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?

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.

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...)

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!

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.

Flower Power!

After doing the 'boy' dinosaur theme this week, I decided to do a 'girl' Flower Power lunch to even the score.

To make the bouquet, I started with kiwi fruit, cut like the dinosaur eggs, but with a banana slice and blueberry middle, I transformed it into a flower.

(I held the banana and blueberry in place with a cocktail stick cut in half. If you do this, PLEASE WARN YOUR CHILD so they don't eat it! I actually brought Feebz and Lollly through and showed them the process so they would remember. Later in the car, I asked Feebz what she needed to do to check that she remembered, and she answered 'Take the stick out'. Good.)

I then added halved strawberry 'roses' and blueberry 'bluebells' to finish the floral arrangement. (Lolly, who doesn't like kiwi, got a red strawberry flower instead of the kiwi and strawberry arrangment.) Several slices of ham rolled into a cone made the flower wrapping (again held in place with a cocktail stick), and a slice of cheese cut into the shape of a flower with a cookie cutter finished the bouquet.

The top layer was simply some crackers for the ham and cheese, pretzels, a string cheese and a brownie cut into a flower. An apple in the bag and a juice box finished the lunch.

Almost.

As I put the lid on the bento, I quickly racked my brain for something else I could throw in last minute and remembered these chocolate biscuits I bought in the oriental food market. A couple of these yummy treats will have made a very happy five year old.

Jurassic "Parked" Lunch

Get it? "Parked" instead of "Packed"?

I promise I'll work harder on my puns, guys. I promise.

But I'm trying to simultaneously feed Baby Jaguar and type at the same time, while my loads of laundry, dirty dishes and messy bedroom loom on my mind. Doesn't leave a lot of space for punning. That's my excuse. I'll try harder next time.

This morning, I made dinosaur lunches. Or shall I say "bento-saur"? (I'll try harder, I swear!) At first, the going didn't look good. Feebz came in, saw the dinosaur cutter and moaned, "Not dinosaaauuurrs! I'm not a boy!" I quickly turned it around by telling her you don't have to be a boy to like dinosaurs just like you don't have to be a boy to be a scientist, which is what she wants to be, or a doctor. Besides, I told her, some scientists, called paleontologists, study dinosaur fossils, ooh, how cool is that! And she was convinced. It's all about the spin, people.

(But then later Lolly came in, saw the dinosaurs and shrieked, "Aughh! I'm afraid of dinosaurs!" With nothing better to come up with, I just retorted, "No you're not.")

So.

I started out with the kiwi fruit. This is where the inspiration for the prehistoric theme came from. Not that fun lunches have to have a theme; it's just that I kinda get carried away sometimes if a theme presents itself. To make dinosaur egg kiwis, you just use a paring knife and cut a zigzag all the way around the kiwi. If your kids will eat the skin (the skin is edible, just wash it first), great! If not, either peel it or provide a good solid metal spoon to scoop it out. My kids like the skin by some miracle, so I leave it as is. I do cut the bottom and top off, though.

Then I used my dinosaur sandwich cutter and cut out ham and cheese sandwiches. To finish the scene in Feebz's, I added blueberry "skies" and moved onto the other half of her bento. With Lolly's, I just worked on a single bento tier (the pink one above). I cut out cucumber "trees" and added a few more cherry tomato "eggs". I've never tried "cracking" a tomato egg before, but I gave it a go today, and it turned out all right. I chopped a bit of banana with the peel (to keep it from absorbing too much tomato juice, though it will have absorbed some because I cut the tomato) for the "sun". There was still room, and I didn't want to fill it completely with more blueberry sky, so I went back to the fridge for inspiration. This is where rice always comes in handy, but it was too late for that. I saw the chicken chunks I'd bought yesterday, so used a few slices of it for "clouds" and then filled the rest in with blueberry.

Oh, and of course, I had to add a bit of flair: "ROAR" spelled in cheese. (Cut from a cheese slice with alphabet canape cutters.)

Hint. Chicken chunks will need to be tomorrow's lunch, now that I've opened the package.

