No.20 'Weather Forecast' bento

Today was a promising start to the week for us. A pleasant morning walk to school, a productive day in the house for me, a good day at school for the children and a very rare, close up sighting of a Great Spotted woodpecker on the way home! We were almost at the house when wood shavings started falling on my head from the trees above, accompanied by a sharp tapping noise. I looked up, but couldn't see the little guy from where I was. I was ready to carry on our walk when my daughter called out excitedly "WOODPECKER!", startling me, her brother and the bird. It wasn't too put off by the loud little human girl under the tree though and actually carried on it's chore of chipping the wood for a few minutes. This meant that we got a very close up view of it's beautiful plumage. Fantastic.

For today's bento I have been inspired by the weather, which has been temperamental since the middle of last week. We've had rain, blustery winds and gorgeously warm sunshine, overlapping at times. While I was making the bento I remembered the little bit of text on my son's bento box lid and had another look at it. "There is a fine day and there is a rainy day." it says. Quite true and wise.

For tomorrow, one child will have the rainy day lunch and the other will have the sunshine. They won't know which until they open them, something they enjoyed from when I previously made the 'Sisters' bento.

'Rainy Day'

'Sunny Day'

Just like yesterday, the protein in this meal comes from some sliced vegetarian sausage