Dem Bones bento

I'd been promising her a "Dem Bones" themed lunch, since it would be Halloween-y, and we'd just checked the book out from the library. But the week before Halloween I hadn't planned my time well, and she ate very little, since several of our AM activities involved her getting fed, right before heading off into the car to (not) eat lunch on the way to preschool. Where they feed her a snack, so she's not too hungry after. So a lot of food getting rolled into a fresh EasyLunchBox for the following day.

So I decided to make an effort and get one ready for Monday's lunch - on Halloween!

Dem Bones

Her lunch: Candy "bones," ham and cheese bones, string cheese "spine,"
carrot "finger bones," grapes

The Candy Bone's Connected to the Yummy Bone: I found little packets of these hard-candy bones and skulls at the Dollar Tree and bought them just for this lunch. The rest of the packets will go in the bowl for trick-or-treaters. The red silicone mini cup is from World Market.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Sandwich Bones: I used my dog bone cutter on a ham and cheese sandwich (on a new multi-grain bread we're trying out from Costco. Double the price of the brand we normally get, but still 3g fiber per slice and whole grain wheat, which are my requirements. But my husband was getting tired of the same old bread.) She's been on a ham kick lately, and asking for it a lot, so I figured it would be a safe bet versus her usual peanut-butter-honey.

The Cheese Bone's Connected to the Spine Bones: I chose string cheese into nibblets, since they look kind of like a spine when stacked. And I wasn't in the mood to slice cheese large enough for my bone cookie cutter. And these were already sliced up from a previous lunch that she'd barely touched. Square silicone liner is from Wilton.

The Carrot Bone's Connected to the Grape Bone: The carrots are from our CSA share, and I picked out that curly one specifically for this, since it looks like a gnarled finger. The grapes are a combination of organic red ones bought at the CSA farm, and an organic green/black mix from Trader Joe's I bought for my snack day at her co-op preschool.

The dancing skeleton picks were from Bake It Pretty, but I'm not seeing them there anymore. The colorful skeleton toys were from Dollar Tree last Halloween.

Leftovers Lunch

My lunch: onion bagel w/cream cheese, apples and
raspberries, green beans and peas (Ranch underneath)

My apples were the last few slices from a lunch earlier in the month (still good! And almost no browning, thanks to being sloshed in apple juice right after I cut them.) The raspberries had been uneaten from her Eye Spy lunch. The peas were left untouched ages ago and I put them in a little Take-N-Toss container in the fridge and forgot about them. Time to use them up! I'm surprised they're still good! The green beans were also left uneaten from one of her recent lunches.

Naturally we couldn't eat this tasty lunch without the book that inspired it! She loved the "Dem Bones" video by Scholastic, and I was excited to see the book at our last trip to the library. She's been very interested in books about bones and skeletons lately, which is a great tie-in this time of year! And who I am to interfere with her wanting to actually learn something! The down-side is that this book is a verrrrry long read. At least longer than I like to read out loud. "See Dick run. Run Dick, run!" is more my pace, for reading out loud. More than one or two sentences per page, 10-15 pages, and I start doing some heavy editing of the story. Luckily Daddy is a sucker will read her longer stories. But I read it all anyway, just this once.