Sailing Away

Arr! More pirate lunches, ahoy!

In this lunch:

Watermelon pieces

Blueberries

Greek yogurt

Sandwich with Udi's GF bread

GF pie piece

Van's GF cheese crackers

Our little pirate friend is hanging out on a gluten free ham and cheese sandwich. X marks the spot in a square of gf pie, which Beaker declared the best EVER (not homemade though - I can't remember the brand name, but they are little individual pies sold at a local store). And a treasure chest of golden crunchy 'coins' is tucked in below the X.

I really love the silicone tray I used to make this frozen Greek yogurt skull. It gets a ton of use here! I keep a bag of frozen yogurt shapes in the freezer, and when the kids want a cold snack they can just pull a skull or some bones out of the bag and enjoy. I love how freezing yogurt makes it seem like a sweet treat dessert, but it has a nice pack of calcium and protein, too! And freezing it into shapes is just an extra fun bonus.

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Bento Ahoy!

Autumn is rolling up fast here! The mornings are dark and cool longer, and racoons have begun theiving in my henhouse. Locking it up tight to keep those pests out!

Beaker and Bean are starting to count down the days until Halloween, and I'm eyeballing my favorite spooky bento gear already. September is barely half over, but I'm so ready for October! In the meantime, we're making do with more pirate lunches for Beaker.

I love these little bento dishes from BentoUSA. They're small and compact, great for little tummies or packing into smaller lunch tins.

In this lunch:

Van's gluten-free cheese crackers

Babybel mini cheese wheel

gluten free carrot mini cupcake

carrots

ham

grapes

apple pieces

frozen yogurt

frozen blueberries

gluten free granola

Tiny pirate in his little boat, surrounded by golden crunchy 'coins'.

A pirate raft, with carrot planks and ham rolls.

Tasty pirate parfait. The fruit and yogurt thawed while in his snack tin, so when snack time rolled around it was still frozen just enough to taste like a dessert, but thawed enough to be easy to eat with a spoon. I froze Greek yogurt in a shaped silicone ice cube tray to get the fun skull-and-crossbones shape with a good kick of protein to keep my little guy going through the long day.

The small dishes pack up perfectly inside this cute Jake and the Neverland Pirates lunchbox and matching snack tin!

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Yar! Pirate Lunches Ahoy!

As many of you already know, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Since it was on a Saturday this year, we celebrated with a whole week of piratey lunches for the littlest of the Chaos Kids. He is digging this whole lunch at school thing!

For Monday, Beaker had a little pirate sailing away in an allergy-safe dinghy to find the treasure on the fruity isle.

This lunch includes:

Gluten-free half sandwich on Udi's bread

Baybel mini cheese pirate

Schar gluten-free shortbread cookie sun

Orange island with carrot sticks

Gluten-free cracker crisps

(The cheesy letters covered up the place were I dropped a little food paint on the bread...)

How do you celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day? Share below!

An InLinkz Link-up

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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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Other Pirate Lunches

Last week we did a blog hop full of pirate-y awesomeness for Talk Like a Pirate Day. You can see my post for that here. But since we have a deep affection for all things pirate (well, the fun sanitized kid-version of pirate, anyway), I made a whole week of pirate lunches for my kids. Here are some of those:

Gluten, soy, nut, peanut, egg, garlic, and dairy free lunch for Beaker in a Laptop Lunch box. He has grapes, multigrain GF crackers, Cutie orange segments, a cucumber treasure map (with fruit leather X and nori bits), baby corn, and sliced hot dog 'dead man meat' with 'blood of my enemies' ketchup for dipping.

In this Lunchbots Trio, Beaker has watermelon chunks, multigrain crackers, dried apricots, an Udi's granola bar, carrots, cheese bits, and turkey triangles. This lunch is also gluten, soy, egg, and garlic free.

A rare lunch for G-man in an Easy Lunchbox. He has frozen Greek yogurt skull and bones, grapes skewered on a pirate sword with some cookie bits, a grilled cheese sandwich island staked out with a pirate flag, and some soft cheese with pretzels. 

For Lulu, a Jolly Roger turkey sandwich with gold dubloons, carrots, pears, pretzels, and Cutie orange segments topped with bloody bones (cupcake decor bits).

This allergy safe lunch has a checkered apple pirate isle, rolled ham and cheese barrels skewered with pirate swords and floating in a silicone sea, an Enjoy Life granola bar, multigrain crackers and baby carrots, with Jake and the Neverland Pirates fruit gummies and pears (tucked in under the gummies).

And finally, another allergy safe lunch, with GF vegan lemon blueberry muffins, cucumber slices, cheese bits, ham rolls, apple slices, and frozen blueberries with Greek yogurt skull and bones.

YAR! (That means "Hope you have a great week!" in pirate-speak.)

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A Pirate's Life For Me!

 Avast! Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day! Ye scurvy dogs be sailin' the high seas with the BBF pirate hop and now ye've landed on the great ship C&C. Arr!

Beaker's new favorite show is Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so it was easy to choose a theme for his TLAPD lunch. I asked him which character is his very favorite, and he said, "CUBBY! I love Cubby."

