Chemo Duck bento lunch for ME :)

Look at this! I actually put a little (tiny bit) of effort into making MY lunch cute for once! It was for a good cause (literally!), it was all for Chemo Duck! :) Not sure what "Chemo Duck" is all about? You can read all about it by clicking here!



My ducky lunch is packed in an EasyLunchboxes container and consists of:
- Peppered turkey, provolone cheese & mustard sandwich on multi-grain bread
- organic baby carrots
- the most sour plum I have ever had
- two wittle ducky shaped pieces of cheddar cheese

The lunch is decorated with a few pieces of traditional bento barran and a cute duck bento pick. :)

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is coming to an end, and as such, today is the last day to donate to be included in the Chemo Duck prize pack! The donations so far are outstanding!! I can't wait to share with you all how many Chemo Ducks have been adopted from here this month! Squeeee! :)

I was so excited by how generous you all have been I wanted to add some more fun bento lunch items to the prize pack.



Also included in the nifty prize pack will be this cute duck-shaped mini cutter and a set of darling duck bento picks!! :) These were on the slow boat over from Japan and I was so afraid they wouldn't make it in time. But here they are! They can be yours. Donate! :) It's for a good cause.

For more information on donating, the prize pack, and all that business, you can read all about it HERE. Thanks everyone!! :)

PlanetBox lunch - space bunnies & carships

Ethan's galactic lunch in our trusty stainless PlanetBox.



In the big section I used the PlanetBox Big Dipper for a cut up orange. The Big Dipper has a nice silicone seal on it that is leak-proof, keeping all the orange juice safely contained away from the other foods. :) I tossed some pomegranate seeds on top and tucked 4 grapes in the corners.

The top section holds a row of Wheat Thin crackers and cheddar cheese cars. The cars sorta look like space ships to me. Ethan dubbed them "carships". ;-)

The top side section has baby carrots and a Little Dipper of ranch dressing. The bottom section holds two pickle spears. The little middle section holds a few organic Annie's Fruit Snack bunnies.

I was concerned the pickles might drip pickle juice into the other spaces, so I covered that one little rectangle up with a small piece of Press n' Seal wrap.


I bought that roll of Press n' Seal when I first started bento-ing, over three years ago!! Since I only use it rarely, and in such small pieces, I expect that thing to to around for at least another three years to come! Ha!

celebration bento: F2K

This is a bento to celebrate F2K! And unlike the fiasco that was Y2K, there was no fanfare over whether all our computer systems were going to crash or any of that hooey, nope, this was just FUN!

I apologize for it being quite belated, I should have done this a couple weeks ago! Any idea what I'm talking about?

On September 7 the Another Lunch FaceBook Page hit 2000 fans! Wowza! :) Ergo, a F2K celebration bento!



The status I posted that night was, "Holy Moly Guacamole!! 2000 fans! I'm amazed! THANKS everyone! :) To celebrate, I'm giving away more bento picks! Just comment or "like" this status for your chance to win! :)"

So therefore, this little celebration bento is a fiesta in a box:
- the best corn chips I've ever had (seriously!)(I'll tell you more about them soon!)
- silicone cup of holy moly guacamole
- tortilla roll-up with some shredded chicken inside
- shredded cheese and more cheese :)
- fruit leather hearts, just cuz I luv you guys!!

Tonight I'll announce the two winners for the picks on Facebook! Yep, two winners. :) I have a couple different packs of picks to choose from, so I'll be private messaging the winners via Facebook to select which ones you'd like!

We are already bearing down on the 3000 mark on Facebook (craziness!), and so I'm putting on my thinking cap to see what I can pull together for that milestone! :)

Muffin Tin Monday - Hello Kitty

This week there was no assigned theme for Muffin Tin Monday which was just perfect for me since I've been hoarding all these cute Hello Kitty goodies forever and have been itching to use them in one big Hello Kitty fest! I've said before I am just smitten with this kitten, and I've been grooming my little girl to follow in my footsteps - and I have done a very good job, because Paige is just gaga for Hello Kitty too. Yay! :)



Top row:
- Hello Kitty cookie (from a color-it-yourself kit from Target)
- pastrami roll-ups and provolone cheese
- apples (it was Johnny Appleseed's birthday!)

