Bento For Mummy

I used to make a lot of bentos for the children when they were small if we were going to be out all day, and I made them for myself too. Below, is my favourite bento meal, for kids or grown-ups. This one is for me. (I only made it though, because I was attempting a Darth Vadar avocado and it... well... let's just say it went to the Dark Side. So I had a whole avocado to do something with.)

It's ever so simple. Tuna mayo, avocado, cheese and crackers. And for fun, I added some star-shaped cucumber. Add a fork and you have a really simple and filling lunch to take out with you.

May the Fork Be With You

As a parent, you're always asking yourself, "Am I doing the right thing? Are my children going to grow up with a sense of right and wrong? Am I teaching them what's important in life?"

Then, every now and again, you get one of those break-through moments when you know you are on the right track.

Like when your five year old daughter asks to watch The Empire Strikes Back before bed on a Friday night. It's those kinda things that let you know you've done something right.

So in honour of our Star Wars weekend, I baked a loaf of green oat and linseed bread (which, typically, didn't come out as green as I hoped) and made Yoda sandwiches for lunch.

Oh by the way, notice how this is Sunday night? Yeah, I actually made lunch the night before! Such a good mum! Except I didn't iron any school uniforms, so there's that.

Now, I had really high hopes and visions for this lunch, most of which went to the place where dreams go to die. I was going to do a Cinnamon Bun Leia, a Boiled Egg Stormtrooper and this very intricate avocado shell and rice Darth Vader (which died a horrible death in the making, but at least spurred me on to make this lunch too). All that made it, however, was Yoda. Which kinda makes sense, because the Force was with him.

What you see above is a Yoda cheese sandwich, with cheese eyes (with pupils that did not work as planned - again, fail - thanks to the edible ink pen which did NOT work), plum cherry tomatoes, Oddbits crackers and cocktail sausages, all on the bottom, and on the top, cucumber stars, Mikado Lightsabers, raisins, chocolate cake (which I also tried to turn into a Darth Vader, but man, it so wasn't happening!) and prunes (yes, my kids love prunes. We call them 'dried plums' and they don't know the difference). For snack, there is the granola bar and of course the apple juice.

(Have I mentioned my rabbit's name is Chewbacca?)

This was an incredibly fun lunch to make, and there are so many ideas floating through my head, I can promise you more where this came from. Especially since I ordered these on ebay about an hour ago.

(I have a serious problem with buying crap on ebay. I need support.)


Q: How is Duct tape like the Force?
A: It has a Dark Side, a Light side and it binds the galaxy together.

Omelet You See What I Got Today

At some ungodly hour of this Saturday morning (about 10am or something, for goodness sake!) the doorbell rang. It was the postman. He was immediately forgiven for interrupting my lie-in, because he came bearing gifts.

A letter from the hospital with an appointment I've been waiting on.
My tickets to The Enchanted Forest next weekend.
The brightly coloured flat terry nappies I ordered online.
And these:

An edible ink pen (as in edible-ink pen, not edible ink-pen, naturally) and a set of mini cutters. These cutters are seriously mini; they are even smaller than I expected, which I am delighted about! I foresee many mini cucumber stars, cheese hearts, and ham flowers in the near future. And the hubby can expect some embarrassing written messages on the outside of his boiled eggs in his keto bentos. "u r eggcellent", "u crack me up" and "i shell <3 u 4ever", that sort of yolk.
Eggspect more bad puns later but for now I am egghausted and my brain is fried.



(On the subject of eggs, how cool is this?)

They Learn By Example

6.30 came too early for me yesterday morning.

My alarm went off six times before I actually dragged myself out of bed and fumbled my way around the obstacle course of laundry baskets in my bedroom to the kitchen. There I found Feebz, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, already eating her self-poured bowl of Rice Krispies with sliced banana.

I began the morning routine of unloading and reloading the dishwasher. Feebz asked what she was having for lunch. It reminded me to turn the oven on for her popcorn chicken, which I did. Through my morning haze, I continued my chores and barely noticed what Feebz was up to.

I like that this shot came out blurry. It's how I saw it too.

She was making her lunch herself.

