schedule posted at Mommies Wise Little Bookworms looks like:
- Oct 21-27: Black and White:Glitter, Chalk, Paint anything goes
- Oct 28-Nov 3: Pumpkins: Real, Collage anything goes
- Nov 4- 10: Henri Matisse Collage (more in this in a week or so)
- Nov11-17: Feather
- Nov 18-24: Corn
- Nov 25- Dec 1: NON Open Art: lets see those Turkeys!
Today is a late start day. You’d think since we didn’t have to show up until 10 instead of 8am that I would be less rushed. No such luck! Baby L was up really really early and I ended up lightly dozing (that’s not the best word for it, I’m fully aware of whats going on around me, not actually sleeping, just resting) while Kidlet played his new game (He is on a reward system for behavior at school and yesterday picked out a five day reward – Bakugan game for the xbox, which I had pre-ordered) and baby L took a short nap. I suddenly realized it was 9:30 and it was rush rush rush to get out the door! Thankfully almost everything for today’s lunch was already finished.
Crescent roll and lil smokie mummies, yellow and red raspberries, carrot disks, jicama cut into skull shapes, chocolate vampire, PB&J sandwich with a cucumber monster.
I stole the cucumber monster from Lunchbox Limbo. I made my monster on a tortilla (as you can see I did an imperfect job of trimming the edges!) so that if the kidlet decides to reject the cucumber, he can lift it away and it wouldn’t get cucumber juice all over the pb & j. Also, as I talked about the other day, his lunch gets tossed around so much, the monster would never last unless it was stuck down. I used whipped cream cheese flavored with a little bit of hidden valley ranch dry mix as my glue, and adhered everything together so it will hopefully survive until lunch.
I made everything except the sandwich yesterday evening, so assembly this morning took only a few minutes. Cutting the crescent rolls and winding them up proably took about 10 minutes, but I made 6 of them; saved the rest for his afternoon snack. While they were baking (18 minutes in my oven) I finished all the skulls (there are more of those too 😉 and also made some bones from jicama. I didn’t have a cutter for those, so I kinda carved them freehand — they will probably show up tomorrow. I constructed the monster while the mummies were cooling down (didn’t want to put them in the fridge hot, or they’d steam up the container and get soggy), probably another 15 – 20 minutes. I did this while watching TV with the baby sleeping next to me – multi-tasking mama! 😉
Â
Â
This week’s food network chef cooking challenge features Brian Boitano. Yes, that Brian Boitano. I watched it once and thought the food he was cooking sounded repulsive (It was a bacon themed day, how he made bacon sound bad, I don’t know, but he did!). So it was with some apprehension that I browsed his recipes for this week. The show is so new that there are relatively few recipes to choose from, so I suspect we’ll see some of us duping recipes too. I picked his very un-authentic version of Coq Au Vin – which I love, but it is so time consuming and difficult to make “real†Coq Au Vin, it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.
Â
Thanks to my camera problems as mentioned in a post earlier, I ended up with a bunch of unusable pictures. I’ll post one of the few that came out, so you can see that I really made it ;) Ignore the filthy stove. I had a little accident with the leftover flour from dredging and it got all over the place. The only sustitution I made is listed tbelow — I couldn’t find cipollini onions.
Â
Coq Au Vin-guine, recipe courtesy Brian Boitano
Â
1/2 cup olive oil, divided
1/4 pound pancetta, chopped
1 pound cipollini onions, peeled and sliced in 1/2 (I couldn’t find these at either grocery I frequent right now, so I subbed pearl onions)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
1 pound crimini mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 bottle medium-bodied Italian red wine (I have no idea what “medium bodied” means. We don’t drink around here. I bought a middle of the road pricewise wine.)
3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves removed
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 pound linguine
Fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped
Â
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook until brown and crispy about 8 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with a paper towel. To the same skillet add the onions and cook until they just start to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside on a baking sheet. While the onions cook, add the flour to a glass baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Add the chicken and toss to coat. To the same skillet add 3 tablespoons olive oil, add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Saute the mushrooms until browned, about 8 minutes and remove to the baking sheet with the onions. Shake off any excess flour from the chicken and put on a plate. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil to the skillet and add the chicken. Cook the chicken until browned, about 6 minutes and transfer to the baking sheet. Turn the heat to medium and add the garlic and tomato paste. Cook for 2 minutes and deglaze the pan with 3/4 of the bottle of wine, making sure to scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. While the wine comes to a simmer, add the thyme, chicken, mushrooms and onions and let simmer for 3 minutes.  Â
That's just steam, its not burning.
If sauce is too thick add remaining red wine. Add butter, taste and adjust seasonings, if necessary. Bring a large pot of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the pasta and cook until al dente about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta, transfer to a large serving bowl and top with the chicken and wine sauce. Garnish with the parsley, pancetta and a drizzle of the remaining olive oil.
