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.