Bento, Baby!

I have recently become seriously obsessed with Bento, and after bugging the crap out of a lovely internet friend, demanding all of her knowledge on the subject, I set out to create my own for the very first time. I practiced on our dinner, and this is what I came up with...

Pink food-colored rice, carrot confetti, shapes cut out from cheese, broccoli grass, tomato and cheese flowers, and a plum flower in vanilla yogurt with gummis to decorate.

I am confident you will be seeing a lot more bento from this housewife, as my kids are just as fascinated as I am (although Luke was dipping his broccoli florets in vanilla yogurt *shudder*. Hey, whatever gets veg into the kid, I guess, right?). :) So much fun!

Six.

My daughter turned six yesterday. SIX! Sigh.

But this is about the food, so....

The cake, which I think sucked but everyone else liked. At least it tasted good.

Taco salad, which I just finished off myself last night.

Chocolate covered strawberries. Um... need I comment? Yum.

Aaaaand multicolor rice-crispy treats. Very fruity and a little too sweet but the kids liked them a lot.

Some other stuff that I didn't get pictures of: Sweet and sour meatballs and sausage, bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, cheese, meat, cracker and veg platter, and pita chips (I cut them into shamrock and butterfly shapes, they were super cute). Food was good, and she had a nice happy birthday. Yay.

Chicken Not-So-Chilly.

Whose bright idea was it to make chili today? Oh well, it was yummy regardless. Healthyful, too.

White chili with chicken, summer squash, brown rice, cannellini beans, corn, and celery.

Now I have to go wash chili off of the baby. At least it wasn't the red variety....

This Little Piggy...

...went in my oven today, with some onion and apple butter......

And I swear we eat more vegetables than just onion and spinach.... hmm....

(That's pork loin, not ham btw. It's not pink/brown, it's saucy. :) )

Macaroni and Cheese.

With sauteed onions....

Mozzarella cheese....
and baby spinach.....
put under the broiler...
and served...
And eaten. Yum.

Thirsty?

Today was a HOT one. Too hot, too humid, too sticky. Not really a big eating day, needless to say. I was uninspired by tap water and not relishing the thought of drinking 2 gallons of it, neither. So I made up some good (non-alcoholic, unfortch. And still wondering why?), cold drinks to accompany on my evening alone while I pray that it rains.

First, we have a blackberry-catnip-mint iced tea with honey. All plucked from my yard (of course), except the honey (of course. If you know anything about my fear of flying stingy insects, you'll understand). Lovely, fruity, sweet, cool and fresh tasting. Yum. Drank most of that already.

Next, inspired by an idea my friend had, I made some juice-cicles (poured white grape juice halfway up the ice cube trays, froze, then poured strawberry-banana juice over the frozen grape juice and froze again), and added club soda. It's pretty, simple, crisp, and cold, which club soda must be (I hate it with ice cubes because at the end it's just, well, flat-tasting water, and I hate it with no ice because when club soda is warm, well, EW. Perfect solution to THAT problem, thanks hon! :) )
Dontcha just wanna dive in?

Berry Monster.

Well, today's berry-using capabilities have been thwarted by one Cute-And-Irresistable-Baby-Dude:

Oh, well. I'll go get more this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. I hope he enjoyed them.

Bath time.