No.61 'Little Frog' Bento

I'm pleased with the colour in today's bento. The little froggy is sitting on top of a stack of freshly cooked little olive pancakes, which I made with quite a thick plain pancake mixture and then combined with finely chopped olives and pimento. Under the cucumber lily pads is a layer of quinoa and lettuce, with some carrot sticks and a radish to finish it off. In the fruit section there are satsuma segments, pineapple rings, strawberries and grapes. This is a real 'five a day' bento!

Below is my daughter's portion, which is a bit bigger and has some added pesto pasta in the main section and some of her favourite physalis with the fruit. Her froggy turned out a bit smaller! I cut them by and from cheese.

No.60 'Dragonfly Salad' Bento

Hurray! No bento negativity was brought home from school today, so that's good news. Both of the childrens bentos were completely devoured also, with barely a crumb left. For the past couple of days the bentos I've made have been quite heavy, with the pasta content making me feel very sluggish after lunch in my office (since I've been having the same content in my own bentos). For tomorrow I've gone for much lighter content, which is simply two kinds of salad; one fruit and one vegetable. In the main section of our boxes we've got: lettuce, cucumber, radish, green olives, grated carrot and a little grated cheese. In the fruit section there are strawberries, black grapes, kiwi slices and red currants. We'll take along a small package of crackers and a pot of yoghurt also, to round out the meal and have a snack for break time. As a little decoration I cut out some cheese slice dragonflies to sit on top of the salad. It all looked so fresh as it was that I decided not to colour the cheese, leaving everything natural instead.

No.58 'Tattoo Heart' and No.59 'Cupcake' bento

I've made two different bento details for Tuesday. The reason being that my daughter experienced a lot of bento-caused teasing in the dinner hall today from the senior children. At first, after coming home, she was declaring that she would never-ever-ever take another bento to school. I reassured her that she could take plainer sandwiches and fruit if she liked. It was another sad moment in our bentoing, because I realised that going over to just sandwiches every day would mean a less nutritionally balanced meal. Her father and I explained (again) that being 'different' in any way shape or form can attract negative attention, but being exactly the same as everyone else just to avoid notice isn't necessarily the road to happiness (or good nutrition!).

I was just about to make her a pack of cheese and pickle sandwiches as requested, when she came into the kitchen, saw all the bento food out, and asked me to make a bento! Go my girl! I decided I would use one of my new cutters to make her a very rock'n'roll 'tattoo heart' shaped cheese and pickle sandwich, decorated with a cut out and coloured slice of cheese on top. It's surrounded by strawberries and black grapes. In the middle layer are some mini ring doughnuts and in the base layer is pesto pasta, radishes, cucumber and a square of leftover falafel.

I decided to use another cutter for my son's jam sandwich, featured below (I was on a new-cutter-roll). Because his cupcake shaped sandwich was sweet I decorated it with writing icing and sprinkles like a real cup cake. he exclaimed "Oh wow! My friends will love this!". Which is exactly what I wanted to hear.

No.57 Cute 'Ice Cream' Bento

Monday's bento! Well, after two days of bentos eaten with the senior department last week, my daughter had no success in finishing her food during the limited lunch period. Despite this fact, rather than asking for less food, she has asked for more! I don't understand her logic but I'm going to go with it and see if she gets her lunch times sorted out. Tomorrow she's going to take our largest bento box (the burger shaped one). I've make pesto pasta for the main layer, finely chopped strawberries and red grapes for the second layer and in the top layer she has three vegemite sandwiches in the shape of ice creams (we have some lovely new cutters!), with cheese detail to one. She also has a few redcurrants and a single physalis. She was thrilled to see it when it was made up, so I just hope she gets to enjoy it tomorrow! I think it's a shame when a school doesn't think of lunch as important enough to give a decent length of time to.

The following bento is the version I made for my son, who needs a much smaller portion. It's in his usual 'busy ant' box.

