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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!)

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!

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!