Monday:

I found a new box at the grocery store over the weekend and it debuted on Monday. It’s a snack box designed to hold Goldfish crackers and it’s just the right size for Wyatt’s snack only days.

Wyatt was very excited about it and wanted to pick what went in it. He selected pretzel thins and baked tofu.

Tuesday:

I was scraping the bottom of the barrel on Tuesday because I desperately needed to go to the grocery store. Wyatt tried to get all picky about lunch, but I had to lay down the law by telling him, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” I dug and dug in the fridge and ended up packing the last 5 grapes, a half banana, a cheese wedge and some stale crackers. There was nothing else in the house to send in his lunch, so I actually had to cook some pasta while the kids ate breakfast so Wyatt wouldn’t be hungry all day. I tossed it with some butter and garlic and put it in the thermos (not pictured).

Wednesday:

I was so excited about this lunch! When we went to the store on Tuesday, Wyatt asked me if I would buy shrimp. People — he has never willingly eaten shrimp before! I don’t know why he wanted it — probably a friend had told him that it was yummy — but I didn’t hesitate to buy it for one second. Not only did Wyatt eat all the shrimp I gave him for dinner, but he had seconds and asked for some in his lunch too! Wooo!

So his lunch had three shrimp, two rice balls, a few grapes, a clementine and a slice of banana bread.

For his snack I sent a half banana, pita crackers and a few more grapes. Do you like the Big-Brother-esque message I wrote on the banana? Wyatt is learning some sight words at school right now, so I’m trying to write messages he can read whenever possible. That eye kind of creeped me out though….

Thursday:

Lunch and snack were combined in the laptop lunch box on Thursday. I sent a clearly labeled banana, pretzel sticks, peaches with sprinkles, a laughing cow cheese wedge, pita crackers, baked tofu and a clementine.

Friday:

We pulled the fish box out again for Friday’s snack. this one had a jelly sandwich (cut to fit) and a half a clementine.

Monday:

There was no school Monday because of the holiday. We ate corn dogs for lunch at the fair. Grease-tastic!

Tuesday:

Lunch on Tuesday was: an apple-carrot crusher, a blueberry mini bagel (cut in half so it would fit in the box), turkey meatballs on skewers and a hand full of tomatoes from our garden. The blue box has catsup in it.

I used the Laptop Lunch Box which presents a bit of a challenge because it doesn’t fit in Wyatt’s insulated lunch box and I had no way to send an ice pack along. In the past, I’ve solved this problem by putting a frozen juice box in one of the big boxes, but I didn’t have any today, so I had to come up with another way to keep the lunch cold. I remembered seeing a tutorial on Lunch in a Box a few years ago where Biggie cut up an ice blanket and used the individual sections as tiny ice packs for small spaces. By some weird twist of fate, I had an ice blanket in my freezer, so I took a pair of scissors to it and tucked the little pieces into the various containers in the box. You can see some under the applesauce crusher and to the left of the meatballs. This was an awesome trick and I’ll be using it again in the future, for sure.

And here’s what came home:

This was a pretty good day. He didn’t eat the bagel and he only ate a couple of the tomatoes, but otherwise almost everything else was gone.

And this was the snack: dried cranberries, oyster crackers and half a banana.

Every bit of his snack was eaten.

(OK, he left 5 cranberries. I can live with that.)

Wednesday:

Lunch was raspberries, baked tofu, frozen peas and a half a mini baguette. I got about as fancy as I ever do with the tofu, cutting the giraffes out with a cookie cutter and even going to far as to color them with food markers. It was  time-consuming, but kind of a fun little diversion while the kids were eating breakfast.

Snack was strawberries, dried cranberries and the other half of the baguette.

I packed it in a small locking style box that I think I either got at Target or the Container Store (sorry, I can’t remember exactly where).  I wanted to show this because this is a perfect example of a non-”bento” box that works perfectly for packing bento-style lunches. Since Ichiban Kan closed their online store, I’ve been getting an uptick in emails asking me where to get bento supplies. You can get some really cute stuff on eBay, J-Box (disclaimer — I’m an affiliate), and other online stores but I find items online can cost quite a lot of money. I really encourage people to look around  in their local stores and see what they can find that can work for them.

