Bento lunches week of 9/27

Bento boxes and their accoutrements can be very hard to find. I got lucky with the one and only store here in Jacksonville that carries them. I bought the only two boxes they had. When I've gone back again, the store has not had any more. You can order some of the boxes and elements online but most of the stuff that I want can only be purchased on Ebay from Japan.

So when Karen and I landed in San Francisco, I told her that we had to go to Ichiban Kan. And being a sweetheart, she took me.


There were two aisles of bento things.


And heaven help me! The bento boxes were only $1.50 each.


I went nuts and started throwing boxes into the hand cart Karen was holding for me. She kept a mental tally of the amount of each item. I had asked her to not let me go past the budget amount I had set for myself, knowing full well that I could go overboard without a little help. I ended up with two whole bags of bento wonderfulness. When we got outside, I did little jumps and happy dances up and down the sidewalk. In this picture, you can see me giggling as Karen and some complete strangers were laughing at me.


Thank heavens Karen got a free backpack at her conference in CA. My sweet wife wore the backpack (in addition to the backpack holding her computer) through two airports in order for us to get the stuff home. Isn't Karen just awesome?

So without further ado, here are Kylie's lunches for the week!

Turkey sandwiches on pumpernickel bread, carrots, pretzels, watermelon, blueberries, raisins, grapes, cantaloupe flower. The cartoon character is part of a some food separator sheets. I couldn't use the sheets in this box but couldn't resist tearing one square off as a surprise for Kylie.
Here's the closed box.



Boiled egg, potato chips, chocolate covered plum bites, clementines, grapes, blueberries. The boiled egg was shaped with an egg mold into the adorable bunny shape. I got around six more of these molds so you'll be seeing more of these in future lunches. After I molded the egg, I sliced it in half horizontally. Kylie ate all of it.




Strawberry yogurt with chocolate chips, wheat thins, granola bar, jelly beans, watermelon, cantaloupe, apples, dried apples. I have offered yogurt to Kylie lots of different times. She's always turned her nose up at it. But apparently, some of the kids at her school eat it routinely. When we were in the grocery store together, she saw some yogurt and asked me to get her some. And sure enough, she ate a whole container of it that day as her snack. And she ate all of it in this lunch.




Turkey, mandarin oranges, red pepper, cucumbers, carrots, dressing. I've started making Kylie's lunch the night before. But I completely forgot about it on Wednesday night and threw this together on Thursday morning. I was able to use the little sauce/dressing container, the tiny plastic container for the oranges (it has a lid), and the little molds that are holding the hastily torn off pieces of turkey--all new purchases from Ichiban Kan.




Dried fruit, chocolate covered plum bites, banana, bacon, pringles chips, chocolate chip cookie bits, jelly beans. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the snapped together triangle box.

So there you have it! A week's worth of lunches that were completely fun to make!