Hubby's Bento

This is another trial run for making Bento lunches, this time my hubby is the guinea pig.

The Bento Box was purchased at Pacific Mall in Markham for only $3.99. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any of the kewl bento accessories at the mall, so I went ahead with my eBay purchases. The top tray full of fruit actually has 3 dividers which does not show up well in the photo. The pineapple section is half of the top layer and the melon portion is the other half of the layer split into two sections.

I cased this "Corn-dog" muffin recipe from Whats For Lunch at Our House. Recipe found here. These are corn muffins with added shredded marble cheese and hotdog pieces. This recipe can be tweeked to make pizza muffins, ham and swiss, cheeseburger, taco muffins etc.

I added a cheese string and one boiled egg to top off the protein and filled the bottom corner of the bottom layer with homemade trail mix comprised of: Shreddies, Cheerios, pumpkin seeds, raisin's and granola.

Dry Run - Bento Box

My dd is staring Junior Kindergarten in a few weeks and I have been slightly panicked as to what to do for her lunches. She is NOT a sandwich child and is a bit fussy.

My husband and I purchased a Disney style lunch container for her and her brother from our local grocery store, with the expectation that I would try doing Bento Box style lunches. Without researching Bento lunches of course, my Disney purchase is rather deep for a Bento box use, but still do able with some fine tuning. I saw a few samples online and was flabbergasted how clever some mother's are. I am inspired. Imagine, star shaped watermellon chunks, pretty decorative skewer of cheese and meat, a veritable party.

Here is my first attempt. It is NOT a clever lunch, but it was a run through just to see how to make the Disney container work. I don't have any of the cute Bento accessories YET, so used some regular silicone muffin wrappers as dividers and a small round snap lid container from the dollar store. The dollar store container I thought would be good for cottage cheese, yogurt, applesauce or pudding.
It even passed the true Bento test. With the lid on I gave it a good shake and turned it all upside down and everything remained in place, even the two tiered muffin wrappers.

This isn't characteristic of a lunch for my daughter. She wouldn't eat a whole sandwich and would prefer more fruit options. She's pretty much a sampler kind of eater. As well it is a P B & J sandwich, they aren't allowed in our school district due to nut allergies. I should have used a cookie punch on it to dress it up, but again, this is a dry run to see how to best utilize this particular container.

I have done some eBay shopping and will have cute decorative cocktail sticks, cheese/meat/veggie cutters and dividers, condiment holders, to dress it all up and make it look pretty - even the sandwiches she occasionally has will be done up to the nines. Hopefully it will inspire my dd to eat her lunch for a change. Then again, maybe not.