Thursday:

Wyatt’s primary lunch item on Thursday was spaghetti with butter, garlic and parmesan cheese packed into a Thermos. I sent an apple-carrot crusher to go with it, and I remembered to pack a fork for the spaghetti for the first time in months. (I forget almost every time I give him pasta. Bad mom!).

The snack box had strawberries, pita crackers and deli ham roll-ups on skewers.

I wanted to show a picture of Wyatt’s new lunch bag while I was at it. He had been using a boring, striped thermal bag, but with the start of the new school year, I let him upgrade to a new lunch bag of his choice. He chose this cool Spiderman one.  Much more in line with the kindergarten vogue. It works really well for me too. Both the main and bottom compartments fit the bento boxes we use perfectly and I don’t have to turn anything on it’s side to get it into his lunch box like I used to with the old one.

Friday:

Technically, this was Wyatt’s snack, but he refused to eat any lunch today, so I packed him a lunch-sized bento instead. It had strawberries, a turkey hot dog (with catsup in the monkey box), dried cranberries and cinnamon-sugar whole-wheat tortilla strips. I used to make these tortilla strips for myself all the time when I was a kid, but I’d completely forgotten about them until I saw that Nikki over at Whimsy Love had put some in her daughter’s first bento box. To make them, I just spread a whole-wheat (or regular flour) tortilla with a little butter, sprinkled it all over with cinnamon sugar, baked it in the toaster oven for a few minutes and cut it into strips. Easy peasy and super yum!

This was the week of new and exciting bento boxes!

We kicked things off with the jelly bean bento box. Check it out:

When the boys and I were touring the Jelly Belly factory on Monday I found a whole display of jelly bean shaped bento boxes in the gift shop. The price was quite a bit higher than what I’m normally willing to pay, but come on — how could I pass up a  Jelly Belly bento box?? There was absolutely no way that was going to happen. I let Wyatt pick the color and he chose this crazy bright green one. Cool!

Of course I had to use the new box on Tuesday. The top tier of this box is quite a bit shallower than the bottom tier — about the height of the raspberries you see there. In addition to the raspberries, I put some blueberries, half a bun and two skewers of carne asada leftover from dinner the night before. And there was no way I could send a jelly bean bento box off on its inaugural journey without putting a few jelly beans inside. These are “belly flops” — the imperfect Jelly Bellies they sell at the factory.

I broke out the same box on Wednesday too. This time it had salami, a really unattractive hunk of bun (it looks like I wadded it up in a ball, but I really didn’t), a half banana stamped with a robot (I used food safe markers, of course) and some utterly divine strawberries from the farmer’s market.

Thursday we broke out the Laptop Lunchbox for the first time. We’ve had this for a while but haven’t used it before because Wyatt couldn’t open it and it seemed too big for him. He was messing around with it the night before (yes, my kid plays with his lunch boxes) and he managed to get it open on his own for the first time. I told him that if he could get it open five times in a row he could have his lunch in it the next day. He followed through on his end of the bargain, so I followed through on mine.

Of course then I was faced with all that space to fill. I first started off by putting a Capri Sun in instead of one of the big containers. I don’t normally buy these, but we have a ton left over from our bbq on the 4th so he’ll be getting these in his lunches for awhile. He also got a hot dog, catsup (in the little blue box), a half banana, Cheez-its, a hard boiled egg, strawberries and a few raspberries. Phwew! I didn’t think there was a chance in hell he’d eat all that, but he swore up and down that he would. And when I opened his lunch box that night, this is what I saw:

All that was left was the egg yolk and some catsup! I couldn’t believe my eyes!

This morning, he wanted this lunch box again. This is what I packed: pink lemonade, blueberries, salami, an egg molded into a car shape, leftover pasta, and peas. I’m doubting that my luck is going to hold with the 98% consumption rate, so we’ll just see how much food comes home.

Edited to add the after photo:

I knew it wouldn’t last!

For all you bento lovers out there, I just saw this article on the Ichiban Kan blog saying that they are shutting down their online presence. I am in no way affiliated with Ichiban Kan, but I’m saddened to hear that this will be happening as they are the only online source of bento boxes and supplies I’ve found who offer their products at consistently reasonable prices. If you have been waiting to place an order with them, this may be your last chance for a while. From their blog:

While we do hope to re-establish our online presence in the future when a better financial situation arises, we will be indefinitely closed.

