Muffin Tin Monday - Goldilocks and the Three Bears

This week's Muffin Tin Monday has no theme, so I dug into my stash of brainstormed ideas and chose Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, because it would be easy and not require much advance prep, since I would be gone all day Saturday. I'd just need to either make biscuits or rice, and Unka Seesee had leftover rice from Thursday's dinner, so I just stashed some away in the fridge for my purposes. Done!

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Top to bottom, Left to right: 3 chairs (carrots, marshmallow, pretzels,)
"Porridge" (oatmeal and applesauce,) Forest (broccoli,)
Bears' house (cheese, pepperoni, cracker,) Bed (sandwich,)
Papa Bear (rice,) Mama bear (sandwich,) and Baby Bear (cheese.)

I just bought a shower/gardening caddy at the Dollar Tree, as a way to keep my planned meal stuff together. This way I can pull out idea items as I find them throughout the week and toss them into here, so I don't forget a fun idea or lose track of something. And also so I don't have to climb back up onto the counter to get a cutter from the top shelf, when I could have gotten it down a few days earlier when I was up there for a different one for something else!

3 Chairs: For Papa Bear's "too hard" chair, I chose to use carrots, as they're pretty much the hardest things she can eat. I cut most of them up into spears, but made a few carrot coins too. For Mama's "too soft" chair, I grabbed a marshmallow from a bag I got to make Rice Krispie treats that never happened. For Baby Bear's chair, I broke up some pretzel sticks for the seat and legs, and had a large pretzel knot bit as the back. Since Goldilocks breaks the chair in the story, I didn't bother trying to figure out how I could build it and keep it together. This is the broken chair!

Porridge: I'm not 100% sure what porridge is, but I have packets of instant oatmeal. So I found mini muffin liners in blue and red (from a Kitchen Collection store. I think they were around $5 for a set of 12) and a super tiny one in yellow (also Kitchen Collection. 12 mini assorted shapes around $5.) I cooked up the oatmeal and put some in the red ("too hot") and tiny yellow ("just right") liners. I used applesauce in the blue one ("too cold.")

 

Forest, Bears' House: I got out some pepperoni and mozzarella left-over from pizza cooking class, and used my house cutter from a mini Halloween set. The pepperoni was a little small, so the bottom corners of the house were rounded. Meh.
For the forest, I just broke up a broccoli floret.

Bear's Bed: I opted to just make one bed, since she couldn't eat THREE, plus all the other stuff. So I cut 2 small rectangles from a slice of bread, and added PB&J. I jammed pretzel sticks into the corners as bedposts. I used a bit of cut-off crust as a pillow.

The Three Bears:  Papa Bear: I used the leftover rice in my Winnie the Pooh bento rice mold I bought from JList a while ago.

 I initially tried brown jimmies sprinkles jammed in endwise as eyes, but they looked terrible.

 Flat circle sprinkles looked much better!

Mama Bear: I used a different bear rice mold that came in a set with 2 people faces from Daiso (only $1.50 for the set!) It's edges were nice and crisp, so I used it as a cutter to make bear-head-shapes out of another slice of bread.

The grape jelly had been a been runny on the bed sandwich, so this time I made a PB/pumpkin butter sandwich with circle sprinkle features.

Baby Bear: I had a super mini bear cutter from a set from Daiso, so I made a mozzarella Baby Bear.

Now, you may be asking me... "But where's Goldilocks?"

She's right here! I told her the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears while pointing at the different parts of the meal as they came up in the story.

She loved the little cheese bear. She placed him on all the "chairs"...

...then laid him on the bed, and put a carrot stick on him as a blanket!

Ironically, she ate only the pretzels, sprinkle eyes, and the broccoli before trying for a nap. (I put it in the fridge to save for later.) After nap she ate some carrots, a cheese house, and the cracker. And she licked and nibbled the marshmallow.
But the best part of this meal? I actually got some breakfast and lunch out of it, since I polished off the rest of the oatmeal, applesauce and cheese scraps for breakfast, plus I got to eat a bunch of her leftovers after lunch! I hardly ever remember to feed myself, especially breakfast!