Frozen Pudding Cups!

But first...

Yoshi lunch!

G-man asked for a Super Mario lunch. I didn't want to do another Mario-Star lunch, but was short on supplies, time, and ideas. I dug through the cookie cutter bin and pulled out... an egg shape. An egg? OH! Yoshi! The super cute dinosaur friend of Mario hatches out of spotted eggs. Yoshi was always one of my personal favorite characters from that game series.

The yoshi egg sandwich is ham and cheese on whole wheat white bread with decorating gel green spots. G-man also has graham crackers, a (sad, poorly done) checkered apple slices, Super Mario Bros. fruit snacks, and Biscoff spread for dipping the apples and grahams.

Princess, Bean, and Brick all wanted to take leftover lasagna for their lunches, with some veggies and ranch.

Brick has a Thermos with lasagna, broccoli and carrots with ranch, and a mini Milky Way leftover from Halloween. To fit the lasagna into the Thermos, I reheated it in the morning by dumping a big glump out of the casserole dish into a saucepan, and then cutting it up with a wooden spoon as it heated. I also tossed in a little extra shredded mozzarella cheese. It turned into a sort of thick lasagna goop, which was exactly perfect for scooping into the Thermos and much easier to eat with a plastic fork, since they didn't have to cut up the noodles into bite sized pieces. My kids like the texture of the noodles better that way, too. Not so thick-feeling.

Princess has frozen chocolate pudding, Annie's Organic bunny grahams, and apple bits, plus broccoli and carrots with ranch, as well as a Thermos of lasagna goop.

Bean's lunch was similar, apple bits and frozen chocolate pudding, ranch hiding under the carrots and broccoli, and a Thermos of lasagna goop.

Bean also took a small container with purple grapes and Annie's Organic bunny grahams for her snack.

The frozen chocolate pudding was easy, and turned out to be a great way to keep the pudding cold for a semi-frozen treat at lunch! It was thawed just enough by lunch time to scoop onto the apple and graham pieces, but not so much that it made a mess. Worked out nicely.

To make the frozen pudding I just made pudding... and froze it. Okay, that was pretty obvious, right? I used silicone baking cups laid out on a baking sheet. Just mix up your pudding, scoop into the cups, and pop the sheet into the freezer. Easy! Works great with silicone ice trays, too, just like the yogurt.

I included a pick to make dipping easier ~ Princess just had to poke an apple piece with the pick, dunk it in the pudding, and eat. Fun and super easy!

Finally... the Dude made a cute bento for Beaker! I thought it was sweet. He went to make lunch for Beaker while I was working on something, and I figured he was making mac&cheese or something. He came out of the kitchen a little bit later with this in hand:

He made a bear shaped pepper-turkey sandwich with Goldfish grahams and carrots, cucumbers, and broccoli with ranch for dipping. A cute balanced lunch in an Easy Lunchbox!