Bento boxes – Or how I gave a boiled egg its first black and blue eye
Somewhat last minute, we decided to start sending the kids’ lunches again and cutting out some possible trigger foods. Dairy and sugar are being mostly tossed out the window for a little while and while I don’t use much processed food anyway, it’s completely gone, too.
So when I realized first off that sandwiches weren’t going to cut it, bento boxes were my go-to plan. They’re extremely versatile, can be made as healthy as you want, and hopefully the occasional cuteness will keep the kids interested.
I don’t have actual bento boxes, but standard plastic bowls with lids worked just fine. They’re a bit on the large side but I think that can be adjusted as I get more used to how much food is enough vs. too much.
Because of the time pressure, the only “cuteness” in these boxes are the simple drawn on faces and the hamburger lookalikes. I’ve got Anna to thank for that one again. Mine are made with barbecue meatballs sliced in half and put back together with a slice of carrot and lettuce leaf to make them look like mini burgers. For some reason, I didn’t take a picture of one individually so you can see what it actually looks like, but they were a big hit.
What’s in the box?
- Boiled egg (edible markers were used and it was actually black the night before but melted into a blue by morning…..I squished each one slightly so two are round balls and the other is a triangle)
- Grapes (cutting them in half and mixing them up only took a couple extra minutes and was also a huge hit, so well worth it)
- Ants on a log
- Leftover rice from the night before (a light Spanish rice of sorts)
- Edamame on toothpicks (not a big hit….needed a bit more salt….probably won’t use again once the bag is gone)
- Hamburger lookalike meatballs
- Homemade fruit rollups (no sugar is needed….just toss some apples into the mix and it’s sweet enough…..not shown in the picture above, but can be seen in the bottom of this one)
So uh, the guy above had a little accident. I had partially prepared them the night before and stacked them in the fridge without lids. One bowl shifted so that it ended up resting in this guy’s face overnight. Oops!
I ran into a few other issues but nothing too major. I forgot the girls switched to the lunch bags from Subway last year instead of the old bags I remembered from before. The bowls I chose didn’t quite fit easily, so we had to do some squishing. B pointed this out almost immediately in her least offensive tone….”Are you really going to send those to school with us?” I was afraid she was talking about the food, but it was really just the logistics of getting them in the bags that worried her.
Their excitement was less than peak before they left for school which really threw me off because they’ve been begging to take their lunches again for a while. They weren’t really sure what to think of the sheer lack of sandwiches, I don’t think, but when they got home from school, it was a whole ‘nother story. “I’m so happy we get to take something other than sandwiches,” L told me first thing and N couldn’t stop talking about what the other kids wanted from her box, but she couldn’t/wouldn’t share. Definitely a success and now they’re full of a huge stream of ideas of things they’d love to take. :D
Kentucky Fried Chicken sack lunches
Well, Kentucy Fried Chiken. And actually, it’s not KFC at all, but for whatever reason, that’s how she chose to label her bag for the day so as not to be confused with the other girls’ sack lunches.
And yes, they have lunch boxes, lunch bags, reusable containers, but last year when this picture was taken, taking brown paper sacks was the “cool” thing to do because none of their friends had brown paper bags.
Who am I to deprive them from that experience? Um, yeah…
Oh, and L can spell both Kentucky and chicken now. I think anyway. :P
Try, try again – Reuben sandwiches
I have this weird thing where it drives me crazy not to like a food. Growing up, there were distinct dishes I didn’t like and while originally, I hated having to “at least try the dish again,” it did stick with me.
I taught myself to enjoy certain things over the years that I likely would’ve never tried again after my first brush with the foods. Often times, it was just a matter of bad preparation the first time. Other times, I’m sure my tastes had changed and I got lucky.
~~For the record, it took me at least 10 years to finally be able to eat and enjoy raw carrots. My mom would buy them for me a couple times a year when I requested the chance, knowing I didn’t like them, but not going to turn me down when she knew I desperately wanted to like them. I still can’t stand celery. ~~
Sauerkraut is a food I was presented with in a single way, over and over again, and I found it absolutely disgusting. It came in a bag, cooked on the stove in a big pot for what seemed like all day, and only contained sliced polish sausage. The smell was horrifying, but the taste was even worse. And because it cooked for so long, even trying to pick the meat out was impossible because it soaked up all the nastiness.
(This looks like heaven compared to what I remember the soggy mush with bloated slivers of sausage. via about.com)
So gross. For anyone that loves sauerkraut or has had it fresh or even had it in a halfway presentable way, you can understand why I avoided the food for years. Not that the opportunity arises often for me to have it anyway, but I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way to have it in any way, shape, or form.
But then I made the mistake of reminiscing the awful mistake, exchanging stories with a friend who grew up with fresh sauerkraut. “So you’ve never had a Reuben sandwich before?” Uh, no.
Of course, that was put on the menu for the night and I was soon having my first taste of sauerkraut in at least 10 or 15 years. Now we weren’t having fresh, but it wasn’t like the stuff I remembered either. When they opened the can, I braced myself for the whole room to fill with pungent odor, but surprisingly, I could actually sniff the can up close without gagging, and even sneaked a bite. It had crunch….how weird, lol!
When it was all said and done, the sandwich was surprisingly tasty. It was probably just the grill marks, though, huh? Everything tastes better with grill marks.
How to make Reuben sandwiches
– Pile heavy amounts of either corned beef or pastrami onto rye bread. Every picture I’ve seen has large amounts of meat, so I have a feeling that the version I had above was actually on the light side, lol.
– Add a layer of sauerkraut. I’ve been told that Steinfeld’s is a good brand, if you don’t make your own. I imagine most of us don’t, but when done correctly, it’s apparently amazing.
– Add cheese! Swiss is traditional, but I’d imagine others could work, too.
– Russian or Thousand Island dressing goes on in there someone, too, but I don’t know between which layers it should go? We didn’t have dressing, so I guess that’s sorta cheating.
– Grill and enjoy!
^ Those potatoes had an amazing peri peri rub on them, by the way. Delicious meal that I was prepared to grin and bear my way through, lol.
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