Strawberry Mice

I found this "recipe" in Family Fun magazine last spring. The ears are almond slices, the eyes and nose are black icing (from the cake decorating section at the grocery) and their tails can be a thin red licorice thread or just drawn on the doily with a permanent marker.

Bento Babies Class

A creative spin on the usual lunchbox.

Adapting the traditional Japanese style lunch box to meet the nutritional and taste requirements of your preschooler is a fun, simple way to make your hectic mornings a little easier. This class is geared towards packing for younger children but many of the ideas and suggestions can be adapted to fit your older children or even your own lunches.

A few simple principles are at the core of packing “bento style.” In this 45 minute long class we give you easy recipe ideas, edible garnishment suggestions, creative touches, rules of thumb and how to find supplies. $25 fee includes take away checklists and recipes. Class sign-ups begin now for February 9th class, in Camarillo.

For more information please call 310-694-3773 or email chaserules@gmail.com.

Bento Boxes

This can get as complicated or remain as simple as you like. One advantage to a properly packed Bento box is it can be put in a backpack instead of carried separately like a more traditional lunch box.

There is a huge array of "proper" Bento boxes out there, more on that in another post but keeping it simple, even good ol' Tupperware has something to contribute.


Or, if you catch the bug and want to pack you OWN Bento lunches, grown-up style, there is always the Plastica set featured in Oprah's magazine:
Both of these make sense, the Tupperware is elegant in its simplicity, the Plastica set is simply elegant. Half of the fun of Bento - at least to my mind - is that is not only appropriate but actually expected that it will be kitchy and cutesy...in which case you may want to go with something more like this:

Some great examples from other Bento-ers!

Courtesy of the Vegan Lunchbox!
Courtesy of Bento Yum!

This one kills me!!! Its from Cooking Cute!

What do I feed my toddler?

I am really lucky, my daughter is pretty willing to try things. She gets favorite foods and prefers them but a few weeks later that favorite has changed and she is on to something new. When she was tiny her favorite food was sweet potatoes. Around nine months she became obsessed with cheese, she loved it so much that it actually was the first "Baby Sign" that she used regularly.

She moved on to eggs, then Cheerios and most recently she is the world's greatest fan of the cracker, aka around here as "Cah-Cah." I was a very picky eater as a kid so I am grateful to have a mini foodie for a tot. She likes plenty of other foods, gorged herself on tamago (sushi) to the point of gagging, huge fan of taziki and any other form of yogurt. Fruits and veggies are good, prefers brown rice and brown bread to white.

So where am I leading? Soon I will be back to work fulltime and my dear daughter will be going to "school," okay, its just daycare but it has a curriculum so that makes it school. They provide hot lunches (just like school) for a nominal fee or will happily feed your child the lunch you pack. This got me thinking, if she is doing so well now with all of the foods she eats...do I really want to get her on a mac 'n cheese and fish sticks regime?

Don't get me wrong, I have fed her both of those, neither is her favorite (yet) but since she loves fresh fruits and veggies and whole grain pasta - how can I encourage and continue that without creating hours of extra work for myself? I am on a mommy message board with fifteen other moms who gave birth within a few weeks of my daughter's birthday. There a kids who will eat anything, kids who will eat one thing, kids with allergies, kids with siblings with allergies, so the question of what to feed our toddlers has been coming up a lot.

My answer - being a creative person, a little swayed by current trends, and passionate about my own food - Baby Bento! I am creating this forum to help other moms share ideas about what to feed their kids, how to make it fun and easy and get a chuckle every now and then out of making a meal.