Scarecrow Bento

I love fall and all the wonderful symbols of harvest time.  One of my favorite fall symbols is the happy scarecrow. I think scarecrows are such a neat American icon, and seeing  pictures of them always makes me think of golden corn fields in the midlands.

In these bentos the girls and I shared:

1. Rice formed into scarecrows, with salami hats and alfalfa sprout stuffing. The nose is carrot and the neck scarf is cheese and salami.
2. A Sliced pork chop.
3. Steamed broccoli
4. Tamagoyaki (Japanese style rolled omelette) with American cheese slice.
5. A corn dog muffin from our freezer stock
6. Fruit of grapes, clementine wedges, and beautiful red currant berries.
7. A cherry tomato

I shared this lunch with the girls, but it was too much food for us all; (I'm not eating rice or fruit, so I only shared the meat, eggs and a little broccoli.) So the leftover were our dinner meal too.

Rilakkuma corn dog lunch

Today I made the girls corn dogs for lunch. These corn dogs were super simple as I simply made a corn batter and stuck a cocktail weenie in the middle before I baked them! I thought these mini muffins were cute as they were, but I couldn't resist a little tweaking! So now the corn dogs are Rilakkuma corn dogs, joined by his buddy kiiroitori (yellow bird).

In these bento lunches the girls had:

1. Mini corn dog muffins dressed as Rilakkuma.
2. Quail egg soaked in turmeric water overnight to get the yellow color.
3. Grapes
4. Mango dices
5. Ketchup in the Rilakkuma mini container

I used a mini Carl Craft cutter to make the bear faces. *Hint for bento makers* If you dip the tip of a tooth pick in water you can pick up and place your nori cut outs with ease! No frustration from stubby fingers!

Linking these bentos to What's for Lunch Wednesday week 128 http://www.bentolunch.net/2012/11/whats-for-lunch-wednesday-week-128.html

Autumn Squirrels

I love seeing the squirrels rush around in the fall, gathering acorns. They rush back and fork quite eagerly trying to prepare themselves for the long, cold winters that come all to soon here in Finland. Happily, the beautiful colors of the fall leaves, and warm, hearty stews of traditional Finnish foods make this season quite a welcoming time.

 Those thoughts inspired today's fall themed bento.

In these bento meals the girls had:

1. Squirrels made of bread crust and tortilla. I painted in details with lingonberry jam and honey mixed with soy sauce...it worked quite well. The orange leaves are thin carrot slices. The acorns are tortilla, honey and soy sauce.
2. The squirrels sit on top of a serving of maksalaatikko, a Finnish traditional liver casserole. It's really delicious; containing liver, rice, butter, raisins and eggs. I serve it warm but it can be eaten cold. A condiment of lingonberry jam is the best combination for a enjoyable autumn lunch.
3. Along with the casserole and ligonberry jam the girls had a serving of fall inspired dried fruit. Prunes,apricots and apples.
4. I slipped in a crunchy, sweet apple bunny made from one of our home apples. 

This was today's snack bento:

Inside she had:

1. Whole grain buttered raisin bread shaped as a brown squirrel. The eyes and teeth are cheese.
2. An acorn treat...tortilla spread with Nutella. The top of the acorn shells is also Nutella.
3. Dried fall fruits with a fall leaf pick.
4. A few pieces of caramel popcorn. 

Welcome Autumn! It's my favorite season!

Linking these lunches and snack bento to bento blog networks,  autumn bento of the week!  http://www.bentoblognetwork.com/2012/11/bento-of-week-autumn.html

A Witchy Hello Kitty!

It's Halloween Day and I've enjoyed all the spooky, creepy, and cute holiday spirit I can take!! I had one last Halloween lunch in me for this year, using my favorite fall back. Meaning,  when all else fails and I run out of ideas, turn to my cutest buddy to help me out: Miss Hello Kitty! Look, Kitty's been playing in her Halloween makeup and today she's feeling witchy!

In this muffin tin lunch the girls had:

1. A pumpkin chicken nugget with carrot and pea flowers
2. A green Hello kitty witch, made with rice and pea puree. Her dress is cheese with nori detail and shes wearing a witch's hat pick
3. A small salad of tomato wedge and curly lettuce.
4. ketchup for dipping
5. fruit cocktail

Here's a look at Witchy Kitty!

I used this fun bento set from Bento USA .( Check out my bento buddy Jeejee's site for all your bento tools, bentos and more!!! It's Heavenly!) Anyways, this is the fun tool I bought to make this paper doll like onigiri.

I used the bear shape and pinched the rounded ears pointy. I also flattened out the Bear's snout to have the flat surface for Kitty's face. Cant wait to play with this again...fun!

For the girls sweet tea snack I made more green Witchy Kittys!

This time Witchy Kitty is green marzipan on a plain pancake. They also had a few grapes underneath the pancake. I served this with a container of ice cold milk! Yummy!

So that's it for Halloween 2012! So glad you spent it with me, see ya next year Witchy Kitty! ^-^



Linking these meals to Muffin tin Monday. And What's for lunch Wednesday, week 127.

A Creepy Halloween Lunch for Isi

No cute lunch today for Isi; I tried to bring the full on creeps for Halloween lunch today! Brawww-ha-ha-ha...OK, I'll stop. ^-^

In this Halloween creep-tastic lunch he had:

1. His favorite Indian take away menu, Paneer Kofta Curry (veggie balls in a tomato based curry gravy, delicious) homemade in the crock pot last night, added the plastic skeleton hand this morning.
2. Couscous, topped with nori and a cheese skull decoration. I drew the skull with food safe pen.
3. Taranchula salad, with spider picks, orange cherry tomatoes, red bell peppers, carrot and Indian onion relish

Hope he doesn't frighten his work colleagues too much today! Ha-ha-ha!..

Everyone have a safe, fun and fabulous Halloween!

 It's the day before Halloween and while I've enjoyed playing with the Halloween seasonal toys, I'm just about tapped out of any new ideas! Luckily I was saved by this super cute tutorial I found on
dash recipes.com It shows you how to make these super easy kooky bats treats,but I made a couple of healthy changes for my version.

In this lunch and snack bento we have:

1. Two kooky meatball bats (instead of donut balls) Bats are made from meatballs, tortilla and nori glued together with mayo, cheese eyes and sunflower seed fangs.
2. Two bat chicken nuggets 
3. A container of extra mayo.
4. (Orange) cherry tomato with pumpkin pick
5. Grapes and green apple wedges

In the snack bento there was :

1. Same style bat (this time) made with homemade mini pumpkin muffin and homemade ginger snap cookie wings. Wilton candy eyes and almond slice fangs
2. Grapes with bat bento picks

OK, that's all for today's food. I hope all my blog buddies and family in the US East coast are safe, dry and warm! We'll see you tomorrow on Halloween Day!!  Whoo-hoo!

Halloween Sweeties

I tried my hand at making some fun candy corn shapes today for Missy Lulu's snack bento. I love candy corn and my lovely mother sent me some just for the fall season; the bright colors just make me think of the upcoming holidays and seem all the more festive having them around.

In this snack bento there was:

1. Two candy corn sweeties (marzipan rolled over baked croissant rolls)
2. One cherry tomato
3. sliced pumpkin shaped chicken nugget
4. Grapes and clementine orange wedges

I decided after taking the photograph that I would remove one of the sweets; Missy Lulu had a large lunch and I want to try to ration the all the sweet things in store with each day approaching Halloween day. And of course today she came home with an empty bento.