Thanksgiving Bento

Today is the only day any of my children will be heading to the homeschool supplement charter school that they attend. That is a big name for it, but it is the best way I can think to describe it. Since it is Thanksgiving this week, and I only have to pack one school lunch this week, I just had to make it a bento, right?

It's a turkey...made from rice! Better yet, it has turkey sausage for the ground. I will admit I giggled to myself a little while putting it together. Luckily, I dragged myself out of bed to get it finished and packed in a lunchbox before Gizmo got up to get ready for school. The rice is calrose rose, and is colored with soy sauce. The turkey's feathers are bell pepper, as well as the beak, and the eyes are nori. The background is corn. I think something green would have looked nicer, but I didn't have anything on hand.

Having holidays to plan bentos around makes it a lot easier to come up with new ideas.

Lego Bento

My oldest son, Spike, is involved with a First Lego League. One day, when packing his lunch, I did up a bento.

The top bento held summer squash and sausage that I quickly sauteed. The the lego man, I colored his head yellow using turmeric, and his body red-ish brown using a bit of paprika and chili powder. It was a little darker red than I wanted, but the spices all added a nice flavor. The man is surrounded by kale, and his facial features and made for cut nori.

Well, hello there stranger...

I have ran into it myself many times while reading blogs....the long absence followed by a promise to try and do better and keep up. I am not sure I will make such a promise on this day, I also realize that there very well might be another long absence in the future. What can I say? That is just the kind of realist that I am. That said, thank you for reading this post, whether you have read my blog before, or somehow stumbled across it while skipping through the internets.

As for interesting things going on in our household, there have been plenty. I feel like there is just too much to say, and at the same time not enough. I guess I will leave it at that. I am going to try and get some knitting (and maybe even crochet) patterns up here soon, as well as some more gluten and dairy free recipes. I hope that you will visit again....

Playing with Bento Lunch

Gizmo has been attending a program for homeschool kids this year. She attends a school once a week and gets to do exciting things like ballroom dancing, piano, and debate. She has been loving it. In addition to learning a lot, it has also helped provide more opportunities to hang out with kids her age. The school does not have a cafeteria available to them, so everybody brings there own lunch, which is certainly not a problem for us since I would most likely be packing her lunch anyway because of her special diet (gluten and dairy free).

While this has brought me much opportunity to practice my bento skills, I have slacked off. While she has had a nutritious and tasty lunch for her each week, they really were not anything special....just stuff like sandwiches or soup in her thermos. She was telling me last week though that there were plenty of microwaves available to heat up lunches, and that got me thinking. One of the reasons I tended to not prepare bento lunches as much was the fact that my kids did not really like eating the food at room temperature, and now that problem has been solved!

So this week to got a cute lunch. Nothing too fancy, but she got a kick out of showing her friends.

The bottoms tray has three mini burgers, along with a bit of chopped green onion, and the bottom tray has sticky rice with flowers that have green onion stems, carrot and red bell pepper blossoms, and pea leaves. The pink elephant in the middle has some soy sauce.

I packed it up along with a small container with some ketchup and mayonnaise to dip her burgers in. She also took along an oroblanco (kind of like a grapefruit) for some fruit. She said it was a very tasty lunch.

Why I Like My Camera

My photography skills are not so awesome, and my kids often don't cooperate (gasp). Oftentimes, it is a numbers game...

 But if I just take enough, I can some pretty stinking cute pictures of them. My hubby totally rocked when he bought me my camera for Christmas last year.

A bit of updating....with cake

I completely skipped many months of writing on this blog. This period of time included my two youngest kiddos' birthdays, along with the birthday of my oldest daughter.

Princess wanted a Jasmine cake. Why a Jasmine cake? I have no idea, beyond the fact that Jasmine is a princess, she is not one of our Princess's favorites. However, my little girl was very sure that this is what she wanted, so I did my best. She blew out all five candles like a champ! The domes and the four pillars are made with gfcf rice crispy treats. I tried using cake, but it just flopped. Squirt thought they were delicious!

Squirt did not offer up much input for his cake, but since he loves Lightning McQueen and Mater, I was pretty sure he would be happy with a Cars cake, complete with toy cars (because there was no way I would be able to make those out of fondant). He needed a bit more help with the candles since he just seemed content to let them burn for a while.

 For Gizmo's birthday she wanted apple pie. The pictures are on my husband's camera, but there really is nothing that neat to see.....it is just apple pie.....with candles. Add to that the fact that she is getting older and I do try and respect that fact that me posting pictures of her blowing out birthday candles is not all that cool anymore. :) She is always complaining that I never make enough pie, so she was very happy with her birthday apple pie. I made three for her and everybody who helped us celebrate, served up with Rice Dream ice cream, and I do believe she almost finished off an entire one by herself.

Happy Halloween

 Hope everyone had a fun Halloween 2012. I know that we sure did. We decided to take the kiddos up to my parents neighborhood for trick-or-treating since our neighborhood has lacked Halloween spirit for the last couple of years, and it was pretty awesome. One neighbor set up a haunted woods, while another was passing out homemade root beer and cookies. Even though we could not enjoy the cookies (because of gluten), the root beer was nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the cute decorations on all the houses.

From youngest to oldest, here is what the kids were this year:

Thomas the Tank Engine. The gardening gloves are not part of the costume. He just likes them and would not take them off for pictures. 

 Merida (from the movie Brave)

 A gryphon

 Nike, Goddess of Victory