OK, so who thought I wouldn’t be posting a bento box update this week? Huh? Huh? Show of hands…

Yes, I did in fact make Wyatt a bento for preschool every day this week — this week that also happened to be the first week we were home from the hospital with a new baby. If this doesn’t convince you all that bentos are easy to put together, I don’t know what will!

I tried to put as much of each lunch together the night before as I could and then just finish each one up in the morning, but a couple nights I was so tired that I had to do everything in the morning.

Tuesday I sent a chicken apple gouda sausage, catsup, a half banana, mini-blueberry muffin and frozen peas. Everything but the banana was pulled out of the freezer and defrosted in the box over night. And guess what the only thing he ate in this lunch was? The peas. I couldn’t believe it either.

We were completely out of fresh fruit on Wednesday morning, so I had to pull together stuff from the pantry. I filled baking cup with applesauce (a regular applesauce cup won’t fit in our bento boxes), then added frozen strawberries and some baked tofu.

Thursday I sent some noodles with butter, parmesan and garlic in the Thermos. I also sent some grapes, animal crackers and a little rolled up deli turkey.

The baby slept much, much later than Wyatt and me on Friday, so I had a little extra time to make his lunch and I cuted it up a bit. (I also used the time to play with my boy, eat breakfast with him and give him lots of cuddles and kisses — I have my priorities in order!) I sent blueberries, steamed green beans left over from last night’s dinner, and baked tofu strips. I wedged a couple of strawberries in too to give the box some stability. Then I added a teddy bear and a little man cut from fruit leather for cuteness.

Have a good weekend everyone! We are looking forward to having our big boy home from preschool with us.

This week was a bit strange for us, so I did my best to keep Wyatt’s lunches simple. Tuesday was his first day back at preschool after a two week break and it was also the day our new baby was due. Not knowing exactly when I would go into labor, I tried to make Wyatt’s lunch in advance each night so his aunt and uncle wouldn’t have to worry about it if they got a call to come over in the middle of the night.

Since Tuesday was Wyatt’s first day back at preschool after his time off, so I decided to keep his lunch pretty simple and full of his favorites. There were blueberries, of course, chicken-apple-gouda sausage with catsup for dipping and half of a hamburger bun.

Wednesday, Wyatt really, really wanted me to send broccoli in his thermous so he could run fast and jump high at preschool. He had actually asked for it on Tuesday too, but we were out! Needless to say, when your 3-year-old is begging you to put broccoli in his lunch, you make a trip to the store to get some. The rest of the lunch consisted of: farmer’s market strawberries and raspberries, low-fat salami and saltines. I put the berries and salami together the night before, then added the saltines and heated the broccoli up in the morning. By the way, he only ate about half the broccoli. I still count that as a success.

Thursday I basically sent the same lunch as the one Wyatt took to school on Tuesday. More blueberries (frozen when I put them in the box) with a strawberry for color, chicken-apple-gouda sausage and a hot dog bun.

Friday’s lunch was also a repeat: Strawberries and blueberries, pretzel thins and salami.

No baby yet! But he should be here by the end of next week.

This was a short week at preschool because their summer vacation starts on Friday.

Monday night, I finally made some home made blueberry muffins. I subbed in whole wheat flour for a quarter of the flour called for in the recipe and they came out sooooooo good. So of course Wyatt got a mini-muffin in his lunch on Tuesday. I also sent a rice ball, turkey roll-ups and a bunch of grapes.

Wednesday I sent crackers (hidden under the salami), salami, strawberries and another muffin.

Thursday’s lunch was super fruity. I sent some fresh peach chunks, a bunch of strawberries and a strawberry jam sandwich cut into a little man shape. I was going to send PB&J, but when I pulled out the peanut butter jar, Wyatt announced that he doesn’t eat peanut butter any more. Great.

I’m probably not going to be posting any bento photos for the next couple of weeks because Wyatt won’t be going to preschool, but I do have a couple of bento related posts I’m hoping to pull together during that time that illustrate some answers to questions I get asked a lot. Stay tuned!

There’s nothing too special in this week’s preschool lunches, though I did try something new on Wednesday.

Tuesday: Mini blueberry muffin, grapes, blueberries and ham chunks. This box came home completely empty! Mom scores!!

Wednesday: Technically, I don’t think I can get away with calling this a “bento”. I got Wyatt a new thermos so I could send warm foods in his lunch and this is our first pass. He totally loved it and wanted to take it to the playground after school. In fact, he was so into the thermos that he didn’t even notice that I’d packed his beloved blueberries in a separate container, but he did eat them as a snack while I was getting dinner ready. I also sent paella with extra sausage in the thermos and mango lemonade.

Thursday’s lunch was very simple: hamburger bun, banana, and ham chunks. As usual, simple is a winner though — he ate nearly everything.

