Happy Feet Bento

I would like to state for the record that I think it's stupid that in the movie Happy Feet, the main character, Mumble, still has his fuzzy hair on his neck not only at the end of the film, when all the other penguins from his hatching are all normal-looking, but also in the sequel, even after he's old enough to have a kid himself. Yes, it helps the kids keep track of who's who. But still.
[And yes, I can totally buy into talking, singing, and dancing penguins. But not ones who don't molt like everyone else! I know. I'm crazy like that.]


Thursday, 7/26/12 - "Lights! Camera! Action!" week at Little Gym, so I was desperately grasping for movie-themed ideas and went with a "Happy Feet" bento, kind of. We had Z's gym class, followed by E's baby gym class, then a Summer camp for Z. Normally I wouldn't have scheduled her camp on the same day as class, but Monday was her last day of swim class, Tuesday and Wednesday we were at my sister's, and Z chose to have camp Thursday so she could come to the farm to pick up our CSA share with me on Friday instead.

Happy Feet

PB-chocolate almond butter on sandwich thin, CoJack cheese,
sugar snap peas and broccoli, strawberries and raspberries

I had two different sets of bento picks with a penguin in them; a clear sea animal set and a painted opaque sea animal set (both from Daiso.) So I stuck them in with the berries.

In my silicone penguin cup, I put little cheese penguin stacks, made with a mini penguin cutter. I cut some tiny triangle beaks out of a few, but got bored with that real quick. I added a hair bow pick (also makes a great bow-tie!) in between two of the slices to make a girl penguin, since Z really goes for that kind of thing.

For the sandwich, I chose one of the whole-grain sandwich rounds I'd found at the store recently, and used the same mini penguin cutter to cut a shape out of the top layer of bread. I kind of tried to make a lighter PB tummy, but it was hard to do since I wasn't exactly sure where the penguin would be once I put the pieces together, and the bread was uneven enough I wanted to line the edges up the way it had come. So I scrapped that idea.

From the cut-out penguin bread, I used little feet and beak cutters to make shapes and added them back on. Sooo cuuuute! (If you choose to do this with, say, a ham and cheese sandwich, you can use ketchup, mustard, maple syrup, honey, cream cheese, etc as glue.)

Mama's Lunch

Spinach salad w/carrots, blueberries, raisins, dressing; broccoli and
carrots w/Very Pink Dip, toasted "Everything" bagel thin w/cream cheese

Aaaand I just now realized that, despite double checking against the picture on the package to make sure I did it right, I got the beak upside-down on my sandwich and cheese penguins! Doh!