Bottom row:
- Wheat Thin Stix and the little sauce case holds hummus
- Hello Kitty sealed PB&J sandwich (with fruit leather features)
- grapes on cute picks

I was a little bummed the sandwich didn't turn out very well this time! I've played with the sandwich maker a few times and this is the worst one I've had by far. The bread was too dry and slightly smushed so it didn't fill out the space very well and didn't cut cleanly. My Paigey Pie was ecstatic (to say the least!) over her Hello Kitty lunch, so all was well. :)

I was especially pleased with the cute Hello Kitty cheese! (cut with a Hello Kitty veggie cutter). Next time I think I might add a little detail with food safe markers so the features are more visible. :)


All the Hello Kitty gear was purchased from JBox/JList (this is a link to the Hello Kitty bento stuff!).

This MTM lunch is linked up at the home of Muffin Tin Monday, click on over to see more MTM fun. :)

school day bento lunch

You can determine my personal energy level by the complete lack of creativity that went into that title! I've been single-momming it all week while my husband has been traveling for work. I've had a steady headache to keep me company during his absence. Good golly do I need a nap.

Ethan's lunch:


On the left:
- raspberries
- grapes
- baby carrots

On the right he has Wheat Thin Stix, the little green cup has cream cheese to dip them in. A chocolate chip granola bite, cheddar cheese stars.

And before any robbers or random bad guys get any ideas, my hubby will be back home before the kidlets are in bed tonight! So take that, ha!

a whole bunch of snack bentos

I don't have any lunches to show today, but I have a whole bunch of snack bentos to share. :)
These are my 3rd grader's snacks from the last couple weeks. I prefer to pack his snacks in a small Lock & Lock box. This particular Lock & Lock box comes with two inner dishes, but I usually will remove one dish. Using only one of the inner dishes allows for a tiny bit more space in the box, still divides the box into two separate areas, AND gives me one less thing to wash at the end of the day. ;-) Ethan's snacks are simple and usually consist of a crunchy carby thing and a fruit.

You will see that the theme here is "let's be redundant".

Wheat Thins & grapes


Pretzels & grapes


Ethan's first Aussie Apple!!


Goldfish crackers & raspberries


Strawberries & Wheat Thins

a PlanetBox that's just ducky :)

My little girl and I had some running around to do this morning and shared this PlanetBox lunch before she had preschool.


- peanut butter & jelly sandwich with duck cut-out. Paige ate the ducky middle and I had what would have been the scraps. ;-)
- grapes and cucumber
- the "Little Dipper" holds applesauce and sprinkles
- mini saltine crackers and cheddar cheese
- raspberries and a sliced boiled egg
- organic yogurt covered raisins

I was very happy to find a duck shaped mini cutter this weekend and ducky sprinkles, too!


The Chemo Duck fun just keeps on quacking!

And speaking of Chemo Duck.... you guys are so fabulous, I can't even believe it!! So many GENEROUS donations are waddling in for Chemo Duck, it brings tears to my eyes (honestly!!!). In case you are curious, I am going to announce the total donations received for Chemo Duck on October 1, along with the winner of the prize pack. :) Remember, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and you can make your tax-deductible donation to Chemo Duck any time this month to be entered in the drawing for the fun ducky prize pack. :) If you aren't sure what Chemo Duck is or what I'm quacking about, check out this post HERE, to learn all about it! :)

eggcellent little Chemo Duck snack bento

Another bento in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and Gabe's Chemo Duck Program, the organization that sends fluffy duck companions to kids with cancer!

Unfortunately, I had a little trouble executing my duck element for this bento. Instead of being cute and cuddly, my duck looks rather deranged.


He's coo-coo for Chemo Duck!

This little snack bento contains:
- boiled egg, colored yellow, with a bit of carrot bill, fruit leather tongue and icing eyes
- silicone cup of raspberries
- multi-grain quackers
- cheddar cheese hearts

Coloring a boiled egg is done in just a few simple steps:

1. Supplies needed: bowl, food coloring, water, boiled egg.
2. Add a few drops of food coloring to bowl and fill with water. Peel egg.
3. Gently add your (PEELED!) egg to the colored water and leave submerged until the egg reaches desired color, then remove!

