Thursday, November 21, 2013

Fun Sandwiches

Good morning all! Before we head into todays lunch I want to talk a little bit about why I became a Bento lunch packer and decided to chronicle all of my kids lunches. I have four very different kids here at our house. Some are picky eaters, some are very picky eaters(my son) and some are willing to try new things. In July of this year I started doing some research on Pinterest about kids lunches in preparation for the new school year . I have always packed lunch for my kids but they just were not always so pretty like the ones I do now. I wanted to find a way to pack enough choices and variety without overloading the kids. I wanted to find a way to get them to try new things. That is when I found all the lovely well balanced lunches and discovered the world of Bento. I started reading all the blogs I could find and pinned enormous quantities of lunch ideas. I made list. I showed the kids pictures and got their input on what I wanted to do. The response was great. They loved the idea of making themed lunches. So a Bento lunch maker was born. And let me tell you something. My girls have tried so many new raw veggies and liked them. Even requested them. I am one happy mama and it just goes to show you offering new foods to your kids does work! You can see how our lunches are evolving by pictures of my earlier post to pictures of our lunches now. I owe it all to my wonderful Bento friends! I have some of their blogs listed at the sides of my post. Check them out. Now I would love to share with you our fun sandwich day!
This is a lunch for my fifth grader. She had a heart shaped ham sandwich. Homemade cheese cracker stars. Cucumber hearts, carrot sticks, celery and a Clementine orange. I used a heart shaped silicone cup to go with the sandwich and added some cute cupcake food picks that I made myself. Nothing says I love you like a lunch filled with hearts.

 This is a lunch for my third grader. She is a bit on the adventurous side and loves animals! She had a rino ham sandwich. Sugar snap peas with a cute little cheese crocodile. Sweet pepper rings, grapes, and cucumbers with elephants and giraffes cut into them. She also had jungle iced animal cookies. I used a mini set of Noah's Ark cookie cutters to do the cucumbers. A rino cookie cutter & crocodile cookie cutter to make the sandwich and cheese cut outs. Those came in a nesting set of three and included a huge elephant as well. She was so happy about the sandwich and the cheese!
My other third grader took a dinosaur pepperoni sandwich. He had two clementine oranges. Pretzels, wheat thins and jungle cookies. I used a dinosaur sandwich cutter for this one. This lunch only took 5 minutes to prepare. You can't beat that for time management! A special thanks goes to my friend Grace over at Eats Amazing for reminding me I had this sandwich cutter. She has a lovely post up about Dinovember. You should head over and check it out.
 
So glad you stopped by today and would love for you to leave a comment. Have a great Thursday!

2 comments:

  1. Love your reasons for making cute lunches! Kids definitely eat with their eyes first.

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    1. Thank you Keitha. I think they do too. Somehow having a bunch of bags in another bag just seems so unappealing. They love their lunches and they eat so much better. At least the girls do.

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