What we thought: I thought it was very good. The sauce was delicious! Especially on the pancetta, YUM! It would be even better over mashed potatoes, IMO. I can’t say that it is as fantastic as the “real” thing, but seriously, who can find an old rooster and spend 24 hours cooking it? For a quick coq au vin, it was amazing. Quick is a relative term. It probably took about an hour from start to finish.
Â
DH complained (as usual) for me making something new. Kidlet thought it looked horrible. He isn’t really eating meat right now, so I just took one chunk of the chicken, rinsed off the sauce and shredded it up. When he saw mine in a bowl, he asked me “are you eating poop?” GAH! Why can’t my house be full of people that appreciate food!?
Â
Although he doesn’t say so, you wouldn’t want to try making this in a non stick or cheap skillet.  Use a nice heavy bottomed one (much <3 to my all clad!). By the time you get the garlic and tomato paste in the pan, the bottom is really gummed up with all the good bits from the pancetta, onions, mushrooms and chicken that were cooked in before. It’s the deglazing of all those wonderful bits that really adds depth to the sauce.
I’ve been promising pictures of my obsession for a while. Picks and cutters are my worst offences. I have a fair amount of mayo cups and soy sauce bottles, mostly purchased before I actually started packing Kidlet meals. Once I realized how little use those would get for us right now, I stopped picking those up, no matter how adorable. Picks and cutters though — those I can use everyday in our american style food meals.
My pick collection. At least most of it. I’ve got some bamboo picks and some long pinwheel picks that don’t fit in here. There wasn’t space to separate everything. So all my animal picks are dumped in one container. All the primary color, non fork picks are together, and so on.
Soy sauce bottles, furikake containers and mayo cups. As mentioned, they don’t get used too much. Also my stash of baran. I find that I don’t use them much as food separators, but I like the small ones tucked in his lunch to add a little happy and a little color (as in today’s waffle breakfast).
These are the other assorted non bento specific tools that I use. The brushes are used with food coloring (not shown) or to brush on the luster dust (little bottles in the middle) for a shine. The purple handled tools are the quilling tools that I’ve mentioned before that I use for cutting cheese/meat out.
Miscellaneous stuff. Nori punches, egg shapers, sandwich imprinters, various paper, silicon and plastic cups.
This is the Go To box of cutters. It’s got most of my mini sized cutters as well as all the bento specific cutters I have purchased, used for making figures and such. These (and the rest of the cutting tools) are stored in 12×12″ flat boxes meant for storing scrapbooking papers/pages.
The next box of cutters mostly is stored away. It’s got a lot of theme cutters that I would spcifically go looking for to fit a particular lunch, so it doesn’t need to sit out.
Finally are the large cutters that I use often enough (not necessarily just in bento. I might dino or rocket up his snacks and things too) to keep out. This also has the seasonal items in it. After halloween/fall I will take out those and bring out the christmas ones, etc. (Yes, sadly it is true, there are even more cutters not pictured because they are seasonal and packed away elsewhere until its time to bring them out).
I think I need to make a collage of these photos for my desktop; next time I feel like browsing online bento stores, maybe seeing all the stuff would put my urge to spend in check 😉
The shot on this one isn’t great. I took a couple others, but I’ve been having problems with my camera for a while. Either it ends up off center (even though it looked centered when I took it, even in the preview window thingy after it was taken), or else half the photo ends up looking like it was dipped in dye.
I’ve had my old trusty hp photosmart camera a long time. Several years at least. It’s 5 or 6 megapixels and aren’t they up to 8 or something? I really need a new camera.  One of these days!
Mini blueberry waffles, sausages, hard boiled egg, kiwi, and yogurt in a side car. Bunny bottle has lemon pepper for the egg and there is some blueberry syrup packed for dipping the waffles.
Aside from waiting for the egg to cool down (I forgot to do them last night!), this only took about 10 minutes.
I think (hope) that this week will be a little bit calmer. It would almost have to be, wouldn’t it? ;) I’ve got a dentist appointment this morning (grr, I need a filling replaced), and Friday night is “Fall Fun Night”, but I haven’t committed to doing anything for that. the middle of the week looks clear, so hopefully I can spend some time on cute bento!
Cream cheese and cheddar rolls on a sun-dried tomatotTortilla (they were supposed to look like pumpkins, but don’t really), ham flower, grape tomato, broccoli, asparagus, strawberries with papaya flowers and grapes.
Time taken: about 15 minutes. I microsteamed the asparagus and broccoli and then made the rolls, ham flower and strawberry stacks while it cooled down, and then assembled everything.