My yellow ducky egg was in the yellow water for about 5 minutes. The time you need to keep the egg in the colored water depends on how much coloring you add to the water and how intense you want the color to be. I used 3 drops of coloring because I wanted a lightish yellow duck. Yellow enough to be noticeable, but no so yellow that he looked...um, too yellow.

Friends, I am so very blown away by the generous donations that have come in already for the Chemo Duck program!!!! You are all SO AMAZING! I've said many many times that you are all the best readers a blogger could ever hope to have, and you just continue to show that again and again! :) I love you guys!!



For more information about the Chemo Duck program, and how you can help send Chemo Duck friends to children with cancer, please see this post.

how to help Chemo Duck (& more duck bentos too!)

The motto for Chemo Duck, the program that puts a fluffy duck friend in the arms of children coping with cancer, is "Huggable Hope". How sweet is that? :)


My attempt to recreate the darling Gabe's Chemo Duck logo in bento-format...

This bento is packed in the bottom tier of a two-tier Kotobuki bento box. It is made with a round sandwich on the bottom and a tortilla on top. The yellow duck is made from candy melts and a ducky candy mold (in other words, Lu had fun in the kitchen! :p). I added a little duck bill and eye accent using food-safe markers. The letters are made of fruit leather. :)


The top tier of the bento box holds whole grain quackers, cheddar cheese, salami "flowers", cucumber hearts and a heart dish of sunflower kernels.



Quack quack!! :)

Gabe's Chemo Duck program is a non-profit organization. When a request is received at Chemo Duck headquarters for a Duck, the fluffy friend and educational materials are sent right off - at no cost to the family. Chemo Ducks are also available for free to children with cancer at over 60 hospitals nationwide.

If you or someone you know has a child coping with cancer, please email Lu at lu@chemoduck.org for a Chemo Duck! It is Lu and her son, Gabe's, mission to put a Chemo Duck in the arms of every cancer kid they can! :)



Currently Gabe's Chemo Duck program depends on donations, proceeds from fundraisers (such as bake sales and "fun runs"), and occasional grant money to keep sending Chemo Ducks to kids with cancer.

It costs $25 to put a Chemo Duck in the arms of a child.
This month alone the program has received requests for thirty ducks - that's $750 in Chemo Ducks!

If you would like to help Gabe's My Heart put Chemo Ducks, {Huggable Hope}, in the arms of more kids, you can make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation BY CLICKING HERE.

As a way of saying thank you for your donation, Chemo Duck and I have put together this little prize pack that will be sent to one lucky ducky person!

The prize pack comes in this spiffy back-sack. (ooooh, what will you find inside??)


Lots of goodies in there!!!

- Gabe's Chemo Duck t-shirt (very cute, Ethan has one that he wears to soccer practice almost every week!)
- duck-shaped silly bands (there are more than 2, but I couldn't get the others to lay down nicely for the picture!)
- super cute ducky temporary tatoos
- Chemo Duck pins (3 shown, but there are more like 10 inside!)
- an insulated lunchbag with an embroidered Chemo Duck logo (CUTE!)
- two-tiered Kotobuki duck face bento box!!! (same as shown in the bentos above!)
- Wilton duck cookie cutter

The way this will work... for every $1 donated you receive 1 entry for this prize pack. I will keep track of this on a spreadsheet. So if Strawberry Shortcake wants to sponsor a whole duck and donates $25, I will list spots 1-25 on my spread sheet for Strawberry Shortcake. Then if Rainbow Brite donates $2, and Wonder Woman donates $5, spots #26-#27 will be labeled for Rainbow Brite, and Wonder Woman will be listed for spots #28-#32 on the spreadsheet. One number will be chosen by random via Random.org and the corresponding name on my spreadsheet will be the winner. :)

I think we will run this for the rest of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month - so that means I'll stop adding names to the spreadsheet on September 30. Of course you can continue submitting donations to Gabe's Chemo Duck program for as long as you like. :) I will announce the winner of the prize pack on October 1.
If you would like to donate but do not want to be included in the drawing for the prize pack you can indicate that information in the box that says "Are you sponsoring a Chemo Duck for a specific child? If so, Please enter the child's name and mailing address below". Or if you wish to be included for the prize pack but do not want your name mentioned you may indicate that information in that box too.