No.56 'Ooglies' bento

Since I was putting in a few little portions of different foods, my daughter suggested that I simply put eyes on a few of them so that they could be 'Ooglies'. I liked that idea. The Ooglies are food items with eyes that get up to adventures in a children's stop-frame animation series. The first day of back to school bento went well, with both boxes coming home almost empty and the last few morsels in them eaten before the boxes went in the wash. Apparently very tasty. I had similar food items to pop in the boxes for this next bento, but I reduced the quantity of rice and replaced it with easy to eat bite sized pieces of other foods instead. With limited time for their lunch break it can be difficult to get through a largish portion of rice (so I was told today).

In today's bento (which is sadly not very colourful), they have two vegetable samosas, some chopped vegetable burger, sliced radishes, cubed cheese and a little curried rice onigiri. In the fruit section, some grapes, red currants and physalis. They'll also take a small pot of chocolate mousse as the treat and a cereal bar for break.

No.55 'Sleepy Yellow Cat' Bento

'Twas the night before school, and all through the house, nothing was stirring, not even a mouse. Well, here it comes! Back to school tomorrow. A bit of a surprise for me this evening when my daughter, who had previously told me that she needed 'serious' bento for this year, asked me to make tomorrow's bento cute! Wow. Well, I suppose we'll see how it is after her first day.

I asked them what theme they wanted for their lunch tomorrow and they both said 'Indiana Jones'. Well, thank you children, you had me completely stumped on how to turn vegetable samosas and curried rice into Indiana Jones. I'm afraid I didn't manage the requested theme, but I did warn them it might be something different. Instead I have attempted to make a large onigiri 'sleepy cat' modelled on a small wooden ornament we're quite fond of. 

The rice has been coloured yellow with a little curry powder in it's cooking water (adds a delicate flavour too). The face and tail are cut from a mild cheddar cheese slice. It's pillows are the vegetable samosas and it has colourful radish balls to play with when it wakes up.

The lunch above is my daughter's slightly larger portion and the one below is for my seven year old son. The rice layer dominates in size for my daughter's meal and the fruit layer dominates in size for my son. It works out that way, since my daughter will prefer her savoury dish and my son would rather fill up on fruit. Although having said that, there is physalis in there, which my daughter is particularly fond of. Apart from the physalis, there are grapes, red currents and mandarin segments for my son, who is less fond of the physalis.

So, back to school we go, bento packed and looking smart!

Counting down to Back-to-school Bento

It has come around faster than I'd have liked, and the day after tomorrow the children will be back at school! We're well prepared for it at least, with new uniforms already hung out and name-tagged, shiny shoes waiting and books and pens organised into their bags. I always find that first day of sending them back to school difficult, even though, all-in-all, I've had school aged children for seven years. It never gets easier being apart from them during the day for that first week back at school. Their company is so delightful. Thank goodness that this first week is a short one, with only two days of school before the weekend.

My almost eleven year old daughter has revealed a new bento creating challenge for me. Although she is technically still a junior for another year, at their school the last year of juniors is incorporated into the senior school. She informs me after her senior department taster day that her lunch break will be a little shorter than she's been used to, and the lunch culture of the department is a lot more serious. This means that really complex looking food art creations might be out and needing to be replaced with simpler fare. I'm hoping that this doesn't mean I need to completely avoid a little touch of cuteness here and there, but I'll see how it goes. Since she still wants to take in bento style lunches, 'serious' ones or otherwise, I'm just pleased she'll be having her usual nutritionally balanced lunch.

As well as back-to-school bento, I'm going to be making my office bento a more regular thing. I will often go to great lengths to create healthy bento for the children and then let myself down with a lunch of a quite unnecessarily huge pot of leftover pasta or rice. All carbohydrate. It usually leaves me sleepy and unable to concentrate after lunch on those bento-tardy days.

Here is an example of one of my office bento over the summer. Leftover thai red vegetable curry and sticky rice. Not terribly attractive, but it was a controlled portion size and quite nutritious.