The Week in Bentos: September 4-7, 2012

Other than breaking out the thermos for the first time in ages, this was a pretty typical week for the Copley boys’ lunches. I did get a few new toys to play with so those make an appearance. Want to see what I packed? Here we go!

Monday

No school! No lunches!

Tuesday

Augie’s first lunch of the week was packed in the Thermos food jar. I sent leftover “goulash” which is really just macaroni mixed with a jar of spaghetti sauce and a pound of ground turkey. I make this same dinner all the time using spaghetti and the kids usually complain when they see it on the table, but when I switched to the macaroni they went nuts for it. “This is the best dinner ever, Mama!” “Thank you for this delicious dinner, Mom! Will you make it again next week?” I often ask the boys if they want leftovers in the thermos for their lunches and they usually tell me no, but this delightful and innovative dish had Augie asking to have the leftovers for lunch the next day. I rounded out the meal with some cherry tomatoes and crackers packed into our Steeltainer snack-size box.

I put Wyatt’s lunch in the PlanetBox: bean dip, carrot sticks, grape tomatoes, whole wheat Ritz crackers, goldfish crackers, a ham sandwich and a janky Boba Fett cheese decoration.

I tried making Mr. Fett with one of our Star Wars cookie cutters by cutting him out with the main cutter and pressing down with the detail stamp. I do this all the time with bread and it usually works pretty well, but it didn’t work well at all with this slice of cheddar cheese. The cheese kept getting stuck on the stamp and when I’d try to pull it off it would rip and look all mangled. This slice worked pretty well on the top (but barely stamped the bottom at all) so I decided it was good enough. The mangled cheese bits went right back in the bag and I used them for grilled cheese sandwiches a few days later, in case you were wondering.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, I broke out a few new goodies I bought online to make Augie’s lunch. He had car and airplane peanut butter sandwiches, carrot and cucumber sticks, strawberries, whole wheat pretzels, and some hummus in a new condiment cup that was decorated with a rainbow. I separated the strawberries from the pretzels with a cute animal food divider (hard to see here) to keep the pretzels from getting soggy.

Thermos day 2! We had bbq chicken sandwiches for dinner on Tuesday and Wyatt asked for the leftovers in his lunch. I warmed them in the morning and put them in the preheated thermos (I poured boiling water from the tea kettle in and let it sit while I made the rest of his lunch) and he said it was still nicely warm by the time he ate lunch. I also gave him a bun to put the chicken on and some strawberries (packed in our larger full-size Steeltainer box).

Two other important items I included in his lunch bag: a cloth napkin and a fork. These were there so he could spread the napkin out like a place mat and put the bun on it while he assembled his sandwich and ate it. The fork was for dishing up the chicken, of course.

Thursday

On Thursday, Augie had baked teriyaki tofu, carrot sticks, cucumber stars, hummus (in the star box), strawberries and pretzel goldfish. He is learning about shapes at preschool this week, so I had a bit of a star theme going on with this lunch. This meal was packed in our LunchBots Trio.

Wyatt had basically the same lunch, just presented differently. I swapped black bean dip for the hummus, added some grape tomatoes and put it all in the Laptop Lunch box. Otherwise, the same meal.

Friday

Today, Augie’s lunch was packed in a single layer of our monbento box. He had boat sandwiches (made from the same cookie cutter set I mentioned above), strawberries, fish pretzels, cucumber “star fish” and nectarine slices. How will the nectarine hold up sitting in his lunch for a few hours? I don’t know!

Wyatt’s lunch had clementine slices, strawberries, crackers with cheese stars (the scraps are not hiding very well underneath), and pretzel sticks wrapped with strips of ham.

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