Top Hat O' the Mornin' to Ya! - St. Patrick's Bento

This was a quick lunch to put together that ended up being really fun and looks like more work than it really was! Win!
The CuteZCute cutter gave me a quick and easy kitty "leprechaun" base, and the rest all came together with some picks and a cookie cutter! In our EasyLunchboxes Brights.

PB sandwich on GF cinnamon raisin bread w/cheese, ham-cheese-olive scrap quesadillas, sugar snap peas, galia melon

Shamrock-adillas: I had a bunch of ham and cheese scraps from making shapes for my turn as snack parent for Z's preschool class that week, So I tossed a bunch, along with some diced black olives (just to ensure she'd even give them a chance!) in a dye-free, gluten-free Rudi's spinach tortilla (yes. The spinach tortillas you find just anywhere are really blue and yellow dye tortillas.) I folded the tortilla in half and broiled it for 2-3 minutes on each side. Then I used a mini shamrock cutter to make fun shamrocks! (The scraps went in Baby's lunch!)

Shamelonrocks: I found a galia melon at Trader Joe's and was excited to give it a try. It didn't look as green as I expected though. Oh well. I used the same shamrock cutter to make melon shamrocks too. And stuck some shamrock cupcake picks (mine came from a bake shop) in with those and the organic sugar snap peas to make them more festive!

Leprechitty: After flubbing the first slice of gluten-free cinnamon raisin bread (from a local bakery, but the Udi's brand is pretty tasty too!) by attempting to punch the CuteZCute kitty face OUT of the bread, I instead took some more cheese scraps and cut the face out of those and glued them on with peanut butter. A few bits of gluten-free spaghetti noodles to help prop up a Leprechaun Hat cupcake topper and keep it in place, and done!

I saved time by prepping the quesadilla first. Then while it was cooking, I cut out and assembled as much of the lunch as I could, and let the quesadilla shamrocks cool while I finished cutting and assembly before packing them in the EasyLunchbox. Even with the delay from my first bread fail and having to add time for the cheese cut-outs, this took less than 15 minutes, and that includes rooting through my bento gear to find the tools I wanted and playing fridge-Tetris getting all the food out!

Tools of the Trade