Unintentionally Patriotic Bento

I woke up late this morning, and truth be told, did not feel like making up anything fancy for Feebz's lunch. Surely a sandwich and a bag of crisps would do. But even a sandwich and a bag of crisps can be turned into something magical with just a little extra effort.

She'd already had a ham and cheese sandwich this week (cut into bird and bunny shapes), so I opted for tuna mayo. I made up two cans of tuna mayo, so I wouldn't have to make more at lunch time for Lolly and myself later. I pulled out pretty much the first cookie cutter in the box, and it was a star. Fine, that'll do.

Unfortunately, the star cutter left a lot of sandwich extras, which I hate. I prefer cutters that leave as little waste as possible, like these. But oh well, it was already done.

I decided to go with a bento box today, so I could easily fill up the rest of her lunch. Bento boxes may seem like a lot of effort at first, but once you start thinking outside the [bento] box - ahem - it's really quite an easy way to make up a varied and interesting lunch. I threw in some tomatoes to fill in the extra space, and then filled the bottom tier with sliced strawberries and blueberries. Easy peasy. However, I'd also pulled out the cucumber from the fridge as I grabbed all the random easy bento-sized foods, so decided to make a quick embellishment. My first thought was to spell out a word in Gaelic with my alphabet canape cutters but realised all the words I could think of - sgoinneil, glé mhath, madainn mhath* - were all far, far too long. Even gasta** suddenly seemed daunting ... and really, could I be bothered cleaning all those letter cutters out afterwards? So I simply did a quick couple of stars with a paring knife to give the final product some pizazz.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I just used the word pizazz.

I put the bento together into the lunch box with a juice drink, added a small container of jello (not forgetting a spoon!) and a bag of crisps to have a snack time. Altogether it took about fifteen minutes. Not as quick as slapping a sandwich together, but satisfying, and Feebz was delighted. It turned out rather patriotic too, which was not my intention, but hey ho, why not?

I made the same for Lolly at lunch time, only this time, instead of wasting a lot of bread, I just cut a star out of the middle of the sandwich and gave her the inner star and then also the sandwich with a star hole. Lunches on the plate are definitely easier than lunches on the go!

*In English: 'brilliant', 'very good', 'good morning'.

**'Splendid'