No.11 The 'In-between' bentos

Tonight's post is about those in-between-er bentos that happen when I'm too tired to spend more than five minutes on lunch boxes but know that the children will be expecting something fabulous. The in-between-er bentos are far from fabulous, but they usually put a smile on their faces anyway. The one to the left is 'Happy hearts bento', which has a layer of carrot and cheese sticks with a ketchup dip and in the second layer some jammy heart shaped sandwiches with writing icing features. The funny thing is, despite it's simplicity, the children talked about this one quite a bit after eating it. Ketchup, cheese and jam are obviously winners at lunch time.

To the right is 'Jammy pancake bento', tonight's quick and simple lunch made from all sorts of things found in the cupboards on the night before shopping day. The savoury layer has brown rice noodles with a pinch of paprika stirred in for colour and seasoning, with a few cheese slivers on the top. The dessert layer has two slices of homemade sultana pancake, rolled with morello cherry jam (a particularly nice jam), a few extra sultanas and a piece of chocolate coated flapjack. The side dish is half a jaffa orange. I hope the noodles go down well with the children, particularly since one of them is certain to think that the pinch of paprika might be super-hot curry powder instead and not take a bite. I'll mention it in the morning to save the spicy misunderstanding...

With this picture I have made a weary attempt to create a more colourful background for the meal and set the bento up nicely. More practise with this in future!