She had gotten out the grapes, cucumber, string cheese, Wotsits and juice boxes herself. She opened the bag of Wotsits and put some in a tub. She got out the cutting board herself (and I got out the Pampered Chef child-safe knife for her) and sliced the cucumber and put it in a tub. She put a few grapes in the tub - "The chicken can go in beside the grapes", she informed me. She even got out the ketchup herself and squeezed some of it into a tub. All I did was get out the strawberries for her so she could put some of them in a tub.

Wow.

Once the popcorn chicken came out of the oven, she put that in with the grapes, and there we had it, her lunch was made. All by herself.

I love that she used tubs for everything.

Her little sister, not to be shown up, had to make her own "snack lunch", as she calls it. (As in "packed lunch".) She took the rest of the Wotsits (in the bag), some grapes and strawberries,some chicken, a juice, and a string cheese and packed her own bento box.

She also chopped a huge chunk of cucumber, but it never made its way into the box.

Basically, it was a pretty easy morning for me, and thank goodness. I was not in a lunchbox frame of mind.

And thanks to them, I got my dishes done too!

Two proud little girls.

Baby Led Bento

Just bought this for Baby Jaguar. I can't believe he'll be ready to start solids in only three months! Merry Christmas, here's some turkey and dressing for your first foods...

By the way, have I mentioned that bentos are Japan's gift to Baby Led Weaning?

Hot Dawg

There was no real theme to this lunch I sent in to school with Feebz yesterday. I just really wanted to use my mustache and cake idea. (Today she didn't take a lunch but bought a school dinner, because I took a lie-in this morning while the Hubby got them ready and took them to school.)

With limited resources and time, I slapped this little face together, made of cake mustache, cheese eyes and egg slice mouth, on top of the normal lunch for a bit of fun. The real lunch consisted of carrot sticks, a boiled egg sliced with an egg slicer (one of my many, MANY Pampered Chef items... don't get me started on how much I love Pampered Chef), cucumber slices, grapes, and several mini hot dogs placed inside a brioche roll. Mmm... And a string cheese for snack time. (See, I do try to make sure my kids are cool.)

I asked Feebz if she pretended her cake was a mustache at school. She just looked at me and said, "I just ate it."

Like I was crazy.

You've Got a Bit of Cake in Your Mustache...

Oh, your cake IS your mustache. Sorry, man, sorry.

(Chocolate cake made in bread machine on the Cake setting. Sliced with an electric knife. Cut into shapes with a mustache sandwich cutter. So much fun.)

Cheap and Cheerful

When I was in elementary school, Lunchables were what all the cool kids were eating. (That and string cheese.) My dear mommy couldn't afford to buy three Lunchables per day for her three children, so she made me her own brand of 'Lunchable'.

It really wasn't cool. But she tried.

And oh dear, my kids are probably going to blog about me (using their microchip mind computers while floating in their studio apartments on Mars) when they are grown about how uncool my lunches were. Sigh. Parents can never win.

But her Lunchable-style lunches stayed with me, and here I am now, a couple of years later *cough* doing the same thing.

Today Feebz took in her lunch (and Lolly and I enjoyed at home) sliced smoked sausages, sliced cheedar cheese and Ritz crackers (okay, they were Tesco 'Snackerz' or something), just like Mama used to make. To fill in the holes I used grapes and finished off the punnet of blackberries in the silicone cupcake case. That cupcake case was important, by the way; without it, the blackberries might have made the crackers soggy. I had to keep them completely separate to avoid that.

I also included a banana, a juice and some EasiYo raspberry yogurt. Fast, easy, cheap and probably utterly uncool if the cool kids are still bringing Lunchables with them.

Seriously, why buy them when you can make them at home for a fraction of the cost? Mommy, I totally get you now.

Sincerest Form of Flattery

Imitation.

Or blatant thievery, whatever.



Someone on the Facebook site linked this photo to me, and I had to try it. It was just too cute! However, I did it from memory, and thus forgot to make the hair. I knew something looked amiss. Anyway, here's my attempt at stealing someone else's creativity and imagination.

