More bentos – Not always the healthiest, but still better than school’s?

One of the challenges I ran into while making bento boxes is making sure the food I sent was both healthy *and* something they’d really enjoy eating.

After all, I didn’t want them to feel like they were missing out on what other kids were eating at school. Fortunately, they dislike a lot of the cafeteria foods, but when I’m sending lunches, I want them polishing most of the food off instead of discarding various bits like they would off a lunch try.

Here are some more attempts, which aren’t always the healthiest (see those fries? yeah….), but still manage to balance out quite nicely:

• Homemade pizza pockets
• Peanut butter and crackers
• Dried pineapple chips (they taste like laffy taffy!)
• Cauliflower
• Orange slices
• Homemade roasted red pepper hummus (not pictured)

• Pork onigiri rice balls with soy sauce
• Baby dill pickles (they look like sweet gherkins, but they’re dill)
• Vegetable straws
• Pretzel crackers
• Fresh strawberries



• Peanut butter and banana sandwiches
• Spaghetti
• Orange (I ran out of time to peel or slice)
• Cucumber, tomato, red onion Greek salad (but they call it Canadian salad because I made it the first time after a trip to Vancouver)



• Overstuffed chicken fajita with chicken, peppers, onions, salsa
• Boiled egg on a bed of sprouts
• Homemade beef jerky
• Peanut butter banana sandwiches by request

• Spaghetti with meat and olive tomato sauce
• Chopped pink eggs with funky colored yolk sunshine
• French fries
• Homemade dried pineapple chips
• Frozen strawberries
• Ketchup packages for the fries (totally going with the traditional Japanese bento here, huh?)