This first one is a bit of a stretch to get to the Halloween theme. It also is a good example of bad planning! I wanted to give Monstro sushi but the extra veggies I had available were wet, sloppy ones. So instead of being able to use 1 nice, full box I had to use 2.
The top tier is a sushi snake. It's what we've decided is "Katsushi." I used a leftover piece of torikatsu, mixed white sushi rice and brown long grain rice (seasoned with sugar and rice vinegar of course), some carrot strips and Okonomi sauce. I always eat the ragged ends (we call them butts) and this was so good! I put in a spider cupcake cup to help take up space and tucked in a skull skewer of star shaped green peppers from Hilltop. Then on the bottom, I made an eyeball out of silicone cupcake cups with pineapple bits inside. Then the spider was filled with tomato wedges from Hilltop. Yeah, we've STILL got veggies from our trip 10 days ago!!
For my lunch I used the other 1/2 of the tomato wedges and a lone pepper star as a garnish for my cajun pasta with seitan. We had it for dinner Friday night when a veggie friend stopped by and have been eating off of the MASSIVE left overs since then. I used the seitan recipe linked above but subbed in cajun seasonings and didn't sauce it in the oven. When it was baked I cut it into small cubes and used it in the pasta recipe just like chicken! It was REALLY good! :D The picture doesn't look like much but I was a happy, happy girl eating that! I also took the rest of the carrot that I shaved some pieces off of for the sushi. It went in a baggie because I didn't want it to get sauce-y! This meal (and the next) show something I LOVE about the Lunchbots Eco. It is really easy to just dump things in it, throw on a cute accent and go. And it's big enough that I don't need to pack several things to get through the day.
I was really excited conceptualizing this next lunch. Then I ran into some stumbling blocks.
My vibrantly (but naturally) colored pasta faded badly while cooking and the colors that did stay were covered by the sauce (handily frozen in icecube form a week or so ago!). I realized all of my Halloween cutters were WAY too big for the pepperoni slices I wanted to put on top of the pasta. So, I had the in-house artist cut out some ghosts with scissors, carved that red pepper cheek to look like a jack-o-lantern and used some other veggies to give the lunch some brighter color! We've got broccoli tucked around the edges to hold things in place, wedges of a lemon cucumber we grew in our yard, some carrots and a 1/2 prune plum with craisin eye. I threw some mixed beans in with the pasta too for a little extra oomph since it was a Gym day too.
I got to use up the "scraps" from Monstro's lunch to make my own. We had grilled chicken salads the night before and there was a small piece of chicken, some goat cheese and some greens left. I chopped up the chicken and greens. I shredded the rest of the carrot that wasn't sliced into Monstro's box. I cubed the other 1/2 of the lemon cucumber and some tomato left from the day before. I sliced up some radishes that have been languishing in the crisper since the bento class - there are only so many mice and mushrooms I can carve! It all got tossed into the box with a little bear full of salad dressing, some craisins and the other 1/2 of the prune plum from the lil one's lunch. I did take the time to make some cajun skillet croutons. We have 3/4 loaf of sourdough rye cocktail bread laying around. So I cubed a few slices, dusted them with cajun spice and toasted them in a bit of olive oil and butter.
And finally.... those tasty toes! Monstro loves having this doll foot in his lunch. When I saw that Pepperidge Farms now makes Goldfish shaped bread I was beyond excited! I thought it was the cutest thing ever but the kiddo wasn't so impressed. And for $4 it wasn't worth it if he wasn't going to freak out over it. But, I was still inspired to make a piranha sandwich. So here it is! I used red pepper for the evil fish eye and bloody teeth chewing on the foot. The sandwich was cut with kitchen scissors and is filled with hummus, pepperoni and pepperjack cheese. I did have to cut off a small bit of toothpick and use it to keep the teeth in place. Monstro was warned before I packed it up so that he wouldn't eat the wood! I tucked raw broccoli around it. The smaller box has tomato bits with a .... wait for it... tooth-pick and hummus with carrot fingernails - both in spider cups. There are more carrots, red pepper strips and some sauteed yam slices tucked around the spiders.
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