Wednesday - Using Up Those Leftovers!

No time to buy a new light for the hood above the stove (the stovetop is the only place in the kitchen that I have enough light to take a picture of the bentos), so once again I haven't got any pics for today. Plus I cut my finger, due to reduced visibility. Argh!

Yesterday's lunch was pretty much a flop. Let's hope today's goes a little better:

Potato purses. Leftover mashed potatoes, formed into purses by placing a spoonful of mashed potatoes in a small square of plastic wrap, pulling all the corners/edges together, & twisting the plastic wrap until the potatoes compress into a sort of ball. Then leave it in the fridge overnight, & unwrap just before packing. When possible I use food wrap from something we ate at suppertime to cut down on waste.

Round steak on skewers. I salted some leftover round steak strips that I'd cooked & frozen a couple of year or two ago (yes, those vacuum freezer bags make a huge difference!) and then browned them for a minute or two in a few drops of canola oil. After they'd cooled on a paper towel, I threaded some of them in "S" shapes onto little decorative toothpicks; the rest I just cut up into tiny cubes.

Doctored-up, Doctored-Down Ponzu Sauce for dipping steak. Over the weekend, I'd made a dipping sauce for some potstickers by doctoring up some store-bought ponzu sauce (it's basically japanese soy sauce with a citrus-fruit zing) with jarred fresh ginger root & garlic, plus a dash of white pepper. The family had enjoyed it but it was "too lemony" for BunnieB. So I "doctored down" a bit of the leftover ponzu by mixing it with an equal amount of Worcestershire sauce, to make what I hope is a more child-friendly dipping sauce for the steak.

Sugar Snap Peas Glazed w/Doctored-Up Ponzu Sauce & Balsamic Vinegar. While cutting up the steak, etc, I threw some frozen organic sugar snap peas into the hot saute pan, dumped on a few tablespoons of the ginger-garlic ponzu sauce, added a big splash of balsamic vinegar, and a pinch of sugar. Then I let that bubble away into a glaze for the sugar snap peas while I put everything else together. It doesn't look as attractive as I would hope, because the sauce stained the peapods brown, but it's really delicious, and I actually managed not to overcook the peas! Squeezed out a few of the bright green peas onto the glazed peapods in hopes that they would subconsciously convey to miss picky that the vegetables are not "burned" or "rotten."

Julienned Carrots & Jicama. Cut a handful of washed baby carrots into matchstick-sized julienne pieces. Then did the same with a small amount of jicama. Put the orange carrots on end around the outer edge of a silicone muffin cup, and put the creamy-white jicama on end in the center. Very pretty. Thought about including some ranch dip but that's usually a waste. Over the weekend I did some "pre-marketing" by mentioning how lots of people love jicama and eat it like carrots. We'll see....

Applesauce cup. I had planned on include a nice big apple with today's lunch, but discovered that we were out of them (that's rare!). Had to resort to the pre-packaged cup.

Pudding cup. Decided to "go with the flow" and included a pre-packaged pudding cup as dessert. It will overnight in the freezer so it can serve as "ice" for the lunchbox.

Juice box. Once I fell off the re-usable containers wagon, I guess I fell all the way off! Actually, BunnieB forgot her reusable jar at school so I didn't have one. Harris Teeter has finally started carrying "Apple & Eve" organic juices in the little boxes, and they were on sale last week. I don't want to make a habit of it, but it is handy to have a few around for times like this. The juice box, too, will overnight in the freezer so it can serve as "ice" for the lunchbox.

Mommy Gets a "D" on Tuesday

The light is burned out above the stove, and that's the only place in the kitchen that I have enough light to take a picture of the bentos, so I haven't got any pics for yesterday & today.

Tuesday's lunch was pretty much a flop (though not entirely). It contained:

• :) Nutella sandwichettes cut into butterfly, sun, & moon shapes using metal cookie cutters. She loves the Nutella; miss picky will even eat them if I use brown whole-wheat bread on one half of the sandwiches!.
  
• :( Strawberry jam & vegan cream cheese (Tofutti "Better Than Cream Cheese"), also cut into butterfly, sun, & moon shapes. Normally she loves cream cheese & neufchatel cheese. She didn't know that I had used something different this time. So, I'm not sure if what she disliked was in fact the jelly/cream cheese combo as she stated, or if it was actually the Tofutti.
  
• :) No-bake Honeybees (recipe from The Vegan Lunchbox) on a bed of colorful candy-coated sunflower seeds.
• :| A lovely-looking plum with a butterfly cut out of its skin. She said the plum was too sour, but she "ate it anyway because she was starving" due to not liking anything else but the Nutella sandwichettes. Plums are normally one of her favorite fruits.
  
• :( Organic green seedless grapes topped w/carrots & the plum butterfly cut-out. This looked really pretty, with the dark purple-red skin of the plum against the bright orange grapes, with the green grapes underneath. But alas, this too was a flop. I think the "grape taste" she disliked on the carrots was actually some plum juice from the butterfly cut-out, even though I did think to put a small piece of waxed paper between the butterfly and the carrots. Or else I just made the FATAL and WELL-KNOWN MISTAKE of letting different foods contact each other! Also she normally likes green grapes, but these had a dark spot where they'd been plucked off the stem a couple of days ago, so of course miss picky complained that they were "rotten" and didn't eat them . Guess that's "D" in Mommyhood today, for failure to pay attention to details!
• :( Ice water w/a squirt of lemon juice in her reusable aluminum water jug. "Don't ever do that again, Mommy. It was sooooo sour, it made tears in my eyes!" In truth I probably did put in too much lemon juice; I've added a squirt many times at home & she likes it.