Wednesday, August 10, 2011

"Here's 'Yarrrrrr' Lunch!" - Pirate Bento

This week is a Pirate theme at our Little Gym. We currently are taking two classes there; "Funny Bugs" (gymnastics) and "Jazzy Bugs" (dance (ballet/tap) with gymnastics.) Under age three, there's just gymnastics-based movement and activities classes, but after age three, they branch out into gymnastics, dance with gymnastics, or sports with gymnastics. At four, they add karate with gymnastics. So when Groupon had a deal for a discount on 4 extra classes (or a month-trial for new members,) I snapped it up and saved it for when Z turned three. [Note: They offer a free trial class to anyone wanting to check them out! Just find a location near you and give them a call!] That way, she could stay in her gymnastics class, but try out sports or dance theme and see if she liked it better.

Since we're having a garage sale this weekend, I'll be busy all day Friday, which is our normal class day. So I scheduled a make-up class for earlier in the week. Since we usually have no other plans after class, so we go down a few stores to a Japanese buffet after. But this week we have soccer camp every afternoon, so a lot of eating in the car on the way there!

Anyway, since our first activity this week was a pirate-themed class, I made a pirate lunch to eat after! Yarrrr!
Herrrrr Lunch. Yarrr!:
Pirate PBJ, "gold" doubloons, "treasure chest" (with carrot coins,) green bean "sabers,"
"Seven Seas" (yogurt,) "rubies" (raspberries,) container with sprinkle "buried treasure"
Scurvy Pirate: For the sandwich I used a biscuit cutter to make the round face, and to make the bandana. I used fruit leather for the bandana itself, and stopped the cutter before cutting the other edge and used a steak knife to make a little knot/tie shape. The facial features are nori (dried seaweed) cut with a bento punch (like a paper punch.) Totally stole the concept from What's For Lunch at Our House, but didn't want to bother with all the fiddly details like spots on the kerchief or an eyepatch.

Treasurrrrrre: I don't have a brown square silicone liner, and couldn't find anything treasure-chest-like, so I just used a green square Wilton muffin cup and gambled on just cutting the carrot into coins, rather than using my V-blade down the sides first to make flowers, which she loves. But I figured the round carrot coins fit the theme better. The gold foil coins are leftover chocolate coins from my nephew's seventh birthday party.

Sailin' the Seven Seas: I added some Blue Raspberry Lemonade unsweetened Kool-Aid powder to some Greek honey yogurt. I don't have a pirate-ship-looking cookie cutter, and especially not a mini one. So I just made a small steam boat from some of the leftover bread, so she'd know it was meant to be water.
I packed both a spoon and a straw for her, since she prefers drinking her yogurt, but I was worried the pearls would be too big to fit. So she spooned off all the larger "treasure" then drank the rest.

Buried Treasure: The honey flavored yogurt is usually sweet enough on its own, but either I added too much powder or else they make the blue flavor super sour. So I mixed up some orange/yellow/white non-pareils (leftover from a Target Dollar Spot Halloween mix,) yellow and orange sanding sugars (from a set I just bought at Ross,) and some sugar pearls (on clearance from Williams-Sonoma, since I was ordering other stuff anyway.) I put in a lot more of the sanding sugar than I would have normally (since it wouldn't show up well on the blue, and I try and reduce the amount of sugar) to help sweeten the uber-sour flavor of the yogurt. I used a little rabbit bento sprinkle/sauce container, since I didn't have anything more suitable for the theme. And since it wasn't going to look right no matter what I chose, I picked one she could open herself (since we'd only have a 30-minute window between the end of gym and the beginning of soccer camp to fit getting into/out of car, putting on soccer gear (shinguards and socks,) and eating lunch.)

 My Lunch:
PBJ, Ranch, broccoli, apples w/PB
I used our EasyLunchBoxes again (you'll see them a lot the rest of this month!) since they are hands-down the best way I've found for her to eat in the car. [I even put Happy Meals in them, if we have to eat fast food on-the-go too!]

Other than being disappointed that I used mango jelly instead of honey in her PBJ, she could not have been more thrilled with her lunch! She gobbled down her yogurt (and sprinkles, of course!) chocolate coins (they were still cold and hard from being in the fridge all night, so she called them "pirate treasure cookies,") and some carrots and berries. She nibbled at her sandwich, but had spent so long eating the sprinkles and chocolate coins, and complaining about her PBJ, we ran out of time for her to eat more.

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