It was a tuna mayo on homemade bread sandwich, with cheese for eyes. (And now I want to buy this and this.) I included two strawberries as separators. Some salad hair would've helped make the guys look a little less... I don't know, bald.

The rest of the lunch consisted of blackcurrant jelly/jello, blackberries, half a banana (those bananas were HUGE) and a pack of Cheesy Wotsits. Not exactly the most creative of meals, but I was busy trying to cut out the perfect face shape, and that takes time.

Any other ideas I can pinch?

Kicking It Up A Notch

Today we have a theme. The Moshi Monster theme. Yes, I've done this one before.

But this time, I've kicked it up a notch.

I've had a bit of trouble figuring out how to do the face on this monster. It is a press, but it just doesn't work well on bread. I have tried food colouring, but it wasn't exceptionally successful. I tried writing icing but wasn't totally satisfied with that either. This time, I tried pressing the design into a slice of cheese and hurray! It turned out better!

First notch kicked up.

The rest of the lunch consists of banana chunks, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries on the bottom tier and, along with the ham and homemade bread monster sandwich, I prepared carrots, cucumbers, two "Marshmellow Moshlings" (decorated with writing icing), a Pepperami stick for snack and a homemade blackcurrant jelly/jello.

Now, if you recall, last time I made a Moshi Monster lunch, *somebody* (we don't know who...) slipped a real Moshi Moshling into the kids' lunchboxes. They theorized on *who* or *what* could have caused this toy to appear in their lunch. It was a mystery, and I had provided clues and red herrings, but from the start, I'd decided that the Moshi Monsters lunchbox AND the shape of the sandwich would be the key elements for which a toy would magically appear. I thought it would take Feebz several Moshi Monster lunches for her to deduce this.

Well, she figured it out already.

Sigh. At least she still believes it was "love" that put it there and not me. But now she's asking for a monster-shaped sandwich every day so she can add to her Moshlings collection. Erm... that could get a bit expensive? Not to mention a bit, eh, boring for this blog?

(I have, however, bought some stickers and playing cards for future MM lunches.)

So, um, where is the Moshi Monster, you ask?

Oh I'm so glad you asked. So glad. Because this, my friends, is what I call, ahem, pure genius.

Are you ready?

Are you?

It's in the jelly. I set it in the jelly.

Notch kicked up super high, I mean really.

I'm afraid I've reached my pinnacle of lunch creativity. I might as well just stop here. Nothing more can I teach you, young grasshopper.

(But actually, I'll be back tomorrow.)

(And I sort of ate almost all of the Marshmellow Moshlings...)

We'll See If She Notices....

For the second morning in a row, we accidentally slept in. For some reason, I didn't bother to check my alarm to see what was wrong (maybe I was in too much of a rush at that point), but today I checked and realised it had been set to Wednesdays only. No idea.

So both days I've been in a major rush to not only pack lunch, but get myself and my three offspring dressed, fed and relatively clean looking. Yesterday, I opened the fridge optimistically, thinking 'Good topic for the blog!'. Then I saw only dairy products and instantly gave up in favour of sending £1.75 to school with Feebz instead.

This morning was much the same except I didn't have £1.75 to fall back on, so I had to get creative.

Not sure Feebz is gonna like it...

I bought a bit of ham last night in preparation but forgot butter, so I had to improvise. The car sandwich is therefore a ham and houmous sandwich. I personally love houmous, and so does Lolly, but Feebz claims she doesn't. I doubt if she's ever even tried it. Well, she will today, and by surprise! I quickly made the car look a bit more exciting with a cucumber window and wheels. (Wish I'd been thinking - or had the time to think - and I could've given them carrot disc wheels for more colour.) Aside from that, it's just blueberries, carrot sticks, a cheese, some grapes and some blackberries. On the side is some blueberry yogurt (not homemade unfortunately), a banana (for snack time), a drink and some Mikado chocolate sticks.

I had to fix her hair in the car, but it was worth it.

You're A Star!

