Cthulh-who?

Monday, 10/7/13 - My bento stash may be a wee bit overwhelming at the moment. Most of it is packed away in totes [yes, totes!] My husband may have foolishly suggested that I get rid of some of it. Or at least get rid of the stuff I don't use... which means if I use it, I get to keep it, right? Challenge accepted!

I have a lot of fun cutters that just don't work well with gluten-free bread. Some are just too big, and the ones that make an imprint just don't show up that well... and tend to tear apart the bread. But now that Hubby works at a place that doesn't cater lunch every day, I get to pack for him too (when he doesn't already have lunch plans... and when I remember!)

I had this Baby Cthulhu imprint cutter I couldn't resist, even though it won't work well on our bread, and my girls are too young, and may never be interested in Lovecraft's mythos. (Heck, I'm not really all that interested. I've never even read the books. But I owned a game store for 10 years, selling the role-playing and collectible card games, plus fiction books, so I'm familiar with the mythos. And my business partner and best friend loved the original Lovecraft books. Plus I like the cute Cthulhu stuff that's out there...) But HE can have gluten, and keeps gluten-y bread around the house. Yes! Finally!

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So I figured before I trot out the fluffy kitties and My Little Ponies cutters, I'd lull him into complacency with something more within his bailiwick!

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

PB-creamed honey sandwiches, mozzarella letters, Naturebox Cinnamon Spice Almonds
w/ TJ's Orange Flavored Cranberries, and some leftover bean and brown rice veggie stewp.

("Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!" means something like "Yes! Yes! Cthulhu dreams!" Which means something in the Cthulhu mythos, I guess. And yes. I had to double check myself several times to make sure I spelled it right!)

I got this adorable little Cthulhu cookie cutter from Warpzone. Despite using imprint-holding wheat bread, the imprint wasn't showing up well. So I went over it with a toothpick and some chocolate syrup. Fhtagn!

My "stewp" turned out pretty good. Even the girls didn't hate it (high praise, indeed!) I took a dried black bean soup mix from one of my foodie boxes and changed it up a bit by adding rice and veggies in, for the last 30 minutes (just to hedge my bets, I brought the soup back to a boil first, then added the rice and veggies, as if I were starting the dish then, to make sure everything cooked properly! Sometimes when I don't bring it to a boil, adding rice to something that has been cooking, or even something to be slow-cooked, is a massive failure.)

You can pretend the soup is to represent some bubbling cesspool, and somehow fits into the theme. The raspberries are "brains," because the stories are all about people going insane. Knowing that, the nuts should be obvious...


Oh, did I happen to mention that not only is this appropriate because of the geek factor, but also that my husband's game just came out with a Cthulhu expansion...? Game, you ask? Yes! My husband designed a fun card game called Smash Up, designed to appeal to anyone with a geeky bone in their body! You start out with factions like ninjas, pirates (yarr!) zombies, robots, dinosaurs (with lasers! Pew pew!) etc, and each player gets to "smash" two of them together to create their playing deck! It came out last... oh, how 'bout that? It came out almost exactly a year ago! October 2, 2012! Serendipitous, then, that I made this lunch for him now! Read on to see how Cthulhu is related to his game...

Smash Up was such a blazing hit that the publisher has already released the second expansion, after another "smash hit" with the first expansion, Awesome Level 9000. Since the game is full of tongue-in-cheek humor and lots of geekery puns and inside jokes, they couldn't not come out with The Obligatory Cthulhu Expansion!

Tools of the Trade

      Cthulhu cutter at Warpzone