Spooktacular

Halloween is approaching (ooooo-oooooh), and what could be more fun than a Halloween-themed lunch? (I suppose Christmas, Easter, St Patrick's Day...) Ah, let's face it. I just like a good theme.

Today, Feebz had a ghost ham sandwich on white bread - storebought, lazy! - and eyes drawn on with edible ink, along with Craisins, cheese cubes, a chocolate eyeball, Monster Fingers (cocktail sausages), chopper persimmon and a hard-boiled Ghost (with sushi nori eyes). For snack she had a pineapple finger and some cheese balls.

I told Feebz that this week she'd be getting some new things in her lunch to try, and I wanted her to try them. Remarkably, this did not result in a breakdown. She was a bit fussy about trying the persimmon, her new item for today, but of course, to her own surprise but not mine, she loved it. It's a lovely sweet fruit which I only just discovered too.

Not sure what tomorrow's new item will be, but chances are, it'll be Halloween themed again. Whoooooo!

Site Overhall

Hi Everyone,
I'm in the process of upgrading the site, so please bear with me if you are unable to see the site for the next few days. I'll be back up and running as soon as possible!

Keto Bento Challenge 5: Number 5 Under 5?

The kids have been off school, I've been sleeping in late, but yesterday I did manage another...

And guys, I think I may have met my 5g carb target! Let's just see though (mental maths is not my forte).

Above, you see I packed for the hubby -
*Irn Bru (0g)
*Sugarfree strawberry jelly (.5g)
*1 square of very dark (85%) chocolate (2g)
*a few cucumber slices (1g)
*1 boiled egg (.5g)
*smoked pork sausage (0g)
*pepperoni slices (0g) with full fat cream cheese (approx .7g)
*4 rashers of smoked bacon (0g)

TOTAL: 4.7g!!

I DID IT!

The only complaint the hubby had was that he didn't like the cream cheese. I really hoped I'd be able to get some cheese/fat/calcium in him via cream cheese but even that was too 'cheesy' for him. If you like cream cheese though, I recommend these!

Yummy Scrummy Snack

Behold, the Lunch Box Trifle.

This particular version is sugar-free jelly, EasiYo Forest Fruits homemade yogurt and blueberries, but I'm sure there could be any number of variations of a Lunch Box Trifle that would delight you, your kids or whomever you make lunch for.

And for a bit of a history lesson, here's the scoop on Trifle.

Happy weekend!

Keto Bento Challenge 4

It's time again for the

This time I've gotten a bit more creative, not to mention a bit more cutesy (sorry, big manly man taking his lunch to work...)

On the top tier, we have an almond bun sliced in half, a hard-boiled egg, some blueberries and a tub of Mean Pig Hot BBQ sauce. On the bottom, we have a bed of lettuce with two pig-shaped hamburgers (to go on the almond bun with the hot sauce) and...

wait for it...

Keto California rolls!

You heard me right, California rolls, keto-style.

These rolls consist of the usual cucumber and avocado (which, and I'm not lying, I had NO IDEA were the traditional fillings until JUST NOW when I linked to the Wikipedia article. It was a total coincidence that I just happened to put cucumber and avocado in it, which apparently are the norm. I just wanted something green and keto-friendly!) and a bit of tuna, wrapped in nori, but the secret keto ingredient?

Steamed, mashed cauliflower instead of rice.

It was a total gamble, and totally a creation from my own head, and I am seriously proud of it. It was my first attempt ever at any kind of California roll, and I discovered that a) I used too thick a layer of cauliflower, seeing as it doesn't mould together as well as rice would, and b) I need a sharper knife. My knives were rubbish at cutting cleanly through the nori (even though it was slightly wet, as the instructions said.) Still, for a first try, it looked not too bad, and I was dead chuffed with it. However, the proof was still in the pudding cauliflower, so I had to wait for the hubby to come home to see if they actually TASTED good. His verdict was that they were good, but very bland, and he'd have liked something spicy to go with it. So keto sushi lovers, is wasabi keto-friendly?

Finally for dessert, I prepared sugar-free strawberry jelly, and ta da! Another keto bento.

Now for the important part - the tally. Let's see how many (approximate) carbs there were. Note: Each item will be very approximate since so much was made by hand.

-Almond bun (2g net carbs)
-Handful of blueberries (4g)
-Boiled egg (.5g)
-Hot sauce (2g)
-2 tiny burgers (2.5g)
-Lettuce (1.4g)
-4 California rolls (2g)

TOTAL: 14.4g

Hmm... that doesn't look as good on paper, but I suppose if you used low-carb BBQ sauce (which I didn't) and perhaps tried a different berry (or maybe my guess on blueberries was too high) and also if I'd actually paid attention to how many carbs were in the burgers (I'm hoping it was actually less!), then you could get a much lower carb bento out of this. I guess it also depends on how many carbs a day you are eating; the hubby is allowing himself 20g a day, so this lunch probably was too many for him... but he didn't complain!

