Size Matters! And a winner!
First things first. Since there were soooo many responses to my last giveaway it was really hard to pick a winner. My hand started cramping from writing down all the names and tossing them in the hat.
**Silence**
Hello! Anyone there? Tap tap. This thing on?
Alright, all kidding aside.
The winner of the Moss's mix is.......
Drumroll please!
Angela Mason!
She wrote:
"Hey Christy! Loved the cornbread stuffing recipe, and if I win this giveaway, I will have to try it (even if I don't I will try it! LOL, I will also make hush puppies, because face it, wat's better than hus puppies? And lastly, some breaded salmon. YUMMMMMMY!"
So congrats girl. I will be contacting you soon to get the stuff to you.
Jenn K. Sorry girl, but stay tuned, there will be more giveaways!
So on to the topic of this post.
Have you heard of Bento Boxes?
One of my favorites
It is the Japanese version of a brown bag lunch. In use since the early 12th century, the original container was just a bag but in the mid 16th century they started producing beautiful wooden lacquered boxes with dividers in them.
The boxes would be filled with shaped,stuffed rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves (now, nori is used) called onigiri. As well as fish or meat and cooked or pickled vegetables. They would be packed lovingly for children, a spouse or for themselves by caring family members spending lengthy periods of time and energy to make them enticing to look at and then eat.
Over the past several centuries these boxed lunches have been adopted by many countries including the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, India, Hawaii and, most recently, the US.
And by recently I mean since about the 1970's. Okinawa was occupied by the United States military until the mid 1970's and when all those boys came home they brought new foods, flavors and ideas back with them.
Which is great for us! At least, in this case, it is good for me
You see, in a perfect world, kids would eat anything you gave them and not complain about vegetables or grains. But that isn't my world. I have one picky eater who doesn't like to anything green or not fried. Ok, maybe that's a little extreme, but she does have her favorites and doesn't like to mess it up with things that are good for her, like vegetables.
However, she does like things that are "cute". So I've taken to packing her lunches for school in a makeshift Bento box. I found a rectangle container at my local dollar store and fill it with small goodies she likes and some that she hasn't tried before. By cutting them into cute shapes she has become more interested in trying something new. I have silicone cupcake wrappers that I put moist ingredients into and fill the rest up with sandwiches, chips, pretzels, or anything else I want to get her to try.
So far it's been a success. Both children love taking their boxes to the lunch room, opening them up and seeing what surprises await them. One of my sons' friends told him "your mom must be a food artist"! Which made him feel special and more interested in trying something new as well.
Here is a picture of their lunches from one day last week.
Using plain old cookie cutters to shape food and arranging it in a cool way is fun (at least for me) but challenging. It may seem like a lot of work for just a kids lunch, but it really only took me about 10 minutes to do both boxes at once. And it is worth it if they come home and tell you how much they liked the celery sticks which they might not ever had tried before that day.
There are many choices out there for Bento boxes (expensive too). But you can make your own out of plastic containers and some silicone cupcake wrappers (which help keep moist foods from coming in contact with dryer ones that you don't want to get soggy). So get yourself down to your local dollar store and pick ya up some containers and see what you come up with.
Please post your pictures along with a comment telling me how much you, or your child, enjoyed their boxed lunch that day!