A "Bear-y" Simple Lunch

 

Monday, 2/25/13 - This was a quickie breakfast-for-lunch bento for Little Z (using some leftovers!) in our EasyLunchboxes Brights. This was packed the night before Z decided she was ready to try a gluten-free diet, so we didn't start until after lunch that day!

Colby Jack cheese, hard boiled egg, salt, beet and spinach-dyes pancakes, maple syrup, green beans, clementine

Bears, Bears, Everywhere!: I had some pre-made hard boiled eggs, so I nuked a mug of water to boiling, dropped a peeled egg into it for a few minutes, then jammed it into my bear head egg mold while I made the rest of the lunch. Worked like a charm! Except the egg wasn't big enough to moosh into the ear part of the mold. Oh well.
Thanks to Lise at Veggie-Bento for this little trick! Now I can boil up a batch of eggs without having to know in advance what shapes I want to make!
I put some salt in the bear sauce box since Z likes to sprinkle it on herself. (Mine came from Daiso, and is no longer available.)

I used a mini bear head cutter on some cheese and one mini pancake to go with the bear theme. The pancakes were left over and frozen from our Mardi Gras pancake lunch, and were colored using beet and spinach coloring. I put a little maple syrup in the polka-dot sauce box for dipping or pouring over. Her choice.

Normally I peel her oranges for her, since that takes up valuable eating time. Plus she often has a difficult time. But she had chosen these on-the-stem clementines with the little leaves... soooo cute! So instead I gently sliced the bottom to make six little "petals" to help her get started easily.

Also shown: bear fork (mine came from Daiso and is no longer available.)

This lunch didn't take very long at all to put together. Including heating and shaping the egg and thawing the pancakes, it was less than 15-minutes total. And considering I have to play fridge-Tetris anytime I need to get something in or out, much of my time is used up just gathering the ingredients!

 

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