Next week, the kids are off school, so while I'll blog about our in-house lunches, I'll also try to get some more keto bentos sent in with the hubby to work.

Watch this space - I WILL get under 5g one day!

Single File

Lolly doesn't stay at nursery for lunch time. She gets out at 11.30 and comes home and has lunch with me and Baby Jaguar in the house. However, she gets jealous when she sees Feebz taking a 'snack lunch' with her to school, so many days she begs me for a lunch too. She'll fish out her lunch bag and start filling it herself with random things if I don't do it myself. So today, I made her a little mini bento (which she then left at nursery and therefore totally wasted).

But first, Feebz.

If you have an office job, this lunch might be just the one for you... everything in neat little rows, nicely filed. That's how it looks to me anyway.

We have sliced and filed cucumber, tomatoes (the only thing not sliced here), and plum on the one side, and smoked sausage, cheese and grapes (oh, I guess those aren't sliced either). Inside the lid we find a bit of scatter with some chocolate sweeties.

Then we have the 'Don't eat me!' banana. Lolly, always wanting the same, but different, wanted a face banana too, only she wanted hers to say 'Please eat me!'

For Lolly's little bento, I just did slices of smoked sausage, cheese and grapes, with a plum and a slice of cheese-topped bread in the lid. It saddens me that those delicious sausages are just wasting away in her backpack in an empty nursery right now. Not looking forward to opening that box tomorrow either for cleaning.

Yum. Those grapes look amazing.

Bento Art

Lovely drawing of a bento box by Feebz! The arrows indicate which drawn food items go into the box (and the banana has an arrow pointing out of the box and into a lunch bag!)

Oh What a Circus, Oh What a Show!

A prize for the first person who tells me where today's title comes from! (No Googling, cheaters!)

Feebz insisted on making her own lunch this morning. I just helped. She made her own sandwich and picked out her own cookie cutter - possibly the most intricate one I have, the least appropriate for sandwich cutting - but it gave us the idea for a circus theme.

A circus must be colourful and cheerful, which we tried to achieve with what we had at hand. We have two ham and cheese carousel horse sandwiches*, decorated with cucumber and cheese stars, surrounded by raisins, tomatoes and raspberries in the top tier and toffee popcorn (part of the circus idea), tomatoes, grapes and star-cut cucumber in the bottom. In the lid we put a homemade chocolate oatmeal cookie and a chewable Vitamin C tablet (we have all come down with colds). The plum was for snack.

This next week I'm going to try to experiment with some different kinds of food in their lunches. Feebz is a pretty picky eater, so wish me luck!

*This cookie cutter was bought for Lolly's first birthday party, which was a carousel/rocking horse theme. Just thought I'd show off a bit and show you the cake I made for it!

Love Makes the Lunch Go 'Round

For my very girlie daughter, a heart lunch.

I was running low on resources actually (shopping day and all), so I had to work with what I had. I made tuna mayo sandwiches on store-bought (!) bread cut into heart shapes. The silicone cups contain raspberries and heart shaped cucumber slices. The inner cucumber hearts were placed on top of the sandwiches, along with some tiny cheese hearts (also in the raspberries). To fill in the gaps, I placed some apple slices, the last of my box of Panda biscuits and a mini chocolate cupcake. To finish off the love/heart theme, I wrote 'I love you' in Gaelic on the banana. (I used my food pen, but actually a ball point pen works better.)

As a bonus, I found this in Lidl this morning - a chocolate mould. Lolly and I are going to make chocolate covered stuff this afternoon with it. Raisins, cherries, nuts, any other ideas?

Traditional With a Capital T

You know you are slightly obsessed with something when it starts showing up in your dreams... All last night, I dreamed about what I was going to put in Feebz's lunch today, and it was so frustrating; the sweet corn kept disappearing out of the bento, and the mayo from the tuna kept leaking onto everything else.

Um...

So anyway, upon waking from this corny (ha) nightmare, I went through to the kitchen and made just an ordinary, everyday lunch. No disappearing grains, no leaking condiments, just the Traditional Lunch.

(I figure if you capitalize the words giving it an official title, it makes it less boring.)

Here we have the ham and cheese on homemade white *with* the crusts, a bag of crisps, an orange, a strawberry soya milk, a Pepperami (for snack) and some sliced cucumber.