How many Chemo Ducks do you think we can sponsor together this month? Four? Five? If every visitor of this blog on an average day donated $1 we would have enough to supply 100 ducks to kids with cancer! :)



Chemo Ducks, Huggable Hope. It's a good thing. :)

a bento in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month & Chemo Duck :)

Continuing my week of bentos in honor of September being Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and celebrating the Chemo Duck program, I present you with this little lunch. :)



- two duck-shaped sandwiches, stacked, with a sprinkle eye and cheddar cheese bill
- ducky shaped whole grain cheese quackers
- duck-shaped cup holds organic yogurt covered raisins
- ducky cheddar cheese pieces
- grapes...uh, because Chemo Duck was founded by Gabe's mom...Gabe, Grape...uh, and cuz ducks like grapes? Work with me here! :)
- strawberry with duck pick (fine, it's really a penguin, but if you squint and turn your head to one side you can sorta see a duck!)
- a gold ribbon made of apricot fruit leather

Have you seen anyone flying their gold ribbons? On Facebook or Twitter? Gold ribbons are for Childhood Cancer Awareness. Share the news. :)

The original Chemo Duck was created in 2002 by my friend, Lu Sipos, when she discovered that her then one-year-old son, Gabe, had cancer.

Lu wanted to help her son understand what was happening to him as life became a never ending round of doctor and hospital visits. In an effort to help Gabe through this traumatic experience, she took a stuffed yellow duck that had been given to Gabe by a friend and gave it a makeover. She dressed it in blue hospital pajamas and added medical equipment such as a chemotherapy port and a blood pressure cuff to it – all items that Gabe could relate to. Her son immediately connected with the duck and began playing “doctor”. He used the duck to administer treatment and role-play his way through new, frightening experiences. This helped Gabe to overcome his fears and feel less alone. Since then, it has been their mission to make a difference in the lives of children battling cancer by giving them their very own Chemo Duck to love through their foundation, Gabe's My Heart.

Gabe, with the original Chemo Duck:


If you have been a reader of this blog for any length of time you may remember our sweet Alex who is battling neuroblastoma.


The Chemo Duck Program had a feathered friend placed in Alex's arms the same week he was diagnosed with cancer.

Every day 46 children are diagnosed with cancer. Every day. :(

The Chemo Duck program currently receives an average of one request per day for a Chemo Duck.

Tomorrow I'm going to share with you how we can help put Chemo Ducks in the hands of more children coping with cancer. :)

a totally ducky Muffin Tin Monday

This week's assigned theme for Muffin Tin Monday is "movies".

I had decided early on the movie I wanted to base my MTM tin on was "E.T.". I had some fun ideas to pull it altogether...but in the end I just never actually did it. Plus, I totally forgot to buy Reese's Pieces and what is E.T. without those?!

Then some events happened between then and now that totally changed my focus for this week's lunches. More on that later. :) But in accordance with our focus this week is this muffin tin -


Across the back row of this ducky muffin tin meal is:
- a Babybell cheese with a sorta-duck cut from the wax
- snausages (the last of our leftovers) with a homemade ducky pick
- ducky colored M&M's (which Paige did not eat! shocking!!)
Front row:
- veggies and ranch for dipping (in a ducky shaped cup no less!)
- peanut butter and quackers
- strawberries

The "movie" that inspired this muffin tin meal can be seen here:



I will be talking more this week about Chemo Duck and my partnership with this special program that brings education and comfort to children coping with childhood cancer! September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and I am so honored to be able to share about this great program!!

If you can't wait until tomorrow to read more about the Chemo Duck program, you can read all about it at Chemo Duck's official home, gabesmyheart.com :)

For more Muffin Tin Meals, head on over the to the official MTM site to check them out!

