Back to Bentos Tuesday!

And we are finally back to bentos! It was a nice break, now we are ready to roll again and start Christmas bentos soon, probably in the next day or two.

But for today, Mr. Ben needed to eat, so I had to toss something together for him.

Ben has a sliced hard-boiled egg and pesto cream cheese rolls. I make the pesto myself, then mix a bit of that with a bit of cream cheese for a yummy sandwich spread. It's on Nature's Own 7-Grain Honey, which is my current favorite bread. Just roll it flat with a rolling pin, spread with cream cheese, roll it up and slice into rounds. It helps a lot if the bread is slightly warm (microwave for 5-6 seconds), bread from the fridge kind of cracks when you roll it. He also has grapes, carrots and a bit of strawberry fruit roll-up that I made the other day. We've got yummy brownies for after dinner, so I didn't have to worry about lunch treats today.

The Kids Cook Monday - Ambrosia Fruit Salad

This is actually one of my favorite recipes and I needed a dish for a Christmas potluck this weekend. It became the perfect idea for The Kids Cook Monday!

It's a nice simple recipe too, an orzo pasta based with pineapples, oranges and cherries, complete with whipped cream and a pineapple pudding. I think it has serious bento potential--it's doesn't have a liquid-type sauce, so it shouldn't leak onto everything nearby!

Ambrosia Fruit Salad:
1 package orzo pasta, cooked & cooled
1 can crushed pineapple
1 can mandarin oranges
1 jar maraschino cherries
1 container whipped topping
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tbsp cornstarch


Drain pineapple, reserve juice.
Add eggs (beaten), sugar, and cornstarch to pineapple juice
Bring to boil cooking till thickened.
Combine orzo, fruit (drain cherries & oranges, and pineapple mixture.
Refrigerate, preferably overnight.
Mix in whipped topping, refrigerate until served.

Muffin Tin Monday - Thanksgiving Leftovers

Now that the holiday is over (albeit temporarily, isn't Christmas just around the corner?), it's time to get back to bentos, and muffin tins, and recipes.

Being that I cooked a nearly 10lb turkey for just the four of us, the most appropriate muffin tin theme is "Thanksgiving leftovers". Honestly, we're going to be eating turkey for the rest of our natural lives. ;o) I already have pot pies and casseroles in the freezer, so trying to figure out what I can remake the turkey into, I'm thinking a stir fry, maybe?

Anyhow, for lunch, the kids have:
Leftover turkey
Mashed potatoes with gravy already mixed in (hence the color)
Sweet potato puffs with honey & goat cheese
Carrots & cucumbers (not leftover)
The last bits of pumpkin pie with whipped cream
Banana pudding, made by Shaun's coworker Sheri for a Christmas party last night, F&B highly approve!

Check out Muffin Tin Monday for more fun tins!

Pop-Tarts Giveaway Winners!

We're back from a lovely Thanksgiving bento break, in which I made my very first turkey ever and did *not* poison my family! There was also a few rounds of Black Friday shopping, including at 2am, and a wedding for a dear friend last night, and leading into our first Christmas party of the season tonight.

In all the excitement, I forgot to draw the numbers for the Pop-Tarts giveaway on Friday, so here you go!

The three winners are:
#33 - Xelia
#9 - Ali B
#17 - Kelley C

Congratulations! I'll email you all in a bit or feel free to email me an address (scarino@gmail.com) and I'll drop these in the mail for you tomorrow! :o)

Twas the Day Before Thanksgiving Bento ...

Twas the night before turkey day,
And all through the house.
There's wasn't much food,
Not enough for a mouse.

The turkey was defrosting
In the bathtub with care,
Waiting for the stuffing
That soon would be there.

Yeah, the above is kind of all true. I need my kitchen sink, so I stuck the frozen turkey in the bathtub in the guest bathroom we don't use. It's always interesting around here!

We are also only eating food that is already opened, so today's bento is pretty simple. I did give Ben his very favorite Peanuts for decoration, he is thankful for elephants.

