Bento Art

Lovely drawing of a bento box by Feebz! The arrows indicate which drawn food items go into the box (and the banana has an arrow pointing out of the box and into a lunch bag!)

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.

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.

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.