Okay, kiddo. A Cubby lunch it is!

Cubby is an open-faced turkey quesadilla. His face and ear are made with turkey lunchmeat, while his pirate bandanna and eyes are made with white corn tortilla. Blue food dye painted on with a toothpick colored the quesadilla and also painted on the mouth and nose. A circle of white corn tortilla also forms the base of the quesadilla. Carrot shavings form his hair and eyebrows.

This lunch also includes carrot coin 'gold dubloons', a star filled with raisins and EnjoyLife chocolate chips, grapes skewered on pirate swords, and a tub of tasty Cutie orange segments.

This lunch is completely Beaker-safe, which means it is free from gluten, soy, nuts, eggs, garlic, and shellfish. According to Beaker, "My Cubby lunch is DELICIOUS!" But alas, he has now decided that Jake is actually his favorite character and wants a special Jake lunch. Yeah, I'll just go ahead and get right on that, kid. Maybe another day.

Now that you've seen my TLAPD post, follow the button to see the next post at One Crafty Thing!

Once you work your way all around the hop back to here, visit the BBF Blog TLAPD post to see the other half of the hop, Black Beard's Revenge!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Arr! Piratey Grub!

Yo ho, yo ho! A pirate lunch for Beak-y!

Beaker's new favorite TV show: Jake and the Neverland Pirates. He loves it! Something about pretending to be a pirate ("But a NICE pirate, Mama, not a mean pirate.") totally appeals to him. He was thoroughly thrilled with the piratey lunch I packed for him to take on an errands day:

Arrr! EasyLunchboxes and silicone cups made packing this lunch easy and fast. Beaker has a little leafy green salad with a deli roasted turkey rose, watermelon chunks, carrot bits and cucumber slices, cheese pieces, and gluten-free multigrain crackers.

It's the little touches that make bento lunches special. Like this pirate ship pick sailing on the watermelon sea, and the little pirate boy tucked in the corner of the crackers, or the crossed long swords in the cucumber slices. Very little effort, but big smiles from my little guy!

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Leftover Chicken, Three Ways

The other night we had grilled marinated boneless chicken breasts for dinner. The Dude cooked it up, and he made potatoes and brussel sprouts on the side. Delicious! There was a lot of chicken leftover, which is exactly how I like it. Perfect leftovers for lunches!

For lunches the next day, I sliced the leftover grilled chicken into thin slices and strips. Using that chicken, I made three different lunches for three different people, using the chicken in three different ways.

First, a lunch for the Dude. I used the thin sliced chicken for the sandwich. The chicken is snuggled up onto a croissant with some spring mix greens and spicy mustard, topped with a grape tomato. He also has a hard boiled duck egg, a few mini Oreos, and a few strawberries.

Yep, that's a little teddy bear pick for my big construction worker husband. It's the little things that make me smile. I have a slightly off-center sense of humor, to put it mildly.

For Bean I used the chicken to make a big salad. I filled the largest section of a Sistema Cube with the spring greens mix and laid the chicken out on the bed, spreading bacon crumbles on top, with ranch dressing on the side. Also tucked in is a hard boiled duck egg on a bed of spinach leaves, a few mini Oreos, and some halved strawberries.

Most of us here are big salad lovers. A big tub of spring greens from Costco generally disappears pretty quickly around here.

Pretty colors, too! I was glad to see strawberries in the store the other day. Hoping they still have some tomorrow; they're Beaker's favorite.

For G-man, I used the chicken strips to make a pirate boy lunch. Which he remembered to take to school... but forgot in the classroom when it was time to go to lunch. At least he ate some of it when he got home.

For his lunch, the chicken is sliced into pieces and placed in a jumbo silicone baking cup, with a little dish of barbecue sauce on the side for dipping. He also has a hard boiled egg shaped like a fish, snowflake Ritz, pirate gold chocolate coins, strawberries, and tangelo segments.

Strawberries run through with pirate swords:

Leftovers are a fantastic way to stretch the grocery budget, prevent waste, and get creative with lunches. With just a little imagination and a few other ingredients, dinner from last night can become a great lunch for tomorrow!

And from this week...

Woo! Finally caught almost up to date after all of the catching up. Here are some of the lunches from so far this week:

A lunch for the Dude. He has a thin sliced corned beef croissant sandwich with Havarti cheese and crisp lettuce. He also has cucumber slices, whole strawberries, and a few mini Chips Ahoy cookies.

It has to be Spring eventually! Yes, Winter just started a few weeks ago, but we're already daydreaming of Spring. Bean has a jumping bunny lunch here.

She has yogurt with sprinkles, jumping Annie's Organic bunny grahams, a pair of orange segments, some halved strawberries, a baby Baybel cheese, and a happy little bunny hard boiled egg.

And finally, for Princess, a family of little bears took over her lunch.

She also has yogurt with sprinkles, a few mini Chips Ahoy cookies, orange segments, and strawberry halves. Tucked up top she has chocolate Teddy Grahams, and in the middle she has cucumber slices and a teddy bear hard boiled egg wearing a little hat. A picnic lunch, even if it isn't picnic weather!