Hey gang! We’ve got five preschooler bentos this week. I had so much fun playing with all my new goodies!

I don’t usually make bento boxes for Wyatt on his non-preschool days, but we were both excited to play with the new bento stuff so I made him a bento on Monday as a special treat. I put in grapes, pirates booty, turkey roll-ups on little flag picks, grape tomatoes and a cheese stick. We took it out to the front porch along with my lunch and a table cloth and had a little picnic right there with Augie watching us from his car seat. Wyatt was delighted which delighted me too.

Tuesday Wyatt asked to use the same bento box. I sent a mini muffin, grapes, apple slices dipped in lemonade to prevent browning and baked teriyaki tofu.

I put some of the grapes on a cute little penguin pick. Wyatt and I had a little chat about these picks before I agreed to send them to school with him. There are two rules: 1.) pull the food off the pick before eating it (so he doesn’t poke his mouth) and 2.) never, never poke anyone with a pick (so he doesn’t get kicked out of preschool).

This is what the box looks like all assembled:

The words on the box read: “Dolphins are the warm-hearted guides to the masic world.” Hmmmmmm….

I didn’t know what “masic” meant, so I looked it up on m-w.com and it wasn’t in their database. I did find the word “mesic” which means “characterized by, relating to, or requiring a moderate amount of moisture.” I wouldn’t really describe the ocean as having “a moderate amount of moisture”, but OK…whatever.

Wednesday was a day for trying something new in Wyatt’s lunch box. He specifically asked me to give him salad so we gave it a shot. I put in some baby lettuce, a little jar of Newman’s Own Italian dressing, two turkey meatballs cut into quarters and put on little picks, a monkey full of catsup and a couple strawberries. I’m happy to report that he ate some of the salad, but not even close to all of it.

He also got a thermos with alphabet noodles tossed with butter and garlic.

And then this is a shot of this bento all assembled. The words on this one say, “The late lunch with a true lover is the symbol of happy life. Let’s enjoy the delicious lunch with a mellow music!” Hee!

Thursday he got more baked tofu, some leftover broccoli from dinner the night before and a bunch of strawberries. I also put a couple of cookies in the lid of his bento because I’m not all tofu-broccoli-salad mom.

I wanted to make it a whole week without putting the spicy meat that Wyatt loves so much in his lunch, so by Friday I needed to get creative. (We’re trying to cut his dependence on salami because even though we buy low-fat, low-salt, turkey salami, it’s still pretty bad for him.) I decided to make a quick quesadilla with a little spicy black bean dip and jack cheese. I ached to cut it up into shapes with cookie cutters, but Wyatt wanted triangles, so triangles are what he got. I also put in some grapes and a strawberry to fill that last little gap.

Have a good weekend everyone! It’s going to be in the high seventies (which is crazy hot even for here) so I think we’ll be trying to find some fun stuff to do outside.