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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

Mushroom Outta Love

I've had family in town for the past week, so apologies for letting the posts get behind. But I have still been making lunches and photographing them, so I'll just start unloading the backlog.

Because of said family, I didn't have the time to do anything exciting or themey. But with a bit of colourful fruit, it still looked pretty.

Feebz took in her lunch last Thursday cocktail sausages (on a better day, I might've cut them into octopus...es? octopi?), cherry tomatoes and raw mushrooms. The raw mushrooms were an experiment and a gamble; when they were small, the kids used to steal, not pick n' mix from the supermarket, but raw mushrooms and brussels sprouts, so I thought I'd see if the mushroom love was still there. It wasn't. But hey, she said she did try it and just didn't like it. In the lower tier she had apple slices, blueberries and strawberries. A few pretzels, a Babybel and a juice were added to finish the lunch off - and if memory serves, I think I added a banana last minute for her to eat at playtime. It was quick and easy.

And that's how you do what you do when your time is short!

Easy Peasy

Some days you just don't have time/ an empty fridge/ can't be bothered. Doesn't mean your lunch has to suffer though.

This morning's lunch took no longer than the average sandwich, bag of crisps, pudding and juice lunch we so often fall into the trap of making day in, day out.

I opened up the package of pre-cooked chicken chunks yesterday, so I had to use the rest up today. All the above lunch consists of is a chicken chunk wrap, a Babybel cheese, some blueberries, strawberries and sliced cucumber. In the lid I also added some Mikado chocolate biscuit sticks for a wee sweet treat. It took more time getting the items out of the fridge without dropping everything than it did to put this together. The wrap was definitely faster than buttering a sandwich and filling it. I suppose slicing the strawberries and cucumber might be considered by some to be time-consuming but seriously, it wasn't. A juice box and a bag of crisps (from Gran last night which we made them save for lunch today) completed this quick and easy lunch, and it is still pleasing to the eye.

And speaking of pleasing to the eye, isn't that lunch bag just the cutest?