Wednesday, August 26, 2015

First Week of School Bentos! Bentos 90 - 93

And, we are back. . . back to school, back to blogging, back to bento-ing.  I have actually been bento-ing every school day since my last blog post, but I lost my blogging initiative for while.  Since the school year is starting, and we are all always looking for new lunch ideas, I thought I'd try to get my mojo back.  I'm going to try different formats to see what is the easiest way to keep posting, so bear with me.  For this post, I'm going to give a brief rundown of all the bentos I packed this week.  Since Monday was a half day, I only needed to pack lunch four days this week.  So, here's what my "baby," now 2.5 year old, ate this week.  

Bento for Baby 90:  In the bottom section of our favorite tiffin box, a cream cheese on a whole wheat cinnamon raisin English muffin sandwich, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a few pretzel sticks leftover from summer travel that my daughter insisted upon.  The top section was a fruit and veggie mix of watermelon cubes, green grapes, sugar snap peas and baby carrots.  


Bento for Baby 91: A snacky bento of crackers and cheese, "woven wheat" crackers with Baby Girl's favorite cheese - Creamy Toscano Cheese Soaked in Syrah, along with some raisins, mini sweet peppers and sugar snap peas. This was packed in the top section of our favorite green tiffin box. This was accompanied by another leftover travel snack, a pack of crunchy dried apples.


Bento for Baby 92:  Baby Girl had an apple sandwich with sunbutter on this day.  I've found sunbutter to be much runnier and messy in apple sandwiches than good old peanut butter, but we cannot send peanut butter to school.  To help with the mess I mixed a little raw oatmeal and coconut with the sunbutter and then rolled the sides of the sandwich in a bit more coconut.  This  gave the sunbutter more structure and allowed for cleaner eating.  Since these are half the ingredients in Baby Girl's favorite sunbutter oatmeal balls, I didn't worry about her not liking the additions.  Along with the apple sandwich, she had some halved cherries, baby carrots, sugar snap peas and more pretzel sticks.  This bag of pretzels is like loaves and fishes, I'd like them to be out of the pantry, but the bag never seems to get any emptier.  


Bento for Baby 93:  Another cream cheese sandwich for Baby Girl on this day, but this time on homemade whole-grain cinnamon raisin bread.  I made this using a recipe from the Smitten Kitchen blog.  I'll just provide a link to the recipe since I couldn't possibly write about or photograph the bread any better.  I made the recipe pretty much as written, but I did add a few more whole raisins to the swirl, since Baby Girl loves raisins.  The bread is very tasty, but it is not a quick, make-during-nap recipe.  I think it is worth the effort, though.  Along with her sandwich Baby Girl had more halved cherries, some mini peppers and frozen edamame.


Items similar to those used in these bentos: