summer lunches & a bento

A simple, yet organized bento. Carrots, a peanut butter and honey sandwich cut into squares on Dave's Killer Bread (I used natural peanut butter, and local raw honey incase you wanted to know), cantoloupe, and a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, cut into 1/4's. She always takes a water bottle with her. She ate school lunch twice this week per her request. Her school serves pretty healthy lunches, so she will probably choose 2-3 days per week to eat there.

During the summer, bentos made an appearance every now and then. But, almost everyday, I served lunch for the 3 kiddos the same way whether we were indoors or outdoors. Wanna see? It's kind of like a giant bento. I went to the dollar store and got this platter with a domed lid. Then I just put in whatever we had on hand. This first one the kids told me they wanted everything to be orange. I did my best. They LOVED eating their meals this way. So I still do it for lunchtime and dinner when I don't have any plans.

 carrots, veggie straws, clementine orange segments, cheese cubes, and not orange cucumbers

 carrots, raisins, pretzels, bean burritos cut in 1/3's, bananas, animal crackers, and olives in the middle.

 blueberries, carrots, cheese cubes, quesadillas, chips, cucumbers, and grape tomatoes.

 carrots, cucumbers, bean burritos, strawberries, cheddar crackers, and olives

cheese cubes, hard boiled eggs, roasted sweet almonds, carrots, laughing cow cheese wedges, raisins, rosemary crackers, olives

 goldfish, cinnamon muffins, cheese cubes, carrots, grape tomatoes, and hard boiled eggs

 pb&j sandwiches, kiwi fruit, pistachios, chicken apple sausage, chips, and cucumbers

 mangoes, graham crackers, cucumbers, carrots, raisins, ham and cheese sandwiches, and grape tomatoes

cucumbers, raspberries, cheese sandwiches, tortilla chips, carrots, gingersnap cookies, salsa

Kind of a lot of pictures, but you can see the variety and possibilities of what you can put in these. Whatever they didn't finish at lunch, I would leave it out and offer it as snacks when they told me they were "dying" of hunger. Usually everything got eaten up. They did get sick of carrots and cucumbers. We always have those on hand though.