I’ve had a couple of questions about the supplies I use in the bento boxes I pack for myself and for Wyatt, so I thought I’d do a quick post on the various pieces I use.

For my bentos, I use my Mr. Bento. My husband bought it for me for Christmas from Amazon.

The bento lunch boxes I use for my son’s preschool lunches were purchased at Ichiban Kan. I am lucky to have a store just a few blocks from my house, so I got them there. I believe that they used to have the boxes on their site, but they appear to be sold out at the moment. It sounds like they may be getting some more in stock in the next few weeks.

Some of my most used tools are my Wilton silicone baking cups. I got mine at Michael’s with a 40% off coupon, but you can also find them online very easily. These are great because you can keep wet things away from dry things so crackers, bread, etc. don’t get soggy. They also make a cute, cheerful presentation and they’re great for a kid who doesn’t like it when one kind of food touches another. The bento containers I use are almost exactly the same height as these cups, so as soon as you put the lid on the food is trapped inside of them. They rock.

I use regular cookie cutters from our cupboard to cut Wyatt’s sandwiches out. I’ve been collecting most of these for years and they’re from all over the place. I did buy a set of mini animal-shaped cookie cutters especially for Wyatt’s lunches though. They’re great for cutting cheese, tofu and the smaller pieces of sandwich left-over after I cut the bigger heart or kitty shapes. Cutting food into shapes is flat-out the best way to make a lunch cute.

Finally, I’ve been assembling a collection of Japanese bento accessories for the last few months. Some of them are from the Ichiban Kan store by my house and some were sent to me by my friend Lisa in a care package. In the picture above you can see a sample of some of my stuff. The pink thing in the top left is a condiment container complete with a yellow spreader. I use it for butter in my lunches. Wyatt is dying for me to send it full of catsup in his lunch. Below that are some tiny little bottles. They’re intended for soy sauce, but I use them for lemon juice too. Below that are little food picks. Don’t let these go down into your garbage disposal or you’ll be sorry. And the pack on the right side contains anti-bacterial food dividers. You’re probably most used to seeing green ones separating the wasabi from the California rolls in take-out sushi boxes. I think veggie ones are particularly cool, and I find myself saving them for special occasions which I have to admit is totally weird.

As far as tips for packing a bento, I bow down to the superior talents of Biggie over at Lunch in a Box. Go there to learn everything you need to know about packing a lunch for yourself or your preschooler. Just don’t get too depressed by the fact that her son appears to eat everything. I find my options are much more limited because of my son’s pickier eating habits.

When I started up this blog, I had the the idea that I would review the books I read on a regular basis. I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit there with that intention but in the last few weeks a book has come along that I just have to gush about a bit.

I’d seen a few reviews of The Six O’Clock Scramble by Aviva Goldfarb on blogs and most of them were very positive. I’m constantly looking for ways to make cooking dinner easier and faster. When we aren’t planning very well or even when we just get too tired after a long day, we end up making spaghetti for dinner (again!) or going out to eat. It’s not healthy, it’s expensive and it really doesn’t take much less effort or energy.

When Zach asked me if there was anything I wanted to add to his Amazon order a few weeks ago I asked him to add this book on a whim. It’s organized in a bit of an unusual way — the book has four main sections based on the seasons and within each season there are weekly menus. Each menu has a shopping list online and you can download and print the weekly menus from the book’s website. It’s a great idea in theory (and one that seems to have been borrowed from Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner), but in practice it leads to a book that feels a bit disorganized to me. The menus are only pulled out at the beginning of each section and once you get into the recipes there is no indication of which menu you are in aside from a small piece of text down in the footer of the page. It’s a minor annoyance and one I can easily get around by dog-earing recipes that I want to try or by just going to the index, but I think I would find it easier to use if there were chapters on chicken, fish, pasta, etc.

But those are minor quibbles and I’m gushing, remember? So let’s get to the good stuff. As I’ve been reading the book, I’ve been marking the recipes I want to try. I usually mark one of every 10 or 20 recipes when I read a cookbook, but I’ve been marking one recipe for every 6 that I read. It’s only that few because I started out marking every other page and I realized I needed to stop before the whole dang book was marked up.

The other thing I like about this book is that Goldfarb goes out of her way to make the recipes truly child friendly. I have one “family” cookbook that features recipes for fried oysters, gravlax and duck burgers. Seriously. I don’t care how evolved your child’s palette is — they would never eat that stuff. Most of the adults I know wouldn’t eat all three of those things. Goldfarb’s recipes on the other hand are tasty and interesting enough for adults, but use child-friendly ingredients. She also goes out of her way to provide ideas for how to modify the recipes for the pickiest eaters.

Last week I made our whole dinner menu (four recipes) from this book. I didn’t use the online shopping list feature because I wanted to try recipes from all over the book but I found it pretty easy to throw a list together before I went to the store. The meals were quick to prepare — true to the 30 minutes or less of hands on time promised in the book — and Zach and I liked every meal enough to want to have it again. Here are the recipes I made:

Recipe: Ravioli Lasagna (p. 142)

Pros: This was a shortcut lasagna where you use refrigerated ravioli instead of lasagna noodles and sauce. The first, and I think the best of all the recipes I made, it was chock full of veggies (carrots and red bell pepper) and it came together really quickly. We added the optional turkey Italian sausage which Zach really liked. We’ll absolutely be making this again and I think it will become a regular recipe in our repetoire.