Ben has a chicken sandwich with pesto cream cheese on Nature's Own Multigrain Rounds. It's topped with a cheddar Peanut, with a Swiss cheese ear, and sugar eye. To the left, there are some pretzel grids, and on the right, strawberries and green grapes with Peanut picks. I'm out of cookies, muffins, etc, but with Thanksgiving tomorrow, I'm not baking extras right now.

Don't forget to check out our Home for the Holidays post and find out how you can win a trip home from Folger's.

What's for Lunch Wednesday, Week 26

Welcome to "What's for Lunch" Wednesday, Week 25!!!

Thanks so much for joining in last week if you did and looking forward to seeing all the fun lunches this week!

Want to join in?

Just choose a bento you've made from the last week you want to share, copy the URL of that post from your blog (you may need to click on the title to get it), and enter it into the linky below.

Click on the "Add Your Link" button to add yours and follow the steps, it's simple, I promise!

Please add a link back here:
http://www.bentolunch.net/search/label/what%27s%20for%20lunch%20wednesday
so that others can join in and see/share their bentos too.

If you'd like a button to link back with, it's over in the side bar, with the code!

Trouble adding your link? Leave it in the comments & I can add it for you!

Happy Turkey Day Bento

I needed at least one Thanksgiving bento to post, so we made one today! Everyone loves a cute turkey, gobble gobble.

I am running on a low food count, since it will just be the 4 of us and a 9lb turkey for Thanksgiving. I know I'm going to have a million leftovers, so trying to use out as much as I can without buying more before Thursday.

Today, we have turkey & onion/chive cream cheese sandwiches on Nature's Own Multigrain Sandwich Rounds, topped with a cheese turkey! The feathers are alternating cheddar and swiss pieces, cut with a circle cutter twice to make the feather shape. The face is also cheddar, using part of a duck cookie cutter I have, the beak & waddle are swiss from the same cutters. Two sugar eyes make for a happy smiling turkey.

To the top, we have strawberry slices & grapes; to the upper right, some blackberries; and on the bottom right, honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon. We had a birthday dinner the other night with lots of fruit leftover, so F&B are enjoying a huge variety right now.

We're packed in an EasyLunchbox, I love the large space when I want a cute sandwich design.

Muffin Tin Monday - But We're Hungry *Now* Theme

In theory, this week's theme is Thanksgiving, but F&B were starving, so this week's theme for us is actually "foods that Mommy can quickly throw in a tin so people stop whining at her". FYI, it worked.

Ben had turkey & pepperoni, crackers, and monterey jack cheese in the top row, blackberries, honeydew and cantaloupe in the bottom row. Faith had the same but switch out the blackberries for grapes.

Check out Muffin Tin Monday for more fun tins!

Fun Little Giveaway

If you're on my personal Facebook, you may have already read about my obsession with Pumpkin Pie and Gingerbread Pop-Tarts. If you're not, I'm kind of obsessed with them because they are yummy and go well with my morning coffee.

We were lucky enough to participate with BlogHer and Pop-Tarts for a Thanksgiving program, where I discovered that the Pumpkin Pie flavor makes an awesome cheesecake crust and Faith got to make a video of a fun turkey-shaped breakfast. I'm also giving away a $100 Visa gift card from BlogHer on those posts.

Anyhow, I also received some awesome coupons for free boxes of Pop-Tarts and thought, who better to share them with than my readers.

I'm keeping this giveaway simple. Leave a comment below with a way for me to reach you (email, link to your blog, etc, just some way I can contact you if you win). The blog automatically adds numbers to your commments, so it's a nice easy way to count people.

I'll draw 3 names on Friday and mail out 2 coupons each for free Pop-Tarts on Saturday or Monday, as soon as I get addresses. The coupons do expire at the end of December, so be sure to use them by the end of the year. I do have to keep this giveaway to US residents, coupons are only good in the US. :o)

You're also more than welcome to enter the Visa gift card giveaway as well, just follow the links over to the Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts posts!

Rice Bear Bento and a Bento Find!

