Zoo Day

As the last school year came to a close (yeah, yeah... I'm more than a little behind in sharing these lunches!), Beaker's small school had a field trip to the zoo for the entire school. It was pretty neat to see all of the students from the whole school, kindergarten through high school, there together with their families! Lulu tagged along with us, and Beaker was thrilled to introduce her to his kindergarten teacher and the friends he had met at school.

And of course there was lunch...

Beaker has a cantaloup field for a friendly giraffe, and grape and strawberry stripes for a silly zebra. Enter the zoo through a gluten free sandwich on Udi's bread, with cheesy letters and animals greeting you at the carrot stick gates. Smoked gouda cheese with rice crackers are hanging out in the foliage.

He thought a few of his animal friends should check his lunch out to make sure it was safe before we could close it all up. The zebra approves, but the lion needed a closer look.

Lulu prefers her lunches with a little less flair, so she has a pretty toned down version for hers. Carrots with ranch, cantaloup, strawberries, a sandwich, and rice crackers with both smoked gouda and spreadable cheese make up her meal.

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A Day At The Pumpkin Patch

A few days before Halloween, Beaker went on his very first field trip with his kindergarten class. They went to a local pumpkin patch for a day of fun. There was a petting zoo with llamas, goats, chickens, and rabbits; a big hay bale maze and a giant hay bale pyramid to climb on; and they went on a tractor pulled hay ride out to the pumpkin fields where each kindergartener was able to choose a pumpkin to take home. Despite the wet weather, Beaker had a blast. Luckily the rain mostly stopped shortly after we arrived, leaving us with wet, muddy, soggy ground but not much falling from the sky. It worked out pretty nicely, and was mostly dry enough by the end of the morning for Beaker to be able to eat some of his lunch outside, instead of huddled in the car.

For lunch, Beaker has:

A sandwich on a Schar gluten free roll with cheese flowers

A "Jack O' Lantern" clementine

Carrot coins

Gluten free crisp crackers

Grapes

Candy pumpkins

His lunch is all packed up in an Easy Lunchbox container, which is perfect for picnics. The flat construction makes it easy to hold on your lap outside, and the simple construction means that when the rain picked up again we were able to quickly snap the lid on to keep his meal dry.

Another recent pumkin/Halloween themed lunch that I forgot to post earlier...

This lunch has:

Sandwich made with summer sausage and Udi's gluten free bread

A clementine "pumpkin"

Candy pumpkins

Cheese pieces

Crispy gluten free crackers

Baby carrots

Yogurt dyed green and frozen into skull-and-bones shapes

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Butterfly Tin

Sometimes making a meal special involves just taking tiny steps. Like putting it in a different kind of dish or cutting into fun shapes.

For this summery meal, I put Beaker's lunch into a muffin tin. They're kind of perfect for little kid lunches, actually. The small cups limit portion sizes to amounts exactly right for little bellies, and they naturally keep foods from touching (which is often important to my little guy). It's a low-effort way to put a little extra punch in lunch!

This is a loosely butterfly themed, gluten free muffin tin lunch. On the top row, Beaker has carrot discs in the first cup of the tin, EnerG allergen free pretzel rings and Enjoy Life chocolate chips (tucked into a butterfly shaped silicone cup) in the second, and mini sausages in the third. On the bottom row, he has watermelon balls, butterfly shaped apple slices, and ketchup in a silicone flower cup.

Definitely a Beaker-Approved lunch! His favorite part was the butterfly apple slices. They were pretty easy and fast to make. Just cut an apple into slices and use a mini cookie cutter to pop out the shapes, then brush with a bit of fruit juice to keep them from browning. Works like a charm and makes them just the right size and shape for little hands to hold.

It's Pirate Day!

Arrr! That it be, Matey!

 It's Pirate Day - International Talk Like a Pirate Day, to be precise.

We have a deep fondness for Pirate Day here in the Chaos house. A day when everybody dresses up and acts like [the fun, PG, much cleaned up] pirates, purely for the fun of it? YAR!

I found this little bit o' treasure at a grocery store over the summer and snagged it just for such a day:

It's exactly the right size for pirate-y lunches for Beaker!

In this lunch, he has:

 a pirate isle apple

pirate pear halves

'gold dubloon' Van's Say Cheese gluten free crackers

ham and cheese, run through

mini 'mud pit' 

A spinach stem X marks the spot on this sliced apple pirate isle...

Arr! And the pair of pirate pears are happy to see ye.

But beware the bloody bones sinking in the Smudge nut free cocoa spread mud pit!

Another pirate lunch from this week, on the same fun little plate...

This lunch includes:

half a skewered min orange

gluten free multigrain crackers

ham rolls

organic fruit snacks

a cucumber X

carrot sticks with onion dressing

Beaker even took pirate treats for his kindergarten snack today, packed up neatly in a tiny Jake and the Neverland Pirates tin!

Snack box holds:

gluten free pretzels

apple slices

Schar gluten free shortbread cookies

Tween Bean was totally into the Pirate Day lunch theme too, and she took this tasty treat filled Planet Box to school for her hearty repast.

Her PlanetBox Rover contains:

gluten free pretzels

skewered salami with green olives

a checkered apple isle

10 carrot gold dubloons (get it? 10 karat/carrot? Ha. Pirate pun!)

cucumber slices

a pirate pal mini cheese wheel

and a pair of delicious Schar gluten free shortbread cookies

We here on Chaos Isle be wishing you a festive Talk Like a Pirate Day, full of festive fun!

Want to see more piratey lunches? Check out these pirate posts from years past!

Also, check out the Bento Bloggers and Friends Talk Like a Pirate Day Link-Up Party! SO many awesome, amazing pirate themed lunches!

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First Day of Kindergarten

*Sniff* 

How does the time go so fast? People have been asking that for centuries, but it is still a marvel. Babies grow up so very quickly. Just yesterday Beaker was giving us his first smiles, first foods, first steps. And now, a new first. His first day of Kindergarten!

He insisted on dressing all in Batman, because "B is for Batman, like B is for me!" His shoes and jacket were also Batman, and when the teacher introduced the letter they would be learning for the first day, he was utterly thrilled to find that it was none other than the letter B.

His classes are half days, so he has lunch at home and takes a snack to school to eat in the afternoon before recess. For his first day, he had this yummy muffin tin ABC!

Clockwise from the top left:

A blueberry lemon gluten-free cookie bar

Roasted chicken lunch meat rolls

Glutino gluten-free pretzels

ABC grapes

Yogurt with letter and number sprinkles

Carrot slices with dressing

For his first day snack, he chose a little Crayola mini tin lunchbox. It's the perfect size to pack a snack into a sandwich-box container! Both the tin and the box we found in the dollar section at Target.

He has carrot sticks and apple slices with Smudge (a nut free cocoa dip from Freedom Foods) and a few raspberries.

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