Cons: Wyatt wouldn’t try it. I’m confident that if he would have he would have loved it though.

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Recipe: Baked Turkey Chimichangas (p. 70)

Pros: Another big winner in the flavor depatrment and Wyatt ate an entire chimichanga by himself.

Cons: Dang this recipe made a lot! We ate this for dinner two nights in a row and had enough left-over for 3 lunches. I guess that’s a pro in some ways but you can have too much of a good thing.

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Recipe: Chicken Tikka (p. 154)

Pros: Good curried chicken recipe. It was fabulous with Trader Joe’s garlic naan.

Cons: The sauce that went with the chicken was a bit harsh for me with two much raw garlic. Zach liked it though. Wyatt wouldn’t eat this because he’s decided he doesn’t like chicken this week.

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Recipe: One-Pot Chicken and Vegetable Stew (p. 37)

Pros:This was yummy and had tons of vegetables in it. It came together very quickly even with all the veggie chopping.

Cons: This was a bit too spicy for me and for Wyatt too. I think it was my fault though because I substituted chipotle chili powder for regular chili powder but I didn’t cut it back at all. It was still good though and I’ll be making it again without the chipotle modification I made.

Wyatt started preschool this week and for the first time ever, I’ve had to start packing him a lunch. This whole lunch thing has had me a little worried because we usually give him a hot lunch and we don’t have a lot of cold lunch ideas in our picky preschooler repetoire. I don’t know how I’m going to come up with lunch ideas four days a week. I can’t send him to school with PB&J every day can I? I have decided to make the best of it though. When Wyatt told me he wanted to have a “fancy lunch box” like mine I actually started getting excited. He’s been eyeing my bento supplies for a while now and loves to look at the little cups and bottles I use so I began to think that we could have some fun with these lunches. My Mr. Bento is waaaaaaay too big and holds too much food for him to eat so I knew we wouldn’t be going in that direction, but I convinced him to get a couple of smaller bento boxes that are made just for kids and he’s pretty thrilled with them.

We also got him some “juice box” type water bottles, some reusable ice packs and an insulated lunch box to carry it all in. It all fits together perfectly.

So here is what I’ve done so far for his lunches:

The first day I sent this lunch: strawberries, bread, white cheddar Cheez-its, Laughing Cow cheese and deli turkey rolled up real purty like.

He ate: strawberries, one chunk of bread, a wedge of cheese and one turkey roll-up thing.

He was so hungry when his dad picked him up at one (he’s only doing half-days this week) that Zach bought him a piece of pizza. I’ve decided he was just excited and that’s why he didn’t eat my nutritious and delicious lunch — not because it sucked.

Wednesday I sent this: a chopped up cheese stick, lots of strawberries, gold fish crackers and a PB&J sandwich cut into heart and teddy bear shapes (because I love him).

He ate: everything but the gold fish! Score!

Today’s lunch was: cheddar rice crackers, grapes, a cheese stick, and a turkey and Laughing Cow cheese sandwich cut into kitty, giraffe and cow(?) shapes. I put the smiley faces on the cat with catsup and as soon as I finished Wyatt told me he wanted angry faces on the cats. Oh well.

He ate: everything except one of the kitty sandwiches! Woooo! Go Mama!

I am finding this to be incredibly fun so far. I’m sure the thrill is going to wear off soon enough and packing a lunch will become its own form of drudgery, but for now it’s great.

I do still need more ideas for what to pack in his lunch though. I know I’ll always be able to put fruit, crackers, and some cheese in, but I’d love to have some other stuff that I can make ahead and just throw in there in the morning. I’ve seen some good tutorials on making and freezing rice in cute shapes and I’ve been thinking about making a batch of granola bars too. Anyone have some clever ideas?

I have another post with more bento ideas here. I’ve also answered some questions about the supplies I use for my bentos in a post over here. And I’m constantly adding photos to my preschool bento set over on Flickr, so you can see more ideas there.

This weekend I made these button flowers that I saw on the artsy-crafty babe site. They’re so cute I want to eat them. I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to do with them yet. I’m thinking I’m either going to turn them into pins like she did or maybe make a bunch of magnets. Mostly I just want to put them in a big pile and sit around staring at them, but I don’t think that would be the best use of my time.

This is a good example of one of the reasons I scrapbook:

SouleMama: remembering

I don’t want to forget one single minute of this wonderful, difficult, fantastic life I lead or any of the people who come in and out of it.

I’ve finally started taking photos and documenting my pregnancy. I feel a little guilty about it because I started much earlier with Wyatt, but I was reluctant to start doing all this stuff when we were going through the trisomy 8 stuff (I promise I’ll eventually write that up for the blog).

In any case, we did our first batch of photos last week. Here I am at 20 weeks:

It was no surprise that Wyatt wanted to get into the pictures. He’s so excited about his little brother. He asks about him every day. When we eat a meal, he asks if the baby likes it. He puts his hand on my stomach and tells me he can feel the baby kicking (too early for him to feel, though I can).  He also pretends that he has a baby growing in his tummy too.