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Tag Archives: cute lunches

International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2014

Pirate Pucco

Ahoy me hearties!

Yo ho ho and shiver me timbers, today be t’ best day o’ t’ year. Arr, aye, today be ‘International Talk Like a Pirate’ Day!

T’ celebrate I made Captain Nicholas a swashbuckling lunch with an extra surprise for snack time. Aye, dressin’ up like a pirate be one o’ his favourite things t’ do, so he was happy with his booty. Later he told he especially loved the jolly roger flag.

pirate lunch

pirate apple - aarrr!

The pirate schooner and sail are cut from a ham, cheese and spinach sandwich with a cheese mast on a sea of lettuce. I drew a jolly roger and the portholes with edible ink pens, and added a side of cherry tomatoes.

I precut the apple to make it easier for Nicholas to eat and put the pieces back together held with a rubber band to stop the pieces going brown. I then drew on the pirate face with an edible ink.

Batten down t’ hatches and happy Pirate Day to ye!

Eats-Amazing-Fun-Food-Friday

I’m linking our pirate lunch up to Eats Amazing’s Fun Food Friday, a weekly round-up of fun and creative food.

 

The Kingsmill Great White Challenge

I do love a challenge, especially one that involves food, so when Kingsmill invited us to take part in their Great White Challenge I jumped at the chance.

For three days we had to replace our normal loaf of bread with Kingsmill Great White and use it as creatively and healthily as we could.  Our creations also had to have the ‘wow’ factor, kind of like The X Factor but with sandwiches instead of singers!

I don’t usually buy white bread, especially not for Nicholas, although I do secretly love a slice of white toasted and slathered in butter. Thankfully Kingsmill Great White contains as much fibre as wholemeal bread with 7.0g fibre per 100g (interestingly Kingsmill Tasty Wholemeal contains 6.2g fibre per 100g).

breadNicholas, unlike his Italian papà, loves toast and sandwiches, and happily eats them every day. However, he’s recently gone from happily eating his crusts to refusing to eat them.

But back to the challenge. As soon as I heard the bread’s name there was only one possibility for me – we were going on an undersea adventure in search of great white sharks!

Mask and snorkel? Check!

Mask and snorkel? Check!

Shark pjs? Check!

Shark pjs? Check!

We actually had a false start to the challenge as it was postponed a week at the last moment, but I didn’t want our efforts to go to waste. We had turtle toast with peanut butter and a teeny bit of nutella for breakfast to celebrate World Turtle Day. Then Nicholas very excitedly told me when I picked him up from pre-school that he’d eaten TWO sharks at lunch (and there were only crumbs left as evidence). Two great whites already spotted!

Kingsmill Great WhiteOn to the official challenge. On Friday we had ‘under the sea’ sugar-free French toast for breakfast, jellyfish and fish sandwiches for lunch and some shark fin carrot soup for dinner. I made the jellyfish tentacles from the leftover crusts and (shock, horror) they were the very first things Nicholas ate! Number of great whites spotted – 1

Kingsmill Great WhiteOn Saturday morning a fishy in a hole gave us lots of energy, then later our Playmobil friend went a little crazy when she spotted not one but two great whites lurking in our salad sandwiches. Number of great whites spotted – 2

Kingsmill Great WhiteWe started our final day of the challenge with crab toast (again with peanut butter and a little bit of nutella) inspired by one of Nicholas’ books (and the crab legs, made from crusts, were the first to be eaten!). I then used some of the bread chopped up to make healthy mini savoury bread puddings for lunch and I made Nicholas’ into another turtle (this is also a great way to use up any crusts or end pieces nobody eats). And finally, in the evening, we had summer pudding (another fab way to use up older bread). Unfortunately my octopus turned out more like a spider, but he still was very much appreciated! Number of great whites spotted – 0

Kingsmill Great White

Total number of great whites spotted – 5!

We had lots of fun making and eating our creations, and I loved see Nicholas enthusiastically eating his crusts 😉

You can see lots of other wonderfully original and healthy creations by other bloggers by searching #KingsmillGreatWhite on Twitter or Instagram. Kingsmill also have a fantastic free Lunch Book with recipes all created by kids (Hayley’s Funky Turtle is definitely my favourite).

Some of the other bloggers who did the challenge and their fabulous creations:
Boo Roo and Tigger Too
Mummy Mishaps
Mummy Mum Mum
Mummy’s Space

Disclosure: we were compensated by Kingsmill for participating in their challenge. My opinions are honest and my own.

Cute lunches: Spider crackers

Cute lunches: Spider crackers

I came across these super cute spider snacks on Pinterest and knew they’d be great for Nicholas’ Spider-Man birthday party. They went down very well, even with the adults! Nicholas now asks for them regularly and they’re an easy snack to prepare.