My week was beastly busy. I’m still not recovered and its Sunday night! Let’s just say that I didn’t stick well to plan last week and leave it at that. =0Â
Â
Â
Monday:Â Â Quick Crescent Taco Bake, Black Beans & Corn Salad, Green Salad
Tuesday:Â Coq Au Vin-Guine from Brian Boitano for the Food Network Chef Cooking Challenge, steamed Carrots, Garlic Bread (whole wheat), Salad
Wednesday: Italian Roast Chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans
Thursday:Â Â Marinated (indoor) Grilled Steak, roasted cauliflower, pierogis
Friday: Fall Fun Night at School (Mini Subs, Fruit, Milk, pre-ordered)
Saturday: Honey-Jalapeno Chicken and Sesame Soba Noodles, edamame
Sunday:Â Creamy Shrimp Chowder, Rolls
Â
For breakfasts we always have oatmeal, cold cereal, scrambled eggs, toast, freezer muffins, yogurt, cottage cheese and fruits to choose from.  I also keep us stocked with lunch meats, cheeses, etc for bentos.   My lunches this week will be leftovers and a pot of soup. Probably this recipe  but with sausages; I have ended up with an extra pack of them. Even when not specifically listed, I usually have a mixed greens salad and fruit available for dinner.
Â
This post is linked Menu Plan Monday at Organizing Junkie. Check out the hundreds of other menus posted.
I had 45 minutes to get the kidlet dressed, fed and ready to go. I also had to make his snack, his lunch, and prepare the baked goods tray for Grandparents Day in that same time frame. It was a rushed morning. Bento turned out fairly one note in color.
Pepperoni and mozzarella puff pastry bites, meatball, checkered apple, strawberry, carrots and a little apple tartlet (from the baking for Grandparents Day).
I’m sure I spent less than 5 minutes throwing this together.
I’m really tired and dragging, with another 2 hours of classroom volunteering and the baking left to do. I know I’m complaining, but honestly, I feel very fortunate that I AM able to take the time to do this. A full time working mom wouldn’t have the chance to exhause herself this way; and it’s worth it for the kidlet.
Another fairly simple lunch. I suspect that the rice crackers *might* come back. He’s had them before, but didn’t love them, and this is the big box (650ml), and usually is too much food for him. It will be interesting to see if the crackers or the veggies are the things that get left by the wayside when he gets too full to finish. Fortunately, the teacher instills a “no waste” kind of policy and has the kids put everything back into thier boxes, so I always get to see what’s left over. His leftovers aren’t usually edible like a disposable lunch with baggies of crackers or such all separate, but I still like to see how the lunches are faring with him.Â
Edit: and the winner of the “what came home today” contest – a tie! half the crackers and half the veggies!
Fruit salad (pineapple, papaya, golden rasperberries, raisins, blackberries, strawberry stars) with little fork picks for eating the mushier pieces. Carrots, purple cauliflower, grape tomato. Turkey and cheese on whole grain white, cheese stars. Babybel cheese with star cutout and some rice crackers.
Time taken: 15 minutes, no prep last night.
You can tell from my lack of super decorated bentos this week what kind of week I am having. We’ve had pediatrician visits, dentist appointments for me and kidlet, an instructional meeting on “gargoyles” for this months art literacy presentation that I am giving to kidlet’s class, a principals chat, a PTA meeting.Â
Still to come is my volunteer time in the classroom as well as getting together with a couple of other moms to cut out pieces for a paper bag owl project the kids will be doing at thier “harvest party” (Not allowed to say halloween!). I have my own project to prepare as well — I’m doing a table where the kids will make bookmarks. I’m digging out my scrapbook supplies (most are packed up), need to cut out strips from cardstock, collect ribbons, patterned papers, stickers and other flat embellishments. I have a little Xyron machine so I can laminate them.
I’m also watching my 18 month old nephew on Friday, along with baby L, so that my mom can go to “Grandparents Day” at Kidlet’s school, since she normally watches my nephew on Fridays. Oh. And I committed to baking 24 portions of something for the grandparents to have with thier coffee (we figured if enough of the people at the pta meeting could do this, we could save the money we’d spend on refreshments, and probably have better food). I so don’t bake; so even figuring out WHAT to make is a challenge.
So yea, no complex bentos this week yet, and probably not at all 😉
Please ignore the limpness of the lettuce! He never eats it; its just there to look pretty and to help keep things wedged in; its not as slippery as the un-lettuced sides of the box, and I bought new lettuce today, honest.
Note to self: the little cut and press thingies that are intended to shape your sandwich and then imprint the bread with a little face does NOT work very well on PB and lemon curd. Stick to meat and cheese sandwiches that won’t squirt out the edges.
Box contains the aforementioned PB & lemon curd sandwiches, cut with the bunny head cutter, but NOT imprinted, with 3 of those tiny strawberry candies on top. We have yellow cauliflower and carrot bunnies. Under the carrots is a lightly dressed salad made out of peas and tiny fresh mozzarella balls. Lemon pepper in the bunny bottle for his salad. Peach slices and grapes. Because he has peas, there aren’t many dipping veggies, so I am sending a mayo cup of ranch dip in there instead of a larger container of it outside the box.
This was another quickie. Between 10-15 minutes with no advance prep.
It doesn’t seem very balanced for color. The green of the peas isn’t really visable. Some cherry tomato might have helped, but I didn’t have any. Oh well, it may not have as much eye appeal as some, but it is a healthy meal that I know he will eat!