sunny monday lunches

Reluctantly we all oozed back into the weekday after a fairly lazy Thanksgiving weekend...

Ryan & AJ's lunches: whole wheat mini pitas stuffed with tofu salad; Trader Joe's maple sandwich cookie; baby carrots; peanuts; cucumber slices; raisins for AJ, dried apricots for Ryan; green beans dressed with soy sauce.
I hope
the
boys
don't
feel
they're
getting
too
old
for
the
mini
giraffe
forks!
I have
not
seen
any
cool
super
hero
mini
forks,
only toothpicks and cupcake liners. Maybe I should invest in some plainer items...do they even make plain mini bento items?!

We had a few warm days
before Thanksgiving to
spend outside.









Thanksgiving Eve we had
sushi in Cambridge. It's
nice no longer requesting
a booster seat or highchair
for anyone! Of course Maia and Nate still require help popping out their edamame.












Thanksgiving Day was considerably colder, but we still went out for a hike before I cooked the big meal.And finally, the dinner feast...
This
year's
menu:
spicy
baked
tofu;
mashed
potato
celeriac;
roasted
sweet
potatoes;
steamed
aspar-
agus;
stuffing;
rolls;
pumpkin
walnut
bread;
cran-
berry
sauce;
roasted squash seeds; pea shoots with garlic & white wine; corn; and lentil mushrooms loaves. The lentil mushroom loaves were the new item this year...and I was quite looking forward to them. But we found them to be very dry and I didn't care too much for the mushroom lentil combination.












And pumpkin pie with
a chocolate crust, with
butter pecan ice cream
for dessert!

Mario

It seems that Mario and Nintendo characters are popular on many back to school bento blogs right now! We're no exception. Boys and video game characters usually go hand in hand.
Ryan & AJ's lunches: tofu salad sandwich w/celery, chives & lettuce on a wheat bun; mini zucchini muffin; strawberry gel cup; carrots; cucumber slices.

It's interesting making two pretty much identical lunches now. Ryan and AJ are only 15 months apart, and AJ has always had a pretty big appetite (he was 9lbs 5oz. when he was born and has always lived up to that!). I'm sure there will be days when I'll have to substitute some ingredients for him though as he is also my pickiest eater. There are a few things that Ryan doesn't like too, like raisins for instance. But AJ has more textural issues with certain foods, so I work with that.
AJ enjoyed his lunch and reportedly pretended he was Mario and played with his food like all good boys should. Tee hee. But he ate it all. And Ryan said he turned the eyes on the star into evil eyes by moving them a bit...ah yes, you can tell he's almost 8.

Boo

Boo.
Ryan's lunch: tofu salad roll w/"BOO" rice cheese letters; Sweet & Sara toasted coconut marshmallow; orange bell pepper & olive "pumpkin"; underneath the pumpkin is a layer of carrot sticks, and under that a layer of gherkin pickles; blanched baby greens (spinach, tat soi, beet greens) dressed w/soy sauce.

Maia loves to dress up, so she should be all set to go on Halloween!