bento lessons learned, please take it from me...

Before I share Maribel's bentos for the last fortnight I first want to share a few things I learned about making cute lunches late at night.

Lesson #1: Do NOT attempt to make "cute" bentos at 2 in the morning. Just don't do it. You will see why in a moment. 
Lesson #2: Cut the shaped bread before adding the pb and strawberry jelly filling. Again, you will see why in a moment. 
Lesson #3: No matter how many warnings you get from your darling little angel that they "do not want cheese so please don't put it in my lunch, mommy" maybe they mean it when they say that they "promise" they "won't eat it." and then leave the lunch with the soggy cheese out in a warm car for several hours after school so that the left behind cheese can have time to be one and meld with the bento box. Um hmm.

Let's just move on shall we...

So to start the week with Monday's lunch which was the last week of August. It was late but I was feeling creative but had no theme in mind so I drained a mandarin orange fruit cup and formed a pretty little orange flower to go with rolled deli ham, multi grain gold fish crackers, vitamin gummies, mini marshmallows, vanilla crackers with some fruit leather butterflies to go with the left over edible Easter grass I had to make a nice grassy bed for the mozzarella flowers.
See...no theme unless you use the "sky" and the "sea" kind of theme but then how would pork fit into the sea thing? Is there a fish out there that is considered "The Pork of the Sea" 'cause I know tuna is considered the "Chicken of the Sea" but what about something tying to the pig? Brace yourself, this is gunna be a long blog post at this rate. Any ways she ate everything and loved the grass but left the cheese flowers. This should have been my first clue.

Tuesday's are school pizza days so I get a day off of making lunches, thank goodness!!!.

Tuesday night was the wake up call. Again I waited until waaaaay late to make her lunch and while my creative juices flow late a night I'm thinking I might just save those late night creativity juices solely for paper crafts because clearly they don't work well with food crafts. Clearly. Let's see, the top box was alright with a sliced apple with some blueberries, bear fruit leathers, vitamin gummies and a rice bear with some Italian dressing to go with the rice. Hey, she's four so what ever she wanted to put on her rice was fine with me.
And then came the awakening moment...the bottom box.

Here is where I learned that it might just be a good idea to wait to add the peanut butter and red jelly to an animal shaped lunch because after I had cut it out, the poor thing started oozing red jelly everywhere making it look like it was bleeding to death. It's not even Halloween so I couldn't just go with it. I had to do something. So I thought I would surround the dolphin with some chocolate babies. Yeh, now the dolphin looks like it was in labour for days because after adding the candied eyeball I'm sure it has the "what was I thinking" expression that us mothers have had cross our minds once or twice. So of course I couldn't stop while I was blundering along, oooh nooo. I decided I would try out the new food markers I had purchased just days prior and write a little message to my little boo. In BLOOD RED to match the bleeding dolphin mommy. So lessons #1 and #2 were learned at such a cost. *sigh* I digress.

Thursday's lunch I really felt like I had to make up for Wednesday's fiasco so I got the creative juices flowing  but I didn't wait until the wee hours of the night to make her lunch. Ha HA! Lesson #1 learned. Top box had some animal crackers, vitamin gummies, grapes and blueberries and a penguin filled with ranch dressing for the broccoli and carrot sticks in the bottom box. We had hotdogs for supper so I use the last leftover dog and made her some crabs and octodogs on a nice broccoli sea bottom with a nice cheese sun lifted up with carrots beaming down. So this is where Lesson #3 comes in to play. Since Maribel had been leaving her cheese behind and I know she likes cheese I made it a point to show her the fun cheese sun and inform her that it is made from cheese and that she likes cheese. (see Lesson #3 point in the quotations for her warnings that I chose to ignore) Ok. Point taken.

So with the following week being the holiday week and all, I only had to make two lunches. I have to say that this week was a success since I chose to listen to her warnings and made her lunches right after supper. Wednesday consisted of leftovers: corn on the cob cut off the cob, grilled chicken, tomatoes, teensie bit of salt for the corn, strawberries stuffed with chocolate chips, gummies, chocolate goldfish, and grapes. Not a crumb was left behind. yessss!

And finally Thursday's lunch. Another success. Since it's still technically summer for another couple of weeks I thought a couple of ice cream cone pb and J sandwiches would be fun with the rolled turkey meat, sliced peach, tomato balloons, gold fish crackers and gummies. Again, nothing was spared. Woo hoo.

So onward to another week of making lunches and discoveries while adhering to the first 3 lessons learned and hopefully the next few discoveries won't be as um, how should I say, frightening to the bento world...
Happy lunch making!

>^..^<