Trying something we don't usually do for bentos--molded rice! F&B prefer their rice fresh out of the rice cooker, so I wasn't completely sure how this one would go over. They did eat it, but Faith commented that the rice was a bit hard. ;o) I kind of expected that.

This would be Ben's box. He has a rice bear (F had Hello Kitty shaped rice) with a bit of cucumber to make the eyes and nose. To go with the rice, he has some leftover crispy-honey chicken from Pei Wei, some blackberries, honeydew and a strawberry-apple fruit roll-up I made the other day.

And on a separate note, look what I found at Target this evening!

Christmas food picks, which I cannot wait to use. They also had similar patterns of swizzle sticks, which also have bento potential.

Snack Bentos for After School

F&B usually come with me to work on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, since it's about 3.5 hours and they are in taekwondo during the last hour anyhow. Most of the kids bring snacks, but my two prefer a late, light lunch. So of course, we bring bentos.

In this one, F&B had tuna salad in mini pita pockets topped with a cute cheese critter--bear for Ben, bunny for Faith. They both had honeydew, then Ben wanted blackberries and Faith wanted carrots & cucumbers, easy enough!

For everyone who ordered the Goodbyns this week, start thinking cute lunches, we'll do something fun in January after the holidays when everything has shipped! :o)

This week on my review blog:
-Check out why we go home for the holidays and find out how to enter to win a trip home for the holiday from Folger's.
-What do you do when your kids are sick? Leave me a comment on that post and enter to win a $100 Visa gift card from BlogHer/Similisan.
-Take a peek at Faith's Thanksgiving Pop-Tarts breakfast video or our Pop-Tarts cheesecake recipe and leave a comment to win a $100 Visa gift card from BlogHer. (Feel free to tell me how cute she is too.)
-It's football season! Here's what we do on Sundays, even though some of us (me and the kids) kind of cheer for Buffalo over Dallas (my husband). Find out about the NFL's Take-It-to-the-House program where you can win a $10,000 community donation or a trip to this year's ProBowl!

What's for Lunch Wednesday, Week 25

Welcome to "What's for Lunch" Wednesday, Week 25!!!

Thanks so much for joining in last week if you did and looking forward to seeing all the fun lunches this week!

Want to join in?

Just choose a bento you've made from the last week you want to share, copy the URL of that post from your blog (you may need to click on the title to get it), and enter it into the linky below.

Click on the "Add Your Link" button to add yours and follow the steps, it's simple, I promise!

Please add a link back here:
http://www.bentolunch.net/search/label/what%27s%20for%20lunch%20wednesday
so that others can join in and see/share their bentos too.

If you'd like a button to link back with, it's over in the side bar, with the code!

Trouble adding your link? Leave it in the comments & I can add it for you!

Fall Leaf Bento for Ben

It's a lovely fall day in Dallas, so we're having some fall leaves in our bento to celebrate. And by lovely fall day, I mean it's 75 and sunny, I do love November in Dallas! I figure it's payback for the 100+ degree days in July.

For lunch, Ben had a turkey sandwich with pesto cream cheese. I make my own pesto and then just use a dab of that in a dab of cream cheese to make a lovely sandwich spread. It's topped with a couple of happy fall leaves (their faces are made with bits of cucumber) on swiss and medium cheddar. To the left is some chunks of honeydew. To the right are some fresh blackberries, carrot sticks and a few pretzels. Of my 4 containers of blackberries, Ben has devoured 2.5 so far.

Really Great Goodbyn Deal

I rarely post deals on here, because I amass the better part of my bento collection through little online or local shops, not to mention a few generous friends who live near cool stores.

However, this is too good a deal to miss! I don't have a Goodbyn (yet) but I want one!

If you join Gilt (a group buy site) through the MTV link, you receive a $20 account credit. It does take a few minutes after registering to have the credit appear in your account.

http://www.gilt.com/account/register?pkey=mtvmen2

Once you have the credit, hop over to the "Children" tab and check out the awesome selection of Goodbyns for $15 each (not a bad deal anyhow, btw). Add one to your cart, go to checkout.

