Halloween Bento Boxes - Part 2

It sure has been a busy month. Fall seems to be the time of year when field trips are extra plentiful, and being out and about means packed lunches, so here we go with another Halloween bento box post. These are some that I packed since we were meeting up with the homeschool swim club.

Finished Bento Box.

I assembled the bottom tiers first, which were filled with fruit. I put cantaloupe balls, green apple cubes, and black plum cubes on cute Halloween food picks that I got at the party store. Any food is funner to eat when you eat it off a stick...if you don't believe me, go find a kid and ask them. I was going to use blackberries instead of the black plums, but the store didn't have any fresh ones, and the frozen ones turned too mushy when thawed. Luckily, I had picked up the plums on a whim. In the little black muffin paper, there is honey-peanut butter fruit dip. Since Squirt is still pretty small, he did not get Halloween food picks. He absolutely loves cantaloupe though, so he was completely happy.

This is all the fruit boxes. You may notice that some of the containers are not bento boxes. I was watching my nephew that day, and also making a bento for my husband who was working from home since I was not going to be there to make his lunch. Unfortunately, I do not have any spare bento boxes, so I had to make do with boring containers.

For the bat boxes, I cooked some carrots and peas in a quick beef gravy using beef bullion and sweet rice flour. After ladling it into the boxes, I placed a bat cookie cutter on top and carefully spooned sushi rice around it. With wet fingers, I pushed the rice down flat, and then spooned black rice into the bat. And what exactly is black rice you may ask? I had never seen it until a week ago while browsing the bulk section of the nearby health food store. It also went by the name Forbidden Rice. I looked it up when home and found out that it is high in fiber, rich in iron, and loaded with antioxidants. The "Forbidden" name comes from the fact that in ancient China, the right to eat the black grain was reserved only for the emperor and a few lucky individuals. Pretty interesting considering I was only interested in it for the color at first. So anyway, after getting the rice all situated, I carefully lifted the cookie cutter out, and was left with this...

Since I was not sure just how well they would hold up, I asked the kids to try and not swing them around too much. During the car ride, Princess was playing with hers, and considering she had it upside-down I was sure that the rice would be completely jumbled up. To my surprise, when I opened it up the bat was still intact and looking pretty much like it did when I packed it!