As soon as items are sold out, our online store will be closed.

Hurry, hurry before everything is sold out!

Ichiban Kan

At the end of last month Wyatt marked his first full year in preschool. When I started thinking about it and reflecting a bit, I realized that I was having an anniversary of sorts myself  — a Bento-versary, if you will — because I’ve been packing (and photographing and documenting) Wyatt’s bento lunches for a year now.  In that time I’ve made him more than 175 lunches and I’ve photographed and posted all but 3 or 4. Crazy! I’ve had so much fun with this hobby of mine and I’ve loved sharing the boxes here on my blog and reading everyone’s comments, suggestions and anecdotes. Thanks so much for reading!

In honor of this milestone and as a thank you to all my bloggy friends,  I’ve decided to give away two sets of bento supplies. All the items in them are from either Daiso or Ichiban Kan so the items are in the $1-2 range, but there’s enough stuff in each of them to get you well on your way to packing fun lunches for your kids or yourself. Each set contains two bento boxes, a belt for the double decker box, a mini-fork in a case, picks, dividers, cups and some other assorted bento packing goodies.

Bento Set #1:

Bento Set #2:

To be entered in the drawing, leave a comment below sharing the most unusual food your kids (or you) eat and enjoy for lunch. Also, this isn’t required, but I’d appreciate it if you’d consider adding a link to Wendolonia on your blog or website. I’ll choose two  entries at random from those that are submitted by Thursday, May 14 at 11:59 pm PDT.  Good luck!

This week we are back to school! We had a nice break, but now it’s time to get back to a steady routine. While we were on our stay-cation, Wyatt and I discovered a new food that he enjoys — mini bagels! I’ve tried these in his lunch before  with no success, but now he loves them. It’s very gratifying to see him adding a food to his repetoire again instead of deciding he doesn’t like something anymore.

Tuesday, we had some leftover pork tenderloin from dinner the night before, so I cubed that and put it on picks. I also sent strawberries (I can’t wait for some more interesting fruit to come into the markets!), a cheese stick, and a blueberry mini bagel.

Wednesday’s lunch had another mini bagel, deli ham roll-ups and some cubed watermelon.

Wyatt was begging for tofu by Thursday, so he got some of that in his lunch, along with some carrot sticks, peaches with sprinkles and some cinnamon apple mini rice cakes for a treat.

I thought I’d show how I cut up the tofu because I think the photo above is a bit of an optical illusion.

I start off by cutting a thin layer of tofu off the broad side of the block — something between an eighth and a quarter of an inch. I then cut the rest of the block of tofu — which is about 3/4 of an inch thick — into planks so Wyatt can pick them up and eat them easily. I then cut the shapes out of the thin slice and turn them over for contrast. Then I reassemble the thin slice into a single layer, putting the turned over circle back into the square and then the star into the circle. The shapes you choose have to be symmetrical in order for this to work. Circles, hearts, stars, gingerbread men and teddy bears all work well with this technique.

The tofu is brown on the outside and white on the inside and I use that contrast to my advantage when I’m working with it. You could probably do something similar to this with anything that has different colors on each side. Maybe a apple? Or a sandwich if you used white bread on one side and wheat on the other? You could also put a slice of cheese and a slice of lunch meat together and cut through both of those. I’ll have to play around with that a bit.

Friday’s lunch was the now familiar Wyatt’s favorite: salami, strawberries, and a blueberry mini-bagel. There’s also a new addition here, skewers of grapes, or as my weapon obsessed 4-year-old refers to them, grape swords. A reminder about skewers — make sure your kid is completely clear on the two rules. No poking anyone with a skewer/pick/what have you. And always take the food off the skewer before you eat it.

BONUS: Snack bento! I was going to take Wyatt to the park after preschool, so I packed him a snack bento to enjoy. It had a half banana, some bunny snack mix and a few grapes. He wasn’t feeling so hot, so we ended up skipping the park, but he still enjoyed the snack in the car on the way home.