Shipping is just under $8, which means, with your credit, your grand total is about $3 for a Goodbyn! And yes, I ordered one. ;o) Ben chose green, although he actually wanted one with cookies in it, even though I had to tell him they don't come with cookies.

In case you are curious, I do not receive referral fees, credits, etc, for this link. Just wanted to share the deal. If you've been thinking about starting to bento, you cannot beat this for a pretty cool box!

Muffin Tin Monday - Healthy Eating Theme

This week's theme is the Food Pyramid/healthy eating! Love it, and a really easy one for us to work on. I combined it with a favorite healthy eating plan we use called "Today I Ate a Rainbow". We got our kit in the summer and F&B love using it, it also makes for really pretty lunches, adding a rainbow of fruits & veggies to your meal!

Our rainbow of healthy foods today:
Red - strawberries
Orange - carrot sticks
Yellow - organic applesauce (love this kind, it's peach-apple with nothing but peaches & apple in it!)
Green - honeydew
Blue/purple - blackberries

And a cranberry-pear muffin because I had a 6th slot to fill.

Check out Muffin Tin Monday for more fun tins!

My BlogHer/Ragu $100 Visa gift card giveaway ends today, there's still time to enter! Just tell me on that post (not here) what your favorite go-to quick & healthy family meal is!

F&B Made Bentos!

Sometimes, they can be so cute! I was in the shower earlier and told Faith I would make lunch when I was finished (because, you know, like most small children, mine ask for things when my head is covered in shampoo).

By the time I finished & dressed, she told me they decided that they would make their own lunch (score!) and that they made bentos and that I really should take a picture again and blog it because Ben helped make his too. Will do!

So presenting, F&B-made meals!

Faith has a sandwich on Nature's Own Multigrain Rounds. My assumption is turkey & cheese because I'm pretty sure we only have turkey open right now. She decorated it with a swiss cheese shoe. She has carrot sticks, honeydew and some teddy cookies in a silicone cup.

Ben has the other sandwich, but he cut out an airplane out of swiss (so I'm told) and Faith helped him add orange decorations to it. He also has carrots & teddy cookies, but he picked a Lifesaver gummy from the Halloween stash.

I'm pretty impressed, and they didn't even leave me a messy kitchen!

Simple Car Bento for Ben

Ben needed a quick lunch and I am a firm believer that one cute item can totally spruce up the meal.

The car is a cookie cutter, the wheels are a separate one (actually, just a plain circle fondant cutter). The car cutter leaves a window impression without a cut out, so a sharp knife fixes that, just follow the lines.

The simple little car took maybe a minute extra to make, but totally makes the box!

Ben has a turkey sandwich on Nature's Own Multigrain Sandwich Rounds with onion/chive cream cheese, topped with the little car (white cheese is swiss, orange is cheddar). A few pretzel grids hold it in place. The other compartments hold honeydew and blackberries, two of Ben's favorites. It's packed in my Paperchase Alien box which is a favorite of mine. I'd love a girly version for Faith!

Snack Bentos for Taekwondo

I had to pack a quick snack for my always starving martial artists. They have class earlier (5:30) but since we stay for the adult class many nights, we're not actually done till 7:30 and home closer to 8.

While I was making Ben's snack, Faith decided she would pack hers on her own. She loves playing with the bento supplies!

Ben has a piece of blueberry banana bread, topped with a cheese turtle, blackberries, honeydew and grapes. I saved a couple of uncut pieces of honeydew to make little trees for him.

Faith has honeydew and grapes too (no blackberries, she doesn't care for them), some carrots, and a cranberry-pear gingerbread muffin topped with a cheese teapot.

We added yogurt in a separate container, so they could have a wee bit of extra protein to tide them over till dinner.

And Still Another Peanut Bento

Well, if there is one thing you can say about my boy, he's remarkably consistent.

I was making lunches and asked him what kind of decorations he might want, especially since Halloween is over and it's not time for Christmas bentos quite yet. He pauses, thinks about it and says "How about a Peanut bento?" I have become quite adept at making elephants out of cheese by now. He does love his elephants!