Monday lunch in a PlanetBox

It is such a Monday. It's always so hard to get moving on Monday mornings!

I anticipated being slow-moving and groggy this morning so last night I did a little lunch prep to help make the lunch-packing go quicker today - I made cute little car-shaped cheddar cheese and washed the grapes.

And then this morning?


I forgot I had cute car shaped cheese and didn't even include it! Gah!! Curses, Monday!
What did manage to find its way into the PlanetBox:
- Zone Beige: cereal bar, granola bar, Wheat Thin & cream cheese "sandwiches"
- grapes
- carrots
- sunflower kernels in the "Little Dipper" container
- chocolate chips in the middle treat section

bento question answered: "what do you do with the scraps?"

This question comes up so often! The fate of scraps varies at our house, depending on what the scraps are made of.

Cheese scraps - usually eaten right away. I'll eat them if I get an opportunity, but usually I have Ethan or Paige calling dibs on them as cute shapes are being cut. The baby loves cheese and the scraps are usually in perfect baby-bite-sized pieces, so they often end up on his highchair tray. Very rarely cheese scraps will end up in the fridge to be eaten later. Very rarely. There are too many people in this house vying for cheese for the scraps to make it that far.

Sometimes the bigger cheese scraps will be tucked in a bento box under the cute easily-visible shapes. When I do put them in there I usually take pains to hide them and use tricky camera angles so they aren't as noticeable. ;-)
In this bento box you can kinda tell that the bears are propped up on something - that "something" is cheese scraps. You can see a little of it under the bear on the right.


Fruit leather scraps - when I'm thinking ahead I make the scraps look pretty to be used on other meals in a cute way - such as Ethan's edible nametag in a lunch or to quickly add a little decoration to lunch on a plate. The real scrappy scraps get collected in a snack sized baggie and used for snacks. It's quick and easy to grab the snack baggie of scraps from the pantry when I'm heading out the door with the kiddies.

Bread scraps - the cutters I usually use for making cute sandwiches are Lunch Punch, which are designed to only cut away the crusts. There is very little waste there and the crusts are usually tossed in the trash. Sometimes I'll eat them if I'm starving and lately the baby is gobbing them up too. I don't worry about crusts too much, but I would like to try saving them to make bread crumbs at some point. At some point when I can be organized enough to manage such tasks.

Cucumber scraps - Sometimes the scraps of cucumbers are hiding under the pretty shapes you see in a bento box, sometimes they are fed to the baby or kept in the fridge to be added to our salads at dinner. Sometimes the cucumber scraps follow a convoluted path to find their ultimate destiny.
Wanna see? :)

Here we have the pretty cucumber flowers from Paige's kinda-sorta deconstructed pasta salad bento on Friday:


Next step, peel away the skin. It's easier to peel the slices with an actual peeling tool before cutting the cute shapes because the solid slices are just easier to handle (having no middle makes them floppy and push away from the pressure you are putting on the peel). But I wasn't that organized and did it the harder way of peeling it after the shapes were cut. With a big knife. Again, I don't recommend doing it this way. ;-)


Cut the scrap pieces into whatever sized chunks work for you. I was going to feed these to my baby/toddler, so I diced them into pretty small pieces.


Cute little cucumber scraps ready for baby Tyler!


Oops. Baby Tyler fell asleep while mama was taking pictures. Poor baby. It's not easy having a kinda-sorta food blogger for a mommy sometimes. :(


Good thing that cute little bowl has a lid. It gets stowed in the fridge to be used later.
If I had a compost bin I'd put the cucumber peel in that. But I don't have a compost bin. *sniff sniff*.


Later that day I had to pack snacks/mini-meals for all the kids to take to their playdate/childcare thing and hubby and I got to go out all alone. Just the two of us! Yay!
The cucumber bits were packed in Tyler's little bento.
(sorry for the truly terrible picture!)

Packed in a nibble tray Tyler had strawberries, fishies, multi-grain crackers, salami, cucumber, and mozzarella cheese.

