Hello, Panda!

For Bean, a sweet baby panda lunch, packed in a Laptop Lunch box.

She has a little panda bear Nutella sandwich with pretzels, yogurt with a sugar heart, Hello Panda cookies, and broccoli and carrots with ranch.

Her sandwich was cut with the CuteZCute, our new favorite cutter.

Cute little panda veggie garden.

These little cookies are way too tasty. Not too sweet, but with a creamy chocolate center. 

For Princess I packed a Hello Kitty lunch. She has a broccoli and carrot garden with ranch, a kitty CuteZCute Nutella sandich, pretzels, and yogurt with a sugar HK head, and in the Hello Kitty container she has granola for mixing in with the yogurt.

Hello, Kitty!

Her dessert: a chocolate filled marshmallow in a Hello Kitty package.

For the Dude's lunch, I packed a light picnic. He has Crunchmaster rice crackers with cream cheese and smoked salmon, a handful of mixed nuts and carrots, half an orange and a sliced kiwi, and a little Dove Raspberry Dark Chocolate for dessert.

I had the same thing for lunch today. In a corny, goofy sort of way it is almost like we shared a picnic, even though we were in different states. <3 Yes, I am a total cheeseball.

Products used:

Hello, Minecraft!

Princess took a Hello Kitty lunch to school today. She has apple slices, a HK ham sandwich with pretzel sticks, HK fruit gummies, a cheese stick, and yogurt with sprinkles and a sugar HK for dessert.

The Hello Kitty sandwich was made using a special HK head cookie cutter, black decorator gel, a piece of edible confetti for the nose, and a flower pick for the top. She is separated from the pretzel sticks by a silicone baran shaped like a heart-topped fence.

Bright and colorful yogurt dessert. Not terribly healthy, but she was utterly thrilled with the pretty factor!

Bean has a holiday-themed lunch. A pretty Christmas tree sandwich with decorator gel light strand (the 'lights' are candy coated sunflower seeds) and a M&M 'star', pretzel sticks, green kiwi, and a chocolate cupcake with an edible confetti tree farm.

The edible confetti trees... I can't decide if they're cool or a little bit creepy. They feel like styrofoam and are made with potato starch and corn starch. I did not taste one myself, but Beaker tried one this morning and was not impressed. "It makes my mouf taste like paper." But they look cute!

Last night at dinner, G-man proposed a challenge. He asked if I thought I could make a Minecraft lunch. Now, I know nearly nothing about Minecraft. I should, since my two oldest kids are mad for the game, but I pretty much let the Dude monitor their games for appropriate content and trust his judgment in the matter. I've picked up a little bit just by listening to them chatter about it, but mostly I'm clueless. So this morning I got up a little early and hit up Google to see what the game is all about. I'm still not entirely sure I understand the game, but I know more now than I did this morning. And G-man was very impressed with what I came up with for his lunch.

For those who are curious, here is the Wiki link for Minecraft. It's a building and crafting game using textured cubes. The graphics are very basic, pixelated cubes, and the game play can be as complex or simple as the players choose.

For G-man's lunch I made a 'cake' ham sandwich and 'grass block' cupcake, 'stick' pretzels, and an 'apple' (um... apple).

The pixels on the grass block cupcake could use a little more work. I'll need to work on that before his birthday - he wants a Minecraft party with a grass cake. 

Brick took a Thermos of tomato soup (his favorite lunch), with a ham sandwich, green chocolate cupcake, and pretzel sticks. No cutesy themes for the too cool 8th grader.

Corn Dog Muffins

Tried these out and they were a rousing success. The kids all loved them! They're just beef hot dogs, sliced up, baked inside of cornbread muffins. Delicious, better than chemical-filled corn dogs, and easily portable.

Bean and Princess took leftover corn dog muffins for lunch. Bean asked me to draw snowflakes on hers. At 8 in the morning, with a mean sore throat and fever (me, not Bean), after almost no sleep the night before... They look more like starbursts or fireworks than snowflakes. But she was thrilled with them, so I'll call them a success!

Bean has corn dog muffins, blueberries, Annie's Organic cheddar bunnies, a chunk of cherry cheesecake, and purple grapes.

Yep... I still see starbursts.

Princess has the same food, but with HelloKitty decor.

If I can find it again, I'll share the corn bread recipe I used to make these. I think any basic cornbread recipe would work. Just place pieces of hot dogs or mini sausages in a muffin tin and pour the cornbread batter over top, and then bake. Super easy!

Hello, Kitty!

Princess has a deep and long lasting love for Hello Kitty. She loves the cute little cat. This morning she asked for a bat lunch. Bats? Yes, bats. Unfortunately, I have no bat stuff. Given more warning I might have been able to put something together, but with half an hour until I had to walk them to school, I had to tell her that bats will have to wait and could she please request something I can do with what I have on hand. So she fell back on her favorite - Hello Kitty.

I used a Hello Kitty head shaped cookie cutter for the pepper turkey sandwich, stuck in a bow food pick, and sketched on the details using black edible decorating gel. Her nose is a yellow heart shaped edible confetti sprinkle. Since the cookie cutter is small, I took the rest of the sandwich and cut it into small pieces, poking them onto a heart food skewer.

Princess also has applesauce with a Hello Kitty cupcake ring pressed in, apple slices with a Hello Kitty candy decoration, Hello Kitty fruit snacks, and Scrabble Cheez Its spelling out CAT.

Bean wanted a bear lunch. "You know, a bear shaped hard boiled egg and bear picks and a bear sandwich and..." Yep, I got it. Bears. Bears she wants, so bears she gets!

Her pepper turkey sandwich was cut with a bear shaped cookie cutter and the leftover bits were cut into tiny sandwiches and threaded onto a teddy bear food pick. Another bear hangs out in the applesauce. Bear shaped cheese, chocolate chip Teddy Grahams, and apple slices with a few gummi bears wraps up the bear theme. Of course, it wasn't until after I walked her up to school and was halfway home that I realized I had made the bear shaped hard boiled egg and forgot to actually pack it in her lunch. Well... maybe tomorrow...

Both lunches are packed into our very frequently used Easy Lunchboxes. Love them!

For my breakfast, I packed a small container with shredded deli pepper turkey, a baby Baybel cheese, and some dried fruit granola to mix in with the Greek yogurt in the second dish. The little butterfly sprinkles were just for fun. Because who doesn't love butterflies? And moms deserve cute snacks, too!