They turned out all right, and what matters is that the kids were happy. I was worried though about the fact that the bentos weren't packed to the very top of each tier and that the contents would move around too much to be recognisable as a scene by lunchtime. I asked Feebz if her lunches still looked like pictures by the time she ate them. She said they were sometimes a bit moved around "like the wind moved them" but she could still see the pictures. Good.

To finish them off, I added a string cheese in the lids for snack time and a juice box and water bottle, and there they have it. Jurassic Parked Lunch!

Lunch is Gasta

I spent all night last night obsessing over lunch for today.  I wanted to do a fish theme, as Fridays at the school canteen are Fish and Chips days, but everything I thought of required foods I didn't have in.

I woke up and commented to the Hubby, "I'm becoming a slave to this blog."  Already!

It's good though, because it was motivating.  I ended up reverting to the idea from yesterday of writing something with cucumber.

Thus, I present to you a 'gasta' lunch.

I started with pulling out berries, tomatoes and cucumbers from the fridge.  I pulled out my drawer of plastic tubs and bentos and rummaged around until I found some suitable containers, and the ideas finally started flowing.  I began with this clever little container from Sistema filling the top with EasiYo strawberry yogurt and the bottom with blueberries, raspberries and sliced banana.

I also uncovered this rice/egg mould in the shape of Hello Kitty, so I boiled some eggs (one for Feebz and a few for the Hubby's breakfast) and clicked it into the mould.  It was my first attempt at using the mould for eggs, and I was fairly impressed with how it turned out.

There was one more of the batch of jellies I'd made at the weekend left, so I threw that in... but I still didn't know what to make for the 'main'.

Aha!  I then remembered I'd bought pitta bread.  So I filled a pitta bread with shredded cheese, put it in a toaster bag and briefly toasted it to melt the cheese and sliced it up into quarters.  A few tomatoes tossed in, and it was ready for the fun part.  I sliced up some cucumber, punched out the letters and arranged them in the single bento container.

Tha e gasta!

 

 

Unintentionally Patriotic Bento

I woke up late this morning, and truth be told, did not feel like making up anything fancy for Feebz's lunch. Surely a sandwich and a bag of crisps would do. But even a sandwich and a bag of crisps can be turned into something magical with just a little extra effort.

She'd already had a ham and cheese sandwich this week (cut into bird and bunny shapes), so I opted for tuna mayo. I made up two cans of tuna mayo, so I wouldn't have to make more at lunch time for Lolly and myself later. I pulled out pretty much the first cookie cutter in the box, and it was a star. Fine, that'll do.

Unfortunately, the star cutter left a lot of sandwich extras, which I hate. I prefer cutters that leave as little waste as possible, like these. But oh well, it was already done.

I decided to go with a bento box today, so I could easily fill up the rest of her lunch. Bento boxes may seem like a lot of effort at first, but once you start thinking outside the [bento] box - ahem - it's really quite an easy way to make up a varied and interesting lunch. I threw in some tomatoes to fill in the extra space, and then filled the bottom tier with sliced strawberries and blueberries. Easy peasy. However, I'd also pulled out the cucumber from the fridge as I grabbed all the random easy bento-sized foods, so decided to make a quick embellishment. My first thought was to spell out a word in Gaelic with my alphabet canape cutters but realised all the words I could think of - sgoinneil, glé mhath, madainn mhath* - were all far, far too long. Even gasta** suddenly seemed daunting ... and really, could I be bothered cleaning all those letter cutters out afterwards? So I simply did a quick couple of stars with a paring knife to give the final product some pizazz.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I just used the word pizazz.

I put the bento together into the lunch box with a juice drink, added a small container of jello (not forgetting a spoon!) and a bag of crisps to have a snack time. Altogether it took about fifteen minutes. Not as quick as slapping a sandwich together, but satisfying, and Feebz was delighted. It turned out rather patriotic too, which was not my intention, but hey ho, why not?

I made the same for Lolly at lunch time, only this time, instead of wasting a lot of bread, I just cut a star out of the middle of the sandwich and gave her the inner star and then also the sandwich with a star hole. Lunches on the plate are definitely easier than lunches on the go!

*In English: 'brilliant', 'very good', 'good morning'.

**'Splendid'