Mini wonton lasagnas – Dinner, bentos, or midnight snacks
What does it mean to find a huge tub of ricotta cheese on clearance for under 3 bucks? Lasagna time, of course!
Knowing that we were limiting dairy, I assumed I would toss these lasagnas straight into the freezer. Instead, I only used a thin layer of ricotta and no other cheese, and they turned out too good to not eat fresh.
Wanna make your own? Just use your favorite lasagna recipe and sub in eggroll or wonton wrappers. As Squirrel Bread says, wontons are the new black, and I use ‘em like crazy around here. For these, I just cut my wrappers in half, layered as usual, and skipped the fuss of precooking noodles or wondering if I cooked the dish long enough to avoid crunchy pasta.
When I originally bought these tins (on major sale, might I add), I thought they’d be great to fix all sorts of mini-this-or-thats in. I assumed I’d cut them in half and be able to toss various dishes into the girls’ lunchboxes.
Instead, I realized they’re roughly 2-cup tins and they’re perfect for building fast bentos right in them. Maybe not the most creative, but it opened up a whole new set of ideas of foods I could bake, toss in the freezer, and have ready in a flash for lunches.
And yes, I snacked on these a few times. Leaving them cold or barely heating them up turned them into easy, hand-held craving-satisfiers. Yum!
You went to a Chinese restaurant again?? – Bento boxes
Another challenge I had with making bento boxes was being concerned they might get teased for taking nontraditional lunches. Of course their nutrition is more important than some silly kid drama, but kids have it hard enough with peers who make fun of pretty much anything they can. I didn’t want to add to that.
I started making the boxes with more traditional items like a fair bit of rice, for example, but have shifted to some more “American” items to help balance some of it out. This is why it made me giggle even more when B told me a story about her friends.
Yeah, I got out my lunch and Jacky yelled “You went to a Chinese restaurant AGAIN??!!”
Talk about an American mindset, huh? Hehe. I had sent spaghetti that day even, and nothing “weird” but B said she didn’t think her friend believes that I make the food. And we don’t have Japanese cuisine here where I live, so it makes sense that the assumption was Chinese takeout.
Some more boxes, mostly very far from Japanese food
- Saltines
- Tuna salad
- Pretzel sticks
- Homemade pineapple mango fruit rollup leather
- Grapes
- Frozen mixed fruit
- Leftover pasta
- Bacon!
- Pretzel crackers
- Carrots
- Frozen apple slices
- Bean and rice burrito
- Crackers
- Cauliflower
- Raisins and grapes (“Uh, Jessi, those are like, you know, the same things….” Yeah, I know, sorta, shush it.)
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?)
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