When looking at the photos I take of Wyatt’s bento lunches, several people have commented that they must take a lot of time to prepare and others have asked where I find the extra time in the morning to put his lunches together. The truth is, making a bento box usually doesn’t take much longer than putting a “regular” lunch together. Because Wyatt takes a cold lunch to school, I don’t need to do any cooking, so for me, 90% of what I do to put together a bento revolves around the equipment. Other parents put food into baggies. I put food into boxes and cups. I try to make them attractive as well by varying colors and textures (which I would be doing anyway), adding cute accessories here and there (equipment again), and occasionally cutting food into shapes (the other 10% of the work).

Take this lunch for example:

I start off with the typical ingredients for a PB&J. (The picture shows almond butter which I grabbed by mistake, but I actually used peanut butter.)

I make the sandwich. I bet this looks pretty much like what every other parent is doing to prepare their kid’s lunch on a Thursday morning.

This is where we get fancy. After the sandwich is prepped, Wyatt picks out a cookie cutter and cuts the sandwich into a shape. Or sometimes I do it. Or sometimes he does one shape and I do the other. But the gist of things is that I cut the sandwich and put it in the bento box. This process probably takes about twice as long as putting a sandwich in a baggie. But really, how long does that take?

You’ll notice that there are a bunch of scraps leftover after cutting. So what do I do with those? With very few exceptions, someone eats them right then and there. If it’s a sandwich leftover, it’s usually me or Wyatt eating the scraps. If it’s cheese, it’s usually my husband.

Next, I put together some kind of fruit or, more rarely, a veggie for the lunch. I forgot to take a picture of the prep for this little cup, but basically, I cut half a banana into slices, put the slices into the baking cup and sprinkled a few dried blueberries on top. Most of the time, Wyatt won’t eat a whole piece of fruit, so that’s why I always cut his fruit up. He also can’t figure out how to open a banana or an orange by himself yet so that’s another reason I cut stuff up. When I cut his fruit, I either put it in a cup or put it right in his bento box.

He wasn’t in the mood for cheese on this day, so instead I sent him with yogurt. His yogurt cups won’t fit into his lunch box, plus he can’t open them on his own, so I decant the yogurt into a baking cup as well. This involves opening the yogurt and spooning it into the cup.

Here are the results of my labor.

Now I put everything in the bento box. I was doing some of this work as I went along. I do try to arrange the box a bit so it will be pretty. Some of the things I do include:

• Varying the color of the baking cups I use. I try not to use two of the same color in one box, for example. I also don’t put a yellow cup in a yellow bento box, or a blue one in a blue box.
• I don’t put two things of the same color together. For example, instead of putting red cherry tomatoes next to a cup of red strawberries, I would try to put them next to cubes of yellow cheddar cheese.
• I also look for little details I can add to make the lunch prettier. This was actually a pretty pale lunch — white bananas, white bread, very light pink yogurt — so I tried to jazz it up a bit by adding blueberries to the banana for contrast and putting the strawberry food divider on the yogurt. The food divider also helps keep the yogurt from spilling onto the other foods.

Finally, I look for empty places in the lunch box and fill them in. Empty spots can cause the contents of the lunch to move around while it’s being transported and stuff can spill or get mixed together which isn’t particularly appetizing when you open the box up to eat. Here there were a few empty spots around the sandwiches, so I stuffed a couple of grapes in there. Other “packing materials” I use include crackers, dried fruits, grape tomatoes and cubes of cheese. These items tend to be colorful as well, so they bump up the pretty factor in addition to stabilizing things.

And here’s the beauty shot!

Obviously, this is a completely unnecessary and time-consuming step, but taking photos and sharing them on Flickr is something I enjoy. Other people spend a spare five minutes in the morning reading the funnies, checking email or savoring a cup of coffee. I spend them taking photos of food. And Twittering. But that’s another story all together…

Every night, I fix Wyatt a cup of warm milk to drink before bed. He calls it “hot tea” and it’s probably the most important ritual in his life.

Wyatt made a bunch of signs yesterday and taped them to every door in our house. They all “say” “No one is allowed inside.”

I thought I’d give a little update on how the lunches I’m packing for preschool are working out. Here are some of the lunches I’ve made in the past few weeks:

This lunch had banana bread, turkey roll-ups, cheese men, watermelon chunks and a home-made granola bar. I made the cheese men by folding over a slice of muenster cheese and using little cookie cutters to cut the men out. I “drew” the faces on with a toothpick.

Here we have PB&J on wheat bread, grapes, cheddar cheese cubes and cherry tomatoes with a little bit of balsamic vinegar. You’ll notice that I try to get at least one fruit or veggie in each lunch along with something bread-like, a bit of protein and some calcium. I’m also trying to get a mix of colors and textures in each lunch.

This is one of my favorites. I sent a Babybel cheese with a teddy bear cut out of the wax, salami (one of his favorites) grapes and a mini cinnamon raisin bagel. To cut the bear, I took a small cookie cutter and pressed it into the wax on the cheese — far enough that it cut into the cheese a little. Then I just pulled out the cookie cutter and peeled the cut out shape off the cheese. It’s super easy and soooo cute.

This lunch had turkey and cheese roll-ups, a silicon baking cup full of Cheerios, Cheez-its, strawberries and another baking cup full of yogurt. I put a happy banana food divider on top of the yogurt to minimize “sloshing”.

We got off to a great start with the lunches, but then the amount Wyatt was eating started to taper off to pretty much nothing. When we opened his lunch box up the day I sent the yogurt lunch for example, there was nothing gone from it — at least nothing I could identify. He often will eat some of his lunch when he gets home from preschool, but by five o’ clock many of the foods are no longer safe to eat, so I was finding myself throwing out more and more food. That kind of food waste was really starting to get to me, so on the advice of his preschool teachers, a kind commenter on Flickr and my own logical brain I decided to start packing less food for him. I’ve been limiting myself to one tier in his bento every day for the past few days and it’s been working out pretty well. Even though I’m sending less food, he is eating more. I’m thinking now that the bigger bentos were just a bit too overwhelming.

Here we have a half PB&J cut into strips, cheese stars, strawberries and multigrain crackers.

This one has grapes, a mini-blueberry muffin, salami and more multi-grain crackers. The mini muffin is from Trader Joes and these have been the hit of this week. The TJ’s muffins are basically little pieces of cake though, so I think I will make some home-made mini muffins to have a little more control over how much sugar goes into them.

This is today’s lunch: turkey hot dog cut in half length-wise and then into chunks, ketchup for dipping in the pink container, apple chunks and another mini muffin. The hot dog is new and I’m hoping the novelty (and the beloved ketchup) will get him excited enough to eat it.

For many more ideas for preschool lunches and bento boxes, please check out the bento category on my blog 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.

Running off a little energy in the front yard before bath time.  Of course the best outfit for this activity was a firefighter jacket and red slippers.

Wyatt and I made a couple of lacing cards this morning as we were putting together lunches and eating breakfast. I drew the pictures, he colored them and then I cut them out and punched the holes in them. I thought they were pretty cute, but he was only marginally interested in them.

I really try not to push my crafty pursuits on him when he’s not interested, but I have to admit that it can get a little frustrating when I come up with something that I think will be a really fun activity for him and he’s lukewarm on it. I wonder if all crafty moms have this problem, or if it’s his age or if I come up with really lame activities.