Red, White and... WHO?! Charlie the Unicorn Bento - Patriotic Blog Hop

My Bento Bloggers and Friends are doing another fun blog hop, this time for the 4th of July. We decided to just have it be a general patriotic theme, rather than 4th of July specific, to allow for bloggers from other countries to show off their national pride as well. Plus you might get some good general ideas for things to do for Presidents Day, Memorial Day, etc!

My original plan had been for a stars-themed lunch, replete with red, white, and blue foods. I had it all planned out, and was waiting for Hubby to get home so I could go to the store to buy the last few items I needed. And then it came. The dreaded question.

"When are you going to make me a Charlie the Unicorn lunch?"

Thanks to my "friend" Jenn from Bento for Kidlet, I was under the misconception that the Charlie the Unicorn cartoons were okay for little kids. Heh heh heh. Not so much. But this was not discovered by me until the very end of the first webisode. After she had already seen it and fallen in love. Ugh.

[Warning. Don't watch this with your little kids around. Ten-and-up only, and only if you let them watch PG-13 stuff. No blaming me if your kiddo gets hooked now. It's on YOU!]


So now Z loves this show. Luckily she doesn't "get it," so she thinks they stole his baby carriage or something, since she doesn't know what a "kidney" is. And she still thinks the blueish and pinkish unicorns are his nice friends.

So I quickly revamped my original stars idea to include Charlie and his two "friends." At least it's all still Red(dish,) White, and Blue!

Red, White, and WHO?! Charlie the Unicorn. And "Friends."

Ham, mozzarella, grape-white nectarine-raspberry skewers, peppermint,
roasted cauliflower and bell pepper, blue corn chips

Click the link or the hop button above to blast on over to see what Chef Corey from Family Fresh Meals has come up with! After you read more about MY lunch, that is!

Red, White, and Roasted!: I opted to try her on a red pepper versus getting radicchio or red chard. I've learned that veggies often taste sweeter or less bitter if you roast them first, so I decided to give that a try. While I was at it, I decided to roast the cauliflower as well. She enjoyed Astrid's Cauliflower Popcorn when I tried it once before. Hopefully she still thinks it's good in a lunch the next day!

For the peppers, I cut stars out first with a star cookie cutter, then roasted them and the scraps flat on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 400 F for 20-25 minutes. I hate red peppers. But Hubby says the scraps were okay. I ground some Himalayan pink salt over the tops, in the hopes that she'll be more willing to try them. She loves the pink salt we found!

To round out my red-white-and-blue veggie options, I got some blue corn chips. She can also use these in lieu of crackers if she wants to make ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

Firecracker Fruit: On my tinsel starburst picks, I skewered blue (purple) grapes, chunks of white nectarine, and red raspberries. Easy peasy! But SO fun!

Charlie and "Friends": Using a mini unicorn cutter, I cut 6 ham-icorns and 6 cheese-icorns. I had the all-natural (no nitrates added) ham cut double thick, to help them keep their shape. I used my blue natural food color to lightly paint onto one of the cheese unicorns with a wetted finger. I used a toothpick to try and draw on their googley eyes. No luck. The eyes turned out really bad. I had started on the blue one, and since I didn't want to go to the trouble of painting a new one, I just made crappy eyes on Charlie and the ham unicorn too. To be consistent.

The peppermint, my nod to the whole Candy Mountain bit in the cartoon, is an all-natural, dye-free version from NaturalCandyStore.com
Silicone muffin cups from eBay (red,) and World Market (blue.)