Oh, and a pack of Moshi Monster playing cards. To make up for the boringness traditionalness of the rest of the lunch.

Not very inspired, I know. But that's because it's a Traditional Lunch With Capital Letters, so it isn't meant to be original.

That or I was sick of dreaming about lunch all night.

Here's hoping tonight's dreams don't find me naked in public!

Nothing Says I Love You Like a Bad Joke

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to upload my photos from my camera onto my laptop before heading off for the weekend, so no lunch photos for the weekend. All I've got for you is an idea.

I had a friend in school who's mom used to write little notes to her on her lunch napkin. This is a cute idea, and so is including a joke or a photo or good luck on a test. Sometimes, just a little reminder than you're thinking of them is all that's needed to make lunch special.

A few days after Halloween, Sally came home with a bad report card. Her mother asked why her grades were so low. Sally answered, "Because everything is marked down after holidays!"

Two monsters went to a party. Suddenly one said to the other, “A lady just rolled her eyes at me. What should I do?”
“Be a gentleman and roll them back to her.”

Q: Why didn't the skeleton go to the party?
A: Because he had no body to go with.

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison in a person's corn flakes?
A: A cereal killer.

etc.

Keep It Simple

This month I'm taking part in the October Dress Project. I am wearing the same dress everyday for 31 days, for various reasons (the main one being to raise money for charity!). This means that for a month, I have to think a lot about how I'm going to 'chop and change' the look of this dress each day so I'm not showing up at the school run in a plain black dress and nothing else for a month. The moroseness of it might get me a visit from the mental health team called in by concerned teaching staff...

Okay, that might be a little over dramatic, but the point is, it's taking away from my bento-making time. Dudes. That time I like to spend in the mornings getting all crafty with my Kraft, cheesy with my cheddar - okay, I'm stopping - is getting imposed upon by my need to accessorise my clothes in some uber-creative fashion (pun obviously intended).

I've said that October is going to be my month to simplify - simplify my wardrobe, my belongings, my schedule - but it won't be a time to simplify my lunch (or my other craft projects). No, no, now is not the time for that.

However, this morning, I learned a bit about simplifying style without sacrificing quality (just like with the dress project! I get it!). Lo and behold:

On the top tier, we have cocktail sausages, a cheese stick, and a slice of brioche roll surrounded by tiny plum tomatoes. On the bottom tier, I had fun stuffing raspberries with blueberries and creating stripes with blueberries and orange slices. The lid contains Mikado sticks and toffee popcorn, and the Wotsits (for snack time) and the strawberry soya milk (a change from juice boxes) slotted into the bag beside the bento just so.

When I cleaned out Feebz's lunch bag after school, the bento box was empty, ya'll. Utterly empty. That's gotta be a compliment to the chef.

Chef. Ha.

FYI:
A group of friends and I are participating in the October Dress Project to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. All donations to this wonderful cause, very close to all of our hearts, are gladly accepted and appreciated.

The Supermarket Game

This post brought to you by... my other blog.

A few years ago, I created a shopping game to help me budget and spend less at the grocery store. Today I share this game with you.

The Supermarket Game (by Lori)
Pre-Game Preparation:
*Make a breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack menu for one full week.
*Break that menu down into a list of things to buy.
*Do not forget to add non-food items such as toilet roll and shampoo that you ordinarily buy with your shopping.

Game Step 1:
*Break the list down into the different shops you will get each item in.
*Within each shop, next to each item, predict the price. You can get as detailed as you like, though I'm mathematically challenged and prefer to round up or down to the nearest 50p.
*Tally up each shop's price list, and this is your budget for that shop.
*Beside that number, tally up the number of items. This is for the bonus round.

Game Step 2 (Budget Round):
*Give yourself 1 point for each item that is priced below your prediction or exactly your prediction. You could give yourself 2 points for exact predictions.
*Give yourself no points for prices above your prediction.
*Deduct 1 point for any extra items you pick up while in the shop.
*Neither give nor deduct any points for items not on the list but genuinely needed.
*At the end, if your receipt price is under your budget or exacly your budget, you WIN the Budget Round. But if it goes over your budget, you LOSE the Budget Round. BUT...
*Tally up your points you accumulated from your predictions. If the number of points is close to your number of items counted for the Bonus Round, you can give yourself an A, B, C, D or F by calculating your score like in school (for example, if you get 20 out of 30, you'd get a 66%, which is a D). So you may not WIN, but you could still get an A or a B.

Bonus Round:
*This is the hardest one to win. Go back to your number of items and if you only bought that number of items or less, you win the Bonus round! Even if your budget went over and you lost the Budget round, you could still win the Bonus round!