Rapunzel... the Robot?

I saw this idea somewhere last week and I had to give it a try. I don't remember what the originator called it, but I call these "Spaghetti Dogs." =D Here's how it works...

First, you stick dry spaghetti noodles into a hot dog, however you'd like:





Then, you boil the spaghetti-speared hot dog pieces:



They sort of "swim" around the pot of boiling water, which is especially fun for the ones that look like little squids. =D

Once you pull them out of the boiling pot, the spaghetti is soft and has swollen to fill the hole it is in, so it doesn't fall out. It's pretty cool!

I really wanted to use this technique to make a head with hair, so that's what I did for this one. She ended up with really long hair, so I thought it would be fun to make a Rapunzel bento, but it didn't really turn out that way. Really, she ended up looking like an evil robot, I think. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.



Still, it was fun to make the Spaghetti Dogs. We'll have to do that again. And I think it would be fun for kids to make their own designs with the spaghetti.

Frozen Bento

This little bento is a backup bento. It's like a frozen meal or tv dinner, only cute! I put it in a glass container so that I can pull it out of the freezer and microwave it. Of course, I will remove the strawberry butterfly and the sauce container before microwaving! I thought it was sort of a novel idea, though, and figured I'd give it a try. So... green bean grass, carrot flowers, and chicken nugget clouds. And, of course, a frozen strawberry butterfly and a marinara-filled sauce cup sunshine!

I'll let you know how it goes when I actually get around to microwaving and eating it. If it works, this might not be a bad thing to make up and keep on hand!

Spring Tweet

This is Eliana's lunch / afternoon snack bento from Saturday, the last day of February. Despite all the snow on the ground (and the snow hike we took to a frozen waterfall that day), I was getting ready for spring! So Ellie got a spring bento, and she liked it!



I used a new double decker bento for this one, which gave me two sections to work with. I like that! The bottom section is primarily vegetables, while the top held mostly fruits. Lots of green beans for grass, some carrot flowers, a couple fruit leather flowers (with my new picks!) and a container of ranch dip for her veggies. Of course, I'm pretty sure she just licked the ranch dip out and ater her veggies plain, but at least she ate them, or most of them anyway. The top portion had strawberries, as sort of a red flowery hedge, more carrot flowers to transition from the bottom to the top, and apple clouds/sky. Then I added a green bean branch and a little tofutti "cheese" bird (I used paprika and turmeric for the coloring) with a pine nut eye. All wrapped up it looked like this:



I have to admit that one of the things I like about the double decker bentos is being able to pack twice as much food, but only give her half of it at a time. That's what we did with this one. We gave her the veggie half to munch on in the car on the way home from hiking, and the fruit half once we got back home. It worked well! And it was a very nutritious lunch and snack for her!