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!