So Mr. Ben has half a ham & onion/chive cream cheese sandwich on Nature's Own 7-Grain Honey bread. It's topped with a marble cheddar Peanut with a swiss cheese ear and a sugar eye. To the left, we have some carrot sticks, to the right, a few pretzels. The bottom tier holds a cranberry-pear gingerbread muffin, fresh blackberries (on sale at Sprouts yesterday, I bought 4 containers for the boy) and cantaloupe chunks, all accented with his Peanut picks, of course!

What's for Lunch Wednesday, Week 24

Welcome to "What's for Lunch" Wednesday, Week 24!!!

Thanks so much for joining in last week if you did and looking forward to seeing all the fun lunches this week!

Want to join in?

Just choose a bento you've made from the last week you want to share, copy the URL of that post from your blog (you may need to click on the title to get it), and enter it into the linky below.

Click on the "Add Your Link" button to add yours and follow the steps, it's simple, I promise!

Please add a link back here:
http://www.bentolunch.net/search/label/what%27s%20for%20lunch%20wednesday
so that others can join in and see/share their bentos too.

If you'd like a button to link back with, it's over in the side bar, with the code! (Thanks Glory for creating it!!!)

Trouble adding your link? Leave it in the comments & I can add it for you!

Feeding My Husband - Sushi Lunch Bento

I am enjoying my new found ability to actually make sushi. Shaun, he of the sushi craving, is a more than willing participant in these sushi experiments.

We made two kinds the other night--a semi California roll with avocado, crab and spicy mayo, and a sort of combo roll with crab, shrimp, avocado, cucumber, and daigo (a spicy yellow radish thing he makes). I overestimated the amount of rice, so we wound up with 27 large pieces of sushi, somewhere between 2 and 2.5 inches in diameter. We also learned that you can refrigerate leftover sushi if necessary.

For lunch, the other day, we utilized some of the leftover sushi. Shaun took 6 of the big California rolls (these are the 2 inch diameter ones). The sixth piece got tucked into the box, but I had to pull it up for the picture since I'm really proud of my sushi. He had a chef salad (dressing at the office), a boiled egg, and one of Faith's cranberry-pear gingerbread muffins. The little blue container holds soy sauce for his sushi. It's packed in our Laptop Lunch box, due to the sushi needing to be separate from everything else.

The Kids Cook Monday - Cranberry-Pear Gingerbread Muffins

While I was making sushi last night, Faith offered to make muffins for The Kids Cook Monday! We had a recipe for cranberry-pear gingerbread muffins that we wanted to try. I found it in Woman's Day magazine and it was simple enough for Miss Faith to do on her own.

It uses a gingerbread muffin mix as a base, then adds pear and pear juice, a bit of oil, and cranberries to it. Our mix called for an egg too, but we did not use it. The muffins are very very moist and cake-y, so next time, I think we'll add the egg, I'd like them a teeny bit firmer.

Faith diced all the pears, then started mixing the ingredients. Apparently, she prefers the wooden spoons for mixing. She told me that after I handed her a regular metal one.

Highly recommend an ice cream scoop for dispersing muffin mix into the tray. It measures well and it's a lot less messy for little hands. We ended up with almost 18 muffins!

Cranberry-Pear Gingerbread Muffins (from Woman's Day):
1 box gingerbread muffin mix**
1 can pears in own juice
1 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup oil
Water

Drain pears and combine pear juice with enough water to make 1 cup liquid.
Add juice/water plus 1/4 cup oil to the gingerbread mix and combine.
Stir in pears and cranberries.
Divide into muffin cups and bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes.

**If your mix calls for anything other than "just add water", you may need the other ingredients. I really wish we had added the egg to firm up the muffins a bit.

Muffin Tin Monday - Make-Your-Own Theme

It's Muffin Tin Monday again! Thankfully it's a no theme week because I have no theme in mind. ;o) I actually need to do some shopping and cooking, so making the meal with what we had in the house.

I originally was going to go with a breakfast/alphabet tin, but no good ideas for the letter D and the only thing I can ever think of for F is fish and who wants fish for breakfast? So we have a sort of breakfast/alphabet tin, with an obvious gap with the letter F (G is for grapes, you know).

