Rudolph Lunches

Now here is a really easy christmasy lunch to pack!  I used my multi-sized biscuit cutters to cut turkey sandwiches into 2 sized circles & stacked them.  Pretzel bits made the antlers, half a cherry tomato for the nose, cheese for eyes with blueberry pupils.  These lunch boxes came back empty!

Olive the Other Reindeer Lunch

Another Christmas lunch, for the slightly more advanced lunch-maker.  Topping a standard sandwich is a hand cut cheese "Olive", the dog from one of our favorite Christmas books, "Olive the Other Reindeer".  I used a hand-cut pita slice to make the two-toned color of her face, and cut nori (seaweed snack) for her eyes, ears, & mouth.  Using holiday books as inspiration for school lunches makes for some very enthusiastic kids!

Stocking Lunch

Another fun Christmas-themed lunch is this stocking sandwich.  Simply cut to a vague sock-shape, topped with cut cheese "fur", colorful details made with bell peppers, and a cute message or name made in cheese cut with fondant cutter letters (purchased at Michaels).  Ho Ho Hungry?

Santa Lunch

With Christmas just around the corner, here are some fun lunch ideas to keep festive in the brown bag!
This sandwich is topped with cheese cut to look like the big man himself.  Red & green bell pepper make the colorful details.

Halloween Lunch

Another halloween lunch.  Cookie cutter turkey sandwich.  I got lazy and used the triangles from kid#2's jack-o-lantern cheese as the ghost's face.  They really should have been circles.  The monster mouth is an apple cut to hinge open and look like teeth.  I've seen people do this online by shoving nuts into the apple for teeth, but my guys are both in nut-free schools, so hand cutting it is!  The tongue is a cut red grape.  Vanilla yogurt with raisin face made the spooky treat at the bottom.

Halloween lunches: pumpkins & ghosts

We ran out of bread, so I used a bun for the sandwich.  Turkey sandwich cut to ghost shape with raisins embedded as spooky face.  Night scene made with stars & moon cheese shapes.  Jack-o-lanterns are a Little Cutie orange, peeled & halved.  The faces are made from seaweed snack cut with scissors.  The spooky tree is broken pretzel & seaweed snack.  This lunch came back eaten to the last crumb.

This turkey sandwich is cut to a pumpkin shape with cheese as the face details.  The Little Cutie is halved and peeled away from the skin.  I cut the jack-o-lantern faces into the peel and then replaced it over the fruit again.

Totoro Lunches

 The boys LOVE Miyazaki, like their parents.  Totoro is a household favorite.  In fact, our youngest's nursery is entirely decorated like My Neighbor Totoro.  Here are their matching lunches.  The Totoros are both turkey sandwiches with cut cheese and spinach for decoration.  The pupils of the eyes are tiny bits of raisin.

The banana trick was new to me this year.  As you can see below, when you first "draw" on the peel (making a firm indentation with a toothpick, as I would draw with pen on paper) you can't see much.  By the time lunchtime rolls around, the peel has bruised to make lovely dark lines where I drew the design.

                              Before:

                                After:

Being a huge Whovian, I particularly like this artists banana designs:
http://ravenriss.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-draw-on-bananas-now-bananas-are-cool.html
As you can see, I did not invent banana art and have not even begun to "scratch the surface" of what is possible.  I will certainly be showing more of it in the future.


**Important note to school lunch packers though, if you like to use bento-style all-in-one boxes like me, bananas can be very pungent when included with the meal.  Be warned that they can often infect sandwiches with a hazy banana smell by lunch time...as well as everything else in that box!  Some banana fans are fine with that.  Other kids lose their interest in having bananas included with lunch very quickly. (you will note that I put a banana in only ONE of the above lunches for just this reason)

Octonauts Lunch

Octonauts Lunch

Once I started doing what my 4 year old started calling his "Cool" lunches (I don't do them cool EVERY day, just about half) he started making requests.  At the time, he was really into The Octonauts.

http://www.octonauts.com

If you haven't seen this show on Disney Jr. or read the books, you're missing out!  It is a very cute show/line of books that got Henry really into marine biology.  This is Kwazii Cat, one of the main characters (he has a patch over one eye & a sailors hat).  This is the hand-cut cheese I was talking about before - makes a great canvas for any fun requests!

Batman Grilled Cheese Lunch

My 4 year old (3 at the time) is obsessed with superheroes (just like his mama) and he requested a lunch to match his Pottery Barn lunchbox.  I obliged with this:

Batman Lunch

This is a grilled cheese.  I started by trying to hand cut out the bat signal from the top slice of bread so that the cheese would show through.  This was not successful, as dark rye is a little too soft to manage a distinct shape with a paring knife.  Pre-sliced cheese IS, however, a fantastic medium for food pictures, as I have since discovered.  So with this one, I made the grilled cheese as normal, then added a bat signal cheese to the top.  My sandwich was not yet cooled completely, so it began to melt a bit (hence the translucency)  Also, note that when including grilled cheese to a lunchbox, always let it cool first, otherwise you get condensation and soggy bread.

I have since seen similar ideas online using Halloween Bat cookie cutters.  I, personally, rarely use cookie cutters, except for my FAVORITE little star one, and occasionally some others.  I really like to hand cut shapes myself.

I would think that if you grill an open-faced grilled cheese, then toast the top bread separately, and cookie cut from the toast, you may get that "window" into the sandwich I was trying to do at first.  I don't know, I never went back and tried that technique, but maybe you can tell me if you have!

Football Lunch

So I suppose I need to start somewhere.  This was the lunch that "kicked" it all off, so to speak.

Football Lunch

Now, I've always been more of a "inside" kid, drawing and reading and watching Star Wars.  I'm not a big football fan, but I just couldn't resist making this one from Dark Rye and hand-cut sliced cheddar.  This is a turkey sandwich on the inside.  You'll see that I always like to keep it healthy, balanced, and low on sugar.  This lunch included fresh fruit, steamed veggies with hummus, and a bonus cheese cut into a star...for my little all-star!  (awwww)