Feebz got the "Tha Is Math A Rinn Thu!*" (or something to that effect, I should've taken a picture) star medal this week, so I made her a star lunch, and she helped. Or at least we tried to make a star lunch. I didn't have very much that was big enough to punch a star shape through. We first cut out a star ham and cheese sandwich, then cut out a slightly smaller star from ham to go on top. I cut out a star from a slice of cheese, but it looked a bit dull,so I got out my thinking cap, and cut a hole out of a cucumber slice and placed the cheese in the hole, holding it all together with a food pick. (These food picks were a great purchase from eBay, and I prefer them much more than using wooden cocktail sticks to hold things together; it feels safer.)

I then cut out dinosaur eggs from kiwis, thinking that was quite star-like and topped them with blueberries (and food picks). The raspberries were my favourite part of this lunch. These raspberries were massive, with massive holes in the middle - just the right size to fit a blueberry into! I thought my blueberry-stuffed raspberries were very attractive indeed. I filled in the rest of holes as best I could with blueberries and dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses and separated the sandwich from the fruit with a plastic separator (called bento 'grass' dividers if you are looking online for it.)

In the lid is a Babybel cheese, some Mikado sticks (same thing as Pocky) and a piece of banoffee fudge. In the purple tub is homemade banana pudding.

The whole thing seemed a bit too sweet though, upon reflection, so thus the token carrot sticks on the side.

I fit everything into her lunch box but there was a pesky little hole left... how to fill it? She had more than enough to eat, I figured. So I went to my stash of party favours, my new favourite addition to lunch time, and put in a shoe keyring. The party favours section of the supermarket has now taken on a new meaning for me. I now go through it wondering what little knick-knacks would be fun to stick in my kids' lunches! Lolly got a shoe too at home that afternoon with her non-packed lunch of a hot grilled cheese sandwich.

This would've been a perfect lunch if she'd gotten that star medal for running!

*Gaelic for "Well Done" but I can't remember exactly what the medal said. It was something to that effect.

Keto Bento Challenge 3

I'm getting into my stride!

Sorta!

It's a double whammy this week in the Keto Bento Challenge. I planned to only attempt this once a week, on Fridays when Feebz requests money for the Friday school dinner of fish and chips, but I had some leftovers to work with and a few boiled eggs on hand...

Keto Bento Numero Tres:

Let's see if I can count the carbs on this one. (Maths lesson idea! Feebz, here's how you count in decimals! Counting carbs is less twisted than teaching her to add and subtract using beer caps, which, yes, we do.)

We have our:
-2 strips of streaky bacon (0g net carbs)
-4 little gems lettuce leaves (approx 1.4g)
-8 raspberries (approx 1.6g)
-taco seasoned (approx 1g) beef mince (0g)
-1 boiled egg (.5g)
-almost Carb-Free homemade vanilla pudding (No idea, but used Almond Milk, Splenda and sugar-free vanilla as substitutes for all the carby things so I'll be modest and say this teeny tiny cup is, oh...2g? Maybe even less. I did put one slice of banana in it to sweeten.)

TOTAL = 6.5g approx

Nuts! Still didn't get it under 5g! Perhaps if I could put a definite value on that pudding... Even still, I don't think I'd have made it under the goal.

Onwards! The challenge continues next week....

(Seriously, if I just added these things up while putting them together I'd probably meet the goal, but that requires adding decimal places at 7 in the morning and, dude, that's just not happening. And besides, where's the fun in that?)

How Many Circles Do You See?

If 'circles' is a theme, then the Spice Girls are a 'band'. But we'll just go with it.

I mean, I didn't stay up late last night thinking, "Theme, theme... Squares? No, no, too boring. Triangles? No, no, don't be so obtuse. How about rectangles? Maybe in a parallel universe. I know, circles! That is, if I can get around to it." (A little geometry humour for you there.)

No, I just happened to have a lot of things to go in tubs, and a lot of my tubs are round, so I just, you know, 'rounded' it out with a lot of circles.

In the small pink tub is some homemade banana pudding ('custard' if you will). It was yum. If you're lucky, I'll post the recipe later on. In the large pink tub, I made a fruit salad of blueberries, raspberries and mango, with cute little food picks (also round, oh yeah). Below that is ketchup in a tub and chicken dippers in another. A round apple, a water bottle (round if you look at it from the top...) and a cheese string (also round in its own wee way) completed this lunch - and depleted my round food items ideas. Sure, there are a gazillion round things I could've included, but you know, for one, lunch only needs to be so big and two, it was something like 7am. Give me a break.