Faith has:
tropical Applesauce
Blueberry Banana Bread
Cantaloupe
strawberry yogurt "Dip" (I told you it's a sort-of theme)
boiled Egg
(no letter f)
Grapes

Check out Muffin Tin Monday for more fun tins!

Couple of great chances to win over on my review blog right now! Check out my suggestions for your sick kid, sponsored by Similisan, and leave a comment for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card. Find out why we go home for the holidays, sponsored by Folgers, and how you can win a trip home too!

Make Your Own Fruit Picks

Or veggie picks, sandwich picks or cupcake picks, whichever you'd like!

We had Faith's birthday party yesterday (and yes, her birthday was actually at the end of September, but I haven't had a free weekend till now). We had gotten the stuff to do a Perler Bead Houseparty so decided to combine that with her birthday.

In the process of decorating, I had to make cupcake picks to match the beads and realized, these have bento potential!

They are so simple to make--regular toothpicks along with a few of the beads. We opted for flower shapes, but I'm pretty sure you could design anything small you'd like to iron into place!

We laid out the design first, then added a toothpick into it, before we ironed. I ironed both sides and while the design was still hot, I pushed the toothpick deeper into the flower center (the hot beads were malleable enough to force it through multiple beads).

I let them cool and added them to cupcakes for the kids. We had 8 little girls, all 8 years old and up, so accidentally eating beads is not a concern of mine anymore.

Wouldn't these be so cute in a bento? I need to try it this week. I know a lot of people ask about where to get some of the cute picks other than online. This might be a fun idea to try. We also made our own with Faith's Nasa bento, these picks are toothpicks, cardstock & stickers. Kind of cute and easily disposable.

Couple of great chances to win over on my review blog right now! Check out my suggestions for your sick kid, sponsored by Similisan, and leave a comment for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card. Find out why we go home for the holidays, sponsored by Folgers, and how you can win a trip home too!

Monster Face Bento for Faith

At least I think it's a monster. From some angles, it could kind of be a frog, maybe?

I'm really not sure. Originally it was a sandwich and boiled egg, but when I looked at it, I could see a face materializing. (Is it a sign that your mind is slipping when you see faces in your food?)

Either way, Faith has a ham & swiss sub on Nature's Own Honey Wheat Hot Dog buns. I always have one or two of these leftover and subs seem to be the best way to use them out. On top, she has a boiled egg, cut in half, some carrot sticks (and two carrot round eyes with cucumber pupils), to the left of that is a piece of pumpkin chocolate chip bread. The bottom layer holds cantaloupe, honeydew and grapes. Both my kids could just eat bentos of fruit!

Phineas and Ferb Bento

This just might be my favorite bento ever!

F&B love Phineas and Ferb, and if I'm being completely honest here, so do Shaun and I. I'm especially a fan of Perry the Platypus, when he's Perry. Both kids even sleep with plush Perries!

I keep looking at the show and thinking, Phineas is really a triangle and Ferb is a rectangle, I can make that. So I did!!!

Ben has a cream cheese and jelly sandwich on Nature's Own Multigrain Rounds, topped with a cheese Phineas and Ferb. Their faces are made with a white swiss, eyes are boiled egg white topped with cucumber bits for pupils. Ferb's hair is cucumber peel too and Phineas' hair is carrot.

Above Phineas and Ferb are some pretzel grids and dried cran-cherries. To the upper right is honeydew and grapes, to the lower right is cantaloupe. Sweet o' the week in my house is cheesecake which I prefer to keep refrigerated. ;o)

We're packed in an EasyLunchbox today, I wanted a nice big area to work with the sandwich!

The only dilemma? Where's Perry? ;o)

Back to the Basics Bento for Ben

Since it's November, we're officially done with Halloween bentos for awhile. Just a wee bit thankful for that as I was starting to run out of ideas for innovative Halloween bentos!

I asked Ben what he might like today and he requested Peanut the elephant. I'm not entirely surprised, the boy still loves his elephants!