Today’s lunch was a bit of a scrounge, as Friday lunches often are. I pulled a chicken sausage with garlic and basil out of the freezer, through in some border-line stale goldfish and peanut butter sandwich crackers and plucked off the last edible grapes from thise week’s bunch. The pink container has catsup for the sausage.

This week, lunch packing was more challenging for me than it usually is. Zach was out of town from Sunday-Wednesday so I had to do the whole morning routine by myself every day. I can do it, of course, but I’m not used to doing it, so we found ourselves rushing, rushing, rushing every day. I’d stocked up on groceries for the week Sunday morning, but somehow I found myself without a lot of my regular lunch staples, so I ended up hitting the freezer for lunch items more than usual. This is a perfect scenario to show why I love having a freezer stocked with little lunch items. The other thing about this week is that somehow I ended up sending blueberries to preschool every day. Normally, I try to shake things up a bit more, but they are just so good right now, they’re fairly cheap and Wyatt loves them. I don’t think that he’s ever turned down a blueberry, in fact.

Monday I sent a lunch with all of Wyatt’s favorites: blueberries, mini-blueberry muffin, chicken apple sausage and blueberry catsup (ha ha! not really — it was just regular catsup).

Variations on blueberries: 2

Tuesday morning I lost the chicken apple sausages somewhere in our freezer but in the process of looking for them, I found some of the chicken taquitos I sent a few weeks back. I put them in the bento box along with some pineapple salsa and a good sized pile of strawberries and blueberries. This lunch was a great success — the box came back completely empty of food.

Variations on blueberries:1

There’s nothing wrong with sending your kid to school with the same lunch two days in a row — particularly if they eat it all — so Wednesday I did just that. So here we have chicken taquitos, pineapple salsa, strawberries and blueberries and I added a half a banana for good measure.

Variations on blueberries:1

Thursday morning I couldn’t find a meat-based protein in our fridge or freezer to save my life, so I decided to give Wyatt breakfast for lunch. He got two blueberry muffins, blueberry yogurt (under the counter-intuitive happy strawberry food separator) and some strawberry chunks. And no, the yogurt didn’t spill — I know this because it came back to our house in absolutely un-touched, pristine condition.

Variations on blueberries: 2

Zach went to the store yesterday so we have lots of good fruit and other fresh victuals in our house. I sent blueberries, of course, a mixture of grapes and bing cherries and a sandwich made of flat bread, salami and catsup. The thought of eating that combo, frankly, makes me want to gag, but Wyatt seems to like it.

Variations on blueberries:1

Have a good weekend everyone!

I am starting to feel like I’m getting in a rut with the lunches I’ve been sending off to preschool. I feel like I do OK with the different fruits, veggies and starches, but I seem to send the same proteins over and over and over. How many times have you all had to look at salami, a sausage or tofu chunks? I was sending PB&J too, but now Wyatt has decided that he doesn’t like sandwiches, so I’ve mostly pulled them from my repetoire. Anyone have any good ideas for proteins to try him out on? I’m all ears.

I made all of Tuesday’s bento the night before because I had a dentist appointment first thing in the morning. I sent: pineapple chunks, zucchini-date bread (from Trader Joe’s), leftover rice and peas from dinner molded into teddy bear and heart shapes and salami roll-ups. He ate everything but the rice which is a little strange because he had three servings at dinner on Monday night. Maybe he doesn’t like the texture of the cold rice though. Or maybe all the other stuff filled him up.

Wednesday I sent more pineapple and zucchini bread, tomatoes with a little strawberry balsamic vinegar on them and baked teriyaki tofu strips.

I thought that Thursday’s bento was very pretty. I sent some peach slices, peas, a mini-blueberry muffin that I pulled out of the freezer and the perpetual favorite, salami. I hope I’m not clogging this kid’s arteries before he even hits age four…

Friday’s lunch has a blueberry cereal bar (behind the divider), leftover cooked carrots from last night’s dinner and some ranch dip (in the pink container), a chicken apple sausage, some cheese stars for decoration and some sliced havarti cheese that I put in to stabilize everything else.

A couple of people have noticed that I’ve been using some new bento boxes for the last month or so, so I thought I’d show what they look like with the lid on.  I got two new boxes with lids that lock on at the Ichiban Kan store by my house. I like these maybe a bit more than the other boxes I have because they hold a bit more and it’s also easier to rearrange things in the boxes when I need to.

I also wanted to show a picture of the drink boxes that we use. These are called Litterless Juice Boxes and they’re made by Rubbermaid. They’re the same size as a disposable juice box and you can just pour juice, milk or water into them. I really like them because it’s much cheaper to buy a big carton of juice than to buy a bunch of little boxes every week. I also can dillute the juice with water a bit so it’s not so sugary. And finally, it significantly cuts back on the amount of waste that’s generated by Wyatt’s daily lunches (though I do put a fresh straw in the juice box every day because I’m afraid of bacteria building up in the “permanent” straw that comes with the boxes).