I at least thought to take the picture on a spotty background. Dizzying, isn't it?

Keto Bento Challenge 2

It's time for another...

Honestly, ya'll, I could seriously never do this diet! I just love cake too much. But being the dutiful wife I am, I am persevering with figuring out what the Hubby can eat and trying to send him to work with yummy lunches. For his sake, I've made another attempt at preparing a keto-friendly bento for my keto-dieting husband.

If only he ate cheese like a normal person is all I'm saying!

This keto bento consists of:
-2 grill steaks (4g net carbs each) *required microwaving
-2 raw broccoli florets (approx .5g)
-approx 1/4 cup cucumber slices (approx 1g)
-Mini Pepperami (.2g)
-1 boiled egg (.5g)
-3 slices of streaky bacon (0g)
-A sugar-free strawberry jelly (.5g)

Total net carbs = 10.7g

More than I would've liked, that's for sure, but I didn't realise the peppered topping on the grill steaks would add so many carbs. Oops.

So, the challenge continues. My goal is to try to get these bentos under 5g of carbs. Better luck next time, eh? But at least he enjoyed it!

Teeny Tubs

Maybe it's been years since you've walked starry-eyed (or bleary-eyed) down the baby aisles, but here's a tip: Baby food containers make great lunch and bento containers.

I picked up these in Morrisons the other day - 2 for £4. Not bad and just the right size for pudding, custards or jellies. Or sauces or berries or popcorn or nuts or.......

The Lunch Box Shop

I didn't do a shopping list this week before going shopping (dangerous, and expensive), but hopefully I have managed to get enough to last me until next shopping day.

This week for lunches (please excuse the water rings on the table) I am using the following:

Cheese Strings - £1.37 (half price)
Jus-Rol Pizza Base - £1.32 (half price)
Bread mixes x2 - .66p each
Passata (for pizzas) - .29p
Pepperoni - .99p
Raspberries - £2.50 (cheaper ones were available, but these looked juicier)
Blueberries - £2
Low-fat Houmous (to go with the crisps and crackers already in)- £1
Pizza Base (in case the Jus-Rol stuff isn't good) - .69p
Cheese Slices - £1.47
Mango Chunks - 2 for £3
Ham Slices - £1.49
Sugar Free Jelly - .69p
NOT PICTURED 3-Pack Juice Boxes x2 - .45p each

TOTAL: £19.03

I guess when school dinners are £1.75 per day I could just send her with money all week and save myself a tenner, but I prefer knowing what is going into her lunch each day, and I also prefer the good old fashioned warm family feeling of a packed lunch! I'd like to think my children's memories of lunches their mummy packed for them will pleasantly last into their teenage years when they stop needing me (and/or start hating me)... and resurface when they have their own children.

Eat Your Lunch and Play With It Too

My dad wanted to be called Papaw when he became a grandfather. That's what we called him to Feebz when she was little, but because he lives in America, all she knew of him was photographs. And drawings. She loved for us to draw all the members of our family, and she began distinguishing everyone by their stick figure characteristics - especially Papaw's moustache, or as she called it, his 'moosha'. Eventually, she stopped referring to him as Papaw altogether and was then and forevermore renamed 'Moosha'.

So, Moosha, in tribute to you and your mustache, I introduce the Moosha Lunch.

This was my first chance to use my new Fred Crustache sandwich cutter. This thing is hilarious! (They also are available as cookie cutters, so I've recently seen.)

Whoever said not to play with your food probably had a good reason for it (or maybe they were just boring old grumpsters), but as long as you eat it, why not? This lunch was made for playing with - and then eating - with jam mustache sandwhiches on seed and nut bread, with little sides like raspberries, blueberries, mango chunks and a couple of Hershey's Kisses just for fun. I also included a juice box and some EasiYo strawberry yogurt. (Have you noticed how much I love EasiYo?)