Ben has a turkey & cheddar sandwich on Nature's Own Honey 7 Grain bread, topped with a cheddar Peanut with a swiss cheese ear. Next to that is a sliced boiled egg (I messed up and bought medium eggs, too small for my molds) and some carrot sticks. The bottom compartments hold a fruit salad and a piece of pumpkin chocolate chip bread. We're packed today in a 4-square Lock & Lock, because that is what I grabbed out of the cabinet. ;o)

What's for Lunch Wednesday, Week 23

Welcome to "What's for Lunch" Wednesday, Week 22!!!

Thanks so much for joining in last week if you did and looking forward to seeing all the fun lunches this week!

Want to join in?

Just choose a bento you've made from the last week you want to share, copy the URL of that post from your blog (you may need to click on the title to get it), and enter it into the linky below.

Click on the "Add Your Link" button to add yours and follow the steps, it's simple, I promise!

Please add a link back here:
http://www.bentolunch.net/search/label/what%27s%20for%20lunch%20wednesday
so that others can join in and see/share their bentos too.

If you'd like a button to link back with, it's over in the side bar, with the code! (Thanks Glory for creating it!!!)

Trouble adding your link? Leave it in the comments & I can add it for you!

Feeding My Husband - Sushi Snack Bento

Shaun has been craving sushi lately, but our whole eat-at-home plan generally precludes sushi because we don't live in a Japanese restaurant. However, we do have a sushi making set and I've been debating trying it again.

Whilst at Kroger the other day, I noticed their sushi bar (yes, our grocery has a sushi bar) sells individual containers of wasabi, ginger, and spicy mayo. We bought the spicy mayo, some crab and an avocado. So today, I took the leftover rice, a bit of rice vinegar, some nori, and a pinch of sugar and got to work.

The result? Two full sort of California sushi rolls (8 large pieces each), for much less than buying 6 smaller pieces at the sushi bar. And I still have lots of crab leftover, plus half a container of spicy mayo and half an avocado, so we can make more later this week

Shaun was more than happy to grab a snack bento for work. It's packed in a Lunchbots Duo, to give you an idea of container/sushi size. To the left, there are 6 big pieces of my California roll. To the right, he has orange slices, cantaloupe, honeydew and strawberry pieces. Soy sauce is in a separate container for dipping.

The Kids Cook Monday - Chili Time

Trying a little something different for The Kids Cook Monday, since we usually use it for baking time. We're opting for a main dish!

I told Faith we'd make a very simple chili to start, since I had seasoning packets from Kroger (yes, this is the lazy way of making chili, and no, I really don't mind). And the lazy way of making chili also involves canned tomato sauce and kidney beans. We did read all the cans of sauce before choosing one because I wanted one with natural ingredients, not chemicals.

Faith loved making this, she got to saute the ground beef, then I showed her how to drain and rinse it well in the colander. I think she really liked using the kitchen sprayer on it.

I opened the cans for her and she added them to the beef, along with the seasonings.

Stir and simmer! Easy for my girl and we'll all be eating shortly!

Next week, it's Ben's turn to help, stay tuned!

Muffin Tin Monday - Fall Leaves Theme

Our first November meal!!!

Today is Muffin Tin Monday, and the theme is fall, harvest, leaves, etc. I've got leaves, and it almost feels like fall in Dallas, so I'm going with it.

After last night's Halloween feast, we're back to nice normal healthy foods, even our treat is homemade (pumpkin chocolate chip bread, it's good).

Faith has:

• carrot sticks with leaf shaped cucumbers
• leaf picks of cantaloupe & honeydew
• more leaf picks with strawberries
• half a turkey & white cheddar sandwich on honey 7 grain bread with orange cheddar happy leaves
• leaf shaped chocolate chip pumpkin bread

Nana & Dave (my parents, and yes, the kids call my dad Dave, but he's *their* Dave) sent the kids an Edible Arrangement bouquet for Halloween, so we are loving all the fresh fruit--pineapple bats (not used in this tin), cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, and grapes. Yum!!!

Check out Muffin Tin Monday for more fun tins!