Ritz spider crackers

Sorry for the very blurry photo, but…

For each spider you’ll need two round crackers (I used Ritz crackers). Using an edible ink pen, draw eyes and a mouth on the top of one cracker (you can also use raisins or sultanas for eyes stuck in place with soft cheese or even mayonnaise). Spread some soft cheese on the other cracker and press in the spider’s legs (I used Twiglets broken in half, but you could also use pretzel sticks or thin bread sticks). Spread a little bit of soft cheese on the top crack and position it on top.

Spider crackers

someone couldn’t wait to eat his spiders!

Can you think of any other animals you could make out of crackers?

Cute Lunches: Incy Wincy Spider

Nicholas is spider-crazy, whether it’s singing Incy Wincy Spider or arguing with his friends which one of them is Spider-Man! A spider-themed lunch is definitely his most requested.

bento fun foodI used an edible ink pen to draw a spider outline on a tortilla and cut it out with kitchen scissors. I then used this as a template to cut out another. The tortilla is filled with mashed boiled egg and shredded spinach.

I added two raisins for eyes and cut thin strips from a couple of spinach leaves to make Incy’s web.

Incy Jr. is a black grape cut in half, slicing one half very thinly for the legs. You could also use a black olive as I did here.

Eats-Amazing-Fun-Food-FridayI’m linking Incy Wincy up to Fun Food Friday, a weekly round-up of fun and creative food by the lovely Grace of Eats Amazing.

 

Cute Lunches: Perry the Penguin

Costa Coffee challenged us to take their newest gingerbread offering, Perry the Penguin, on lots of adventures for the next three days. Feel free to follow all the fun we’re having with Perry on Twitter and Instagram, as well as the adventures he’s having with other bloggers (just search for #perryontour). We’ll do a round-up of all the fun we’ve had on Monday.

Inspired by our new penguin house guest, I made Nicholas a cute penguin lunch. It was the perfect opportunity to finally try making the adorable penguins I often see in the bento boxes on my Instagram feed.

bento, cute food

To make the bigger penguin, I followed Ming’s from Bento, Monsters very easy instructions.

I used a normal boiled chicken egg, a sheet of nori and corn kernels. Ming suggests sticking the nori to the egg with a little mayonnaise; I just lightly wet the egg and it stuck well (using the nori was actually much easier than I’d anticipated). I used some mashed up egg (from the hard-boiled egg I didn’t manage to peel very well!) to stick the corn kernel feet on.

The smaller penguins are made from black grapes. There are lots of little penguins, especially on Pinterest, made from black olives, but I thought Nicholas would prefer grapes to olives.

I cut a thin slice off the fronts of the two larger grapes for the penguins’ tummies. I threaded the two smaller grapes on top for the heads using cut lollypop sticks. You could also use toothpicks, but be very careful of these with little ones. The feet and beaks are small triangles cut from a clementine/mandarine segment. Then I added some yogurt to make their tummies white and tiny dots of yogurt for their eyes.

Thank you to Eats Amazing for the tortilla snowflake inspiration. We actually had two more smaller filled snowflake tortillas on the side.

I’m linking up to Fun Food Friday, a weekly round-up of fun and creative food by the lovely Grace of Eats Amazing.

Eats-Amazing-Fun-Food-Friday

Cute Lunches: Rudolph

Nicholas is SO excited about Christmas and I’m loving it! He talks about Father Christmas making lots of toys with the elves in the North Pole and how we have to leave out some food for him. Apparently our Christmas tree and decorations are just for Father Christmas and the reindeer to see when they visit. And, naturally, Rudolph with his big red nose also features heavily, and so I had to make Nicholas this cute, and very simple, Rudolph snack.

Christmas reindeerRudolph is made from a peanut butter sandwich. I used a large round cookie cutter to cut out his face and then cut out two ears. His antlers are pretzels, his nose a piece of cherry tomato, and his eyes are raisins.

Why not get your little ones to make their own Rudolph?

Cute Lunches: Panda Quesadillas

Nicholas can’t get enough of our new CuteZcute animal cutters and I’m enjoying experimenting with them (by the way this isn’t a sponsored post, just me sharing how much I love our new cute lunches gadget!).

Today we used them to make quesadillas (not sure if that’s the correct plural) filled with cheese and ham. The other day, on the CuteZcute’s Instagram feed, I saw the off-cuts being used to make a bow which I thought was a great idea, so I added those to our pandas.

CuteZcute bentoWe cut the shapes from a tortilla and spread them with butter. In a heated frying pan I placed the face with the cut-out features butter-side down. I then added ham to completely cover the cut-out features and some cheese before topping with the other piece of tortilla (butter-side up). Fry for a couple of minutes then carefully turn them over. Using an edible ink pen, colour in the leftover eye and ear shapes and place them to form a bow under your pandas.

Nicholas devoured these very quickly. I made more for tomorrow, but he discovered them while raiding the fridge for his afternoon snack and devoured those as well! At least he liked them.

I’m linking up to the lovely Grace’s Fun Food Friday on Eats Amazing, a weekly celebration of fun and creative food. Check out the other links for more creative inspiration.

Eats-Amazing-Fun-Food-Friday