Bento!

For the past several months, I've had a secret obsession with Bento. As with many things, I have been reading about it, admiring many of the various tools and just imagining what I would do when I finally tried my hand at it. I like to research. My favorite site is Biggie's blog. I imagined it being a join venture between myself and my son. I thing Robbie will enjoy helping think of things that we can include in the Bento lunches.

Last week I found a store in the Alderwood Mall that carries many of the Bento boxes and fun accessories for very inexpensive ($1.50 ea!). Lyssie and I had tons of fun browsing the rows in Daiso. We also bought enough supplies to give it a try.

Today, I had my opportunity. My husband decided it was the perfect day (maybe one of the last this year) to visit the zoo. Our kids love the zoo... and it's one of our favorite family outings. We planned to go around lunchtime, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to use the new Bento boxes I bought for the kids. Of course, I hadn't planned this... so I had to make my first Bento with what I had in the refrigerator... a challenge in itself.

Look how cute they came out! Of course, Lyssie has the pink box... and hers is only different in the type of sandwich.

Contents: Top - tuna sandwich (jelly sandwich in Robbie's), cheese cubes and crackers. I put the little animal picks in the sandwich and skewered the cheese with them - the kids love these picks and they were just $1.50! I need to get more if we continue to make these (which I hope we do). Bottom - baked sweet potato fries, peanuts still in their shells and sliced grapes. The peanuts were a bit messy - which was fine at the zoo... but probably wouldn't be the best choice any other time.

Not only were these a ton of fun to make... but it was rewarding being about to come up with a fairly well rounded meal (the protein is a bit less than I would have preferred). It reminds me a lot of Muffin Tin Monday (which I'm looking forward to the shape challenge tomorrow!).

Here's a picture of the kids enjoying their Bento lunch at the zoo. They were excited when they opened it... and they are everything (Lyssie had a few pieces of cheese and a few pieces of sweet potato left - and she ate some of her brother's sandwich after deciding she didn't want tuna). Also, I brought two wet clothes in a plastic bag for cleaning up after they were done... I used some cotton crochet wipes we've been using for Lyssie and they worked great (I might be listing some in the On A Whimm shop in the near future)!

I hope to continue to practice making Bento lunches with the long term goal of making them for the kids at school and my husband at work. I figure I'll need lots of practice before I get to that point. For now, I'm going to try to make the kids a Bento lunch once a week.

Finally, I'm going to finish this blog entry with a picture of the craziest duck I've ever met. He seemed to think he was one of the flamingos - standing on one leg amongst the flock - quacking when they were vocal. It was a fun sight to see and it made for the perfect end to our zoo outing.