So that's how scraps go down at our house. Other than a few random bread crusts, everything is eaten. We have too many mouths to feed here to let anything go to waste! ;-)

Some info about the red storage cup I used for the cucumber bits (because I know there will be questions! There always are!) :)
It's a Kinderville Little Bites Storage Jar. They come as a set of four, made of a really nice sturdy silicone, hold about 3.5 ounces (also come in larger 10oz. size) and come in very fun colors. I ordered them from Amazon, I don't know where else they are available. I had hoped I could use them inside bentos, but they are too big to fit in anything other than the Goodbyn. So far I'm finding them really useful to store small amounts of food in the fridge since they are smaller than most of our Tupperware type containers. I am liking that I can take it from fridge, to microwave to child without having to switch dishes. I don't put plastic in the microwave, and our stoneware dishes are not suitable for storage. So before I'd have food in Tupperware in fridge, move to stoneware (breakable) plate for microwaving and then move to a child-safe dish for eating...that's a lot of dishes to go through! The silicone is nice for the kids to feed themselves out of since the silicone is grippy on hard surfaces, like the table and highchair tray, and don't slide away from them (especially nice for my toddler since he's just learning to use a fork!). I haven't had them very long, but so far I'm loving them.

preschool bento lunch: deconstructed pasta salad ... sorta

This was lunch for my 3-year-old daughter today. I wanted to avoid a sandwich since my hubby and I have the rare luxury of free childcare this evening (dinner alone! woohoo!) and I'll be packing her a sandwich to take with her tonight. So lunch this afternoon is a kinda-sorta deconstructed pasta salad.


- mini-sized wagon wheel pasta mixed with a small amount of Italian dressing
- bird-shaped cheddar cheese (Paige called them "bathtub ducks") ;-)
- leftover sausage of some kind leftover from grilling the other night
- organic strawberries(daughter likes to eat them whole sometimes)
- cucumber slices cut into flower shapes with small cutter

This preschool bento is packed in a Sassy box, using only one of the smaller inner dishes for the sausage. The sausage was cut into chunks and threaded on little picks.

As I've said before, I prefer to make pasta ahead of time and keep in the fridge for quick meals. This pasta salad is just as quick to toss together as making a sandwich would be, just add some dressing and it's ready. Wagon-wheel pasta is what I use most often since it is easier for Paige to get on her fork and easier for Tyler (my 15 month old "baby") to chew. :)

clucky little bento lunch

Cute little lunch for my girl. :)



- turkey sandwich
- cheesey chicken decoration
- fruit section: strawberry, pitted cherries on a chicken pick, cantaloupe
- cucumber slices
- pretzel sticks

The cheesey chicken was fun and simple to make. :)


I used a bird shaped mini cookie cutter and some itty bitty mini cutters for the beak and feet detail. The crown is from a tiny star cutter. The eyes were made using a teeny straw - actually, a stir stick, like you find for stirring coffee.

Click here for more information on where to find the bento supplies made to make the cute little chicken. :)

snack idea: how to make an Aussie Apple

A fun guest post from my bestie mate Down Under, Kiersten.
Kiersten is the creative genius behind Lunch Punch, the coolest thing to happen to sandwiches since sliced bread! Kiersten shares with us how all the cool little joeys take their apples to school. :)



"A" is for an Aussie Apple

In Australia, some children take their apples to school like this. It's a simple way to keep an apple fresh but easy and fun to eat.

All you need?
- 1 juicy apple
- 1 clean, washed rubber band
- 1 knife ("that's not a knoife, this is a knoife!")...Sorry couldn't resist the Crocodile Dundee reference.

Cut your apple 4 times as shown. Be careful to cut far enough away from the core to avoid the seeds.







Then put it back together like a block puzzle.
Put the rubber band around the chubby apple's waist.


Pack it in the lunchbox.
Enjoy. :)

...........................................................................

Isn't that brilliant?

Kiersten, super star sandwich cutter queen of the universe, can be found on Facebook and Twitter. Well, not really on Twitter. She hasn't tweeted anything yet, but I'm sure she'll break down and chirp some fun tidbits sooner or later. :)

Thank you, Kiersten! :)