In the lid, I added a string cheese and some cucumber slices. Plenty of playing opportunities with this lunch!

Blue Bread

Last week I alluded to my homemade blue bread.

I got the idea for making coloured bread out of my bread machine recipe book, from a recipe for beetroot bread (don't knock it 'til you try it!). The bread naturally comes out pink because of the beetroot. There was another recipe for lemon poppyseed bread, which gave me the idea of adding yellow food colouring to it to make it look more lemony. Since then I've been experimenting with plain white bread loaves dyed various colours.

After bidding on and winning a monster sandwich cutter on ebay, I put a bread mix and some blue food colouring into the bread maker in preparation for making blue monster sandwiches.

The day I made these was a rather rushed day, so the contents of the lunch are nothing special: blueberries, an orange, a jelly (jello), a cheese, a bag of crisps and a juice. And the sandwich of course (ham). The monster cutter came with a press for pressing a monster face into the bread, but the freshness (I'm assuming) of the bread did not lend itself to retaining the face marks. I tried painting blue food colouring onto the press and then pressing but got big blue smudges instead. Finally, I painted on the face with a clean paintbrush and food colouring. It didn't come out perfectly, but I'm now on a mission to work out the best way of painting this face onto bread. Watch this space!

(Any of your genius ideas are very much welcome!)

Weekly Menu And/Or Shopping List

How I spent £70 quid in Tesco and never really managed to buy lunch stuff is beyond me. It could have something to do with the £15 I spent on adorable baby clothes for Baby Jaguar, the 24-pack of Diet Irn Brus, and the three boxes of hair dye though. (The dye was 3 for 2 so it was a bargain.)

Now I'll have to make due until Pay Day with what I've got, so here's what I'm thinking as possibilities for school lunches the first few days of next week.

-Miniature pizzas ("Star Pocket" star shapes, using my new multi-size pack of star cutters)
-Mini hot dogs
-Homemade banana custard to use up the bananas going spotty.... recipe may or may not follow - it's a family recipe! Must decide if you are all worthy. ;)
-Use up the remaining kiwis before they go off
-Chicken dippers again (a box still left in freezer)
-And for Keto Bento Challenge, attempt miniature these.

Keto Bento Challenge

This may sound off topic but bear with me.

My husband is a total hottie. As of late, he's been knocking the hottie level up a few notches by losing weight on his new keto diet. Well, technically, I shouldn't call it 'new' anymore; he's been on it for 8 weeks and is still going strong.

He's lookin' gooood.

The keto diet is an ultra-low carb diet, which I can't tell you much about but these guys can. At first, I found making meals for him on his diet really nightmarish, especially when he doesn't like cheese (a keto staple). He's becoming a bit of a cook himself, so it has helped that he will make dinner sometimes and I just need to provide the carbs to keep me and the kids functioning. (I went on the keto diet with him for, I think, three days and couldn't hack it. My excuse is breastfeeding a newborn.) It's been quite a challenge trying to make meals for the whole family, keeping carbs in mind, but I'm getting there.

And then I realised I could have fun with this. Thus I introduce to you the:

I would attempt to make keto-friendly bentos for Scott. Here is my first attempt.

It consists of:
-Sliced red pepper (2g net carbs) filled with tuna (0g net carbs)mixed with malt vinegar (approx .5g)
-Boiled egg (.5g)
-Mini Pepperami (.2g)
-2 florets of raw broccoli (approx .5g)
-4 medium sized strawberries (approx 2.5g)
Plus a sugarfree jelly (trace) and a Diet Irn Bru (0g)

Total net carbs (approx) = 5.7

It's a few more than he'd probably like, but he is allowing himself about 20g per day, so he still has room for something nice for tea tonight. Which he'll have to fix himself, because Baby Jaguar and I are meeting friends for a carb-tastic curry and a trip to the theatre to see Calendar Girls!

Friday Giveaway!

There's a giveaway competition on Facebook for one of these sandwich cutters. Go visit the Lunch Is(n't) Boring page on Facebook, and Share <-- this photo for a chance to win one. Drawing will be Sunday night so you've only got the weekend to share and win!

