Today the Kidlet’s school is having thier annual “Run for the Arts” event.  Students collect pledges, then run laps for 30 minutes and collect the funds.  This money pays for additional art education / productions; this year each class is getting a visit with a local artist with hands-on fun.  It’s a worthy thing.  I know this.  PPS funding for music and arts and even physical education is essentially non-existant.  We are fortunate that our neighborhood has a lot of parent volunteers and enough wealthier families that the school raises enough money to provide these things.  Still.  I hate pledge drives.  Even in a less shaky economy, its no fun asking people for money, even your family and friends.  Perhaps especially your family and friends since they have a harder time saying no!  We ended up deciding how much total we could donate, and then split it up and pledged a little for each person we’d normally have gone to.

The kindergarteners were so cute this morning when I dropped off my kidlet.  They are so excited about this run!  Running laps for 30 minutes in the cold doesn’t sound like MY idea of fun, but hey, whatever floats thier boats.  Half of them had on special running outfits, and all were bragging and one-upping on how many laps they would run.  Anywhoo, since today is Run for the Arts, I focused on that for the kidlet’s lunch. 

PB and J circle sandwich, cheese running shoe with spaghetti laces, strawberries and blackberries, carrot “Run!”, cauliflower and broccoli.

Time spent: 20 minutes.  Around 10 to make the shoe and carrot letters, and 10 for assembly this morning.  The shoe was really easy.  I used a paper template to cut the same shape out of 3 slices of cheese (using the quilling tool, which I just drag through the cheese; it takes seconds.  MUCH faster than trying to do it with an exacto, knife or scissors.  It only works on soft things like cheese and bologna though, since its not a sharp edged tool), then cut 2 of the slices into smaller pieces –  laying them on top of each other so they would match and would fit together like a puzzle.  Then I mixed and matched the pieces and layered those on the third (whole) cheese shoe which I used as the base.  I used a small round pastry tip to make the lace holes and threaded the spaghetti through.

I think the shoe was actually easier than the letters, even though I have alphabet cutters for those!  It’s tough to get those tiny little letters out of the cutter without ripping/breaking them.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

I bought the nail picks a long time ago with the intention of doing a construction / Bob the Builder bento.  At the time, he was really into using his little work bench, and we were watching Bob regularly.  Then I saw this bento by JBDoodles, and had a hard time coming up with something that didn’t look like I was stealing her idea!  In the end I decided just to make what I had originally envisioned.  I like my Bob better, but I think her overall bento might be a bit easier on the eye.  None-the-less, Kidlet will love it, I’m sure!

Roast beef and cheddar on whole grain white bread (I love this stuff.  It’s got fiber but is soft and tastes like white bread.  We don’t mind a good multi-grain bread, but I think the white bread makes a better canvas for cheese art ;)). Bob is bologna, cheese with pepperoni hair.  Tools were made from tortillas, crisped in the oven a few minutes, topped with the cheese and returned for another couple minutes to melt.  The saw blade has luster dust on it to give it a metallic sheen, but that didn’t photograph well.  Carrots cut into nut shapes, purple and yellow cauliflower, mixed color pear tomatoes (green and yellow).  Cherry tomatoes and raspberries skewered on nail shaped picks.  The picks were REALLY sharp on the end, so I clipped them with scissors (they are just hard plastic) and then filed them a little.

Time Spent:  it took about 45 minutes last night, but thats because besides bob, I actually made 16 tool crackers (wrenches and drills plus the hammers and saw).  I also I dulled the nail picks. Assembly this morning (including cutting the carrots by hand beacuse I realized at the last minute that I didn’t have a hexagon or octagon shaped cutter.  Boggle) took about 15 minutes.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

It was over a year ago that I first decided that I wanted to pack bento style lunches for my kidlet.  I started looking at bento sites, and sought out gear.  I only made 3 bentos in all of 2008 through july 2009.  I found out that my son wouldn’t be needing a meal packed for preschool, as they served food there and strongly discouraged outside food.  So aside from a packed snack here or there, I had no need for it. 

I never posted my very first bento.  It makes me laugh to see it now!

Hopefully, I have come a long way since then.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

As I mentioned yesterday, shy little kitten was requested, but without nori I didn’t think I could do it, so we just went  with cheese.  This is the tabby version of the shy little kitten I guess!

Pizza cut into star shapes under the cheese kitty.  Raspberries, blackberries, plum, broccoli and carrot flowers with little radish centers.

Not terribly happy with this one.  I didn’t get the kitten wrapped up very well.  The food coloring hadn’t dried and I was worried about smearing, so I wrapped it too loosely.  So some of the edges of the cheese dried a little, ick.  The butterfly dried up even worse, and didn’t make it to the box.  I was out of leafy lettuce to line the edges to disguise where you can see the bottom, and out of blueberries or black flame grapes, so I didn’t have any tiny fillers for the job either.  I wanted to put some tufts of chives in to make the grass he was frolicking in, but the kidlet said “gross, take those out mommy”.

On the plus side, aside from the drying out, I thought the kitty came out well.  The colors are nice, and Kidlet thought the lunch was awesome.

Time taken: 15 minutes on carrot flowers, kitten and (unused) butterfly last night, 8 minutes assembly this morning.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

I still can’t unpload and resize pictures with wordpress.  I’m using an external ftp program to get the photo uploaded, which sucks because it doesn’t get put into the media library for management.  And then I have to resize by eye, so I’m not sure I’m keeping proper proportions.  Very annoying!

Easy bento today.  Tomorrow, perhaps not so much.  When I was figuring out what “little” bento to do, I considering a classic golden book that the kidlet really loves, “The Shy Little Kitten”.  I sketched it all out, experimented with painting food colors and discarded the idea because its all white, gray and black – and the Kidlet doesn’t like anything I do that is black.  He won’t eat nori.  Overpainted / colored food turns him off (even though I’ve got “no taste” colors by Wilton).  I just don’t see any way to make the shy kitten work.  This morning, though, the Kidlet spied my sketch and asked for the shy little kitten for tomorrows lunch.  I told him that I didn’t think I could do it because he doesn’t like any black foods and he said “You can make a rainbow shy kitten, mommy.”  Oh boy.  Hopefully I will be able to get away with a generic kitten.

Beef smoked sausage under cheese flowers (pomegranate seed centers), held in place with mozzarella balls. Raspberries, blackberries, yellow cauliflower, celery and radish flowers.  I am not thrilled with the amount of processed sausages and lunch meats that the Kidlet eats.  Unfortunately, he is going through a phase where he doesn’t like any solid meats at all.  I’ve been buying from trader joe’s, getting organic when I can (I actually don’t feel strongly in organic foods, but in theory I’m getting foods with fewer chemicals and nitrates and all that stuff in it), and hoping that this solid meat boycott is temporary.  I even tried the teriyaki baked tofu that Wendolonia’s wee one likes so much, but he rejected that big time.  He *will* eat shrimp and fish, and I’m going to try and plan ahead to start including those things.

Anyway, he had the sausages for dinner yesterday, so I had cooked extra for today.  This morning I just had to cut out the flowers, lightly steam the cauliflower and assemble, 10 minutes, tops.

Today’s box is “Sucre Pink”.  Which I really love.  It’s a good size. It’s a single tier, which we prefer.  It has 3 divider inserts so if I want to pack something saucy, that is easily done without external cups.  It’s got the lock down lid that is the only way to go here (no way kidlet is messing with belts right now). 

Basically, its just like “Leaflet Tight“, except its a 430ml box, not 650ml — (and the 650ml is really too much food for kidlet, even if its my favorite box for character/cute theme because its bigger and has more room so I don’t have to make characters quite so small.  Smaller is harder!)  Unfortunately, its pink, and while the Kidlet isn’t rejecting ‘girl” colors yet, I expect that he will soon.  Other kids in his class aren’t as open minded about gender roles, colors, etc.  Originally this box was available in blue and orange, but by the time I started buying boxes, I could only find the pink.  I would really like to find another box or two just like this, except in boyish color or theme. 

Does anyone out there know a mail order source for a box with these requirements?  

Single Tier

450ml – ish

Divider inserts that use the whole space

Tight locking clamp seal

“Boyish” color or theme

Posted by Kristen in Bento

We recently upgraded my wordpress to the newest version (I’d been out of date for months) and I’m having a lot of problems with it.  It adds line breaks where I don’t want them, and takes them away where I do.  I sometimes can’t upload photos, othertimes I get them uploaded, but they won’t resize like they used to (you select “70%” for example, it shows the photo at the 70%, but when you click “ok”, it shrinks it down to postage stamp size, instead the 70%). So my apologies for the mess right now.  I’m not sure what (if anything) I can do; I’ll keep trying to get the photos corrected so you can actually see everything.

Today’s lunch came about as I was making pancakes for breakfast this morning.  Kidlet wanted to have pancakes for lunch too.  So instead of “The Three Little Pigs” (following the words of the week theme again), we got an un-themed breakfast bento.  No pre-planning or sketching or anything, so its not as tight or cute as I might like.

He’s got a pancake, which I rolled around whipped cream cheese that I flavored with blackberry syrup.  The cakes were a little warm still though, and the cream cheese melted a bit instead of making a lovely pretty roll with defined layers.  Ah well, it will still taste good.  Lil’ Smokies (including a couple under the rolls so they would tilt up for presentation, an egg sheet flower, canteloupe and honeydew stars and a few tiny apple flowers, for color.

I already had the sausages in the fridge; I’d sauteed them in hoisin and honey yesterday for kidlet’s snack.  The egg sheet came from the freezer; thawed on the counter a few minutes and it was as good as new (maybe a little more rubbery in texture).  Melons were pre-cut. And I was already cooking pancakes.  It took me a few minutes to flavor the cream cheese and cut the apples.  Total time spent this morning: 10 minutes.

Update:  This one was a real hit.  He ate every single crumb.  After school he said “hey mommy. I didn’t get any vegetables today. Don’t forget them tomorrow, ok?”. I’m so lucky even if he won’t eat nori and fishcakes ;). My nephew eats only five different things – it could be much worse!

Posted by Kristen in Bento