Moshi Monsters

I shouldn't be allowed in Tesco after a certain time at night with no kids. The place is so quiet and empty, and just the right temperature for leisurely wandering around looking at random things you don't have time to browse when kids are with you, pulling at your cardigan, asking for sweets, or running away and hiding from you.

On such a night as this, I meandered through the aisles, slipping things like candles, mobile phone accessories and stationery into my trolley, and came across the lunch boxes. I considered how Feebz's lunch box was starting to fray and she never did get a new one for the new school year, and blithely flung a new Moshi Monsters lunch box into the trolley with my other sundries.

This got the wheels in my head turning, and I pointed my trolley down the toy aisle. I picked up a couple of mystery Moshi Monster bags, the ideas whirling.

Moshi Monster Lunch.

I came home and put a bread mix into the bread machine overnight. I'd had success earlier in the week with blue bread; this time I attempted pink. (It didn't come out very pink though, rather disappointing.) I'd already been planning on making those little marshmellow top hat things, so I changed them into 'Marshmellow Moshlings' instead. My new monster sandwich cutter would come in handy too.

My Moshi Monster lunch consisted of Marshmellow Moshlings, a not-very-pink monster ham and emmental sandwich, a Babybel cheese, some blueberries, strawberries and cucumber, and a real Moshi Moshling. (I got the idea for putting a toy in their lunch boxes here.) I made sure the kids did not see me slip in this little extra.

When Lolly opened her lunch in the car on the way home from nursery, she didn't even notice it at first. She drank her juice and ate her her strawberries, her cheese and her sandwich before noticing. 'A toy!' she shrieked. Then she stuffed the marshmellow in her mouth.

When I picked up Feebz from school that afternoon, the first thing she told me was she had a toy in her lunch! 'How did it get there?' she asked. I just shrugged. 'It must've been magic', she mused. Moments later she reasoned that actually it must've been me who put it in her lunch box. I just shrugged again. She thought longer about it, offering the possibility that it could've been put there by someone at school during playtime, or that a piece of food may have turned into a toy, or that Mr Stirling the janitor who does magic tricks may have magicked it in. Finally she concluded that 'Love put it there.'

That's when I nodded and said yes, love did put it there.

Empty Fridge, Empty Cupboards

Tuesday for me is Pay Day, which means by Tuesday morning the refrigerator is pretty much bare. Putting together lunches on Tuesday mornings, therefore, is a challenge. I'll be honest,I'm no Lunch Goddess or even a Lunch Saint, and on a lot of Tuesdays, my kids get loaf-end sandwiches and spotted bananas.

This past Tuesday, I had to really raid the fridge - and freezer - to find something, because I didn't even have bread in. Luckily, two weeks ago I bought frozen chicken dippers and never used them. Before my shower, I turned on the oven to preheat, then got myself ready - the reverse of my usual routine which involves lunch first, getting dressed second. After I was dressed and looking fabulous (cough), I popped the chicken in the oven and then stood scratching my chin while staring into an empty bento box. I turned to the empty fridge and scratched my chin some more.

This was all metaphorical scratching, of course. Real scratching would've necessitated more hand-washing, right?

I had eggs and some fruit, so I boiled some eggs in my nifty egg boiler machine. (Yes, I am so lazy I don't even like to boil eggs the good old fashioned way. I had to spent £8.99 in Lidl on an egg boiler machine, but let me tell you, it was the best £8.99 I've ever spent.) I emptied what was left of the punnet of blueberries and peeled an orange and stuck a cute little food pick for looks. I had a couple of Babybels left and exactly four Panda biscuits in the box. And let's not forget the KFC ketchup packets I collect every time I eat there... which is far too often. Finally some EasiYo strawberry yogurt in a tub and an orange juice made the lunch look not too sparce. I took the chicken out of the oven and let the pieces cool on a napkin until just about time to leave, then I put them in the box and packed it all up.

Feebz reported back to me that it was a very yummy lunch, though she didn't know where to squeeze out the ketchup so she squeezed it onto the lid. Hey, that's fine. Nothing like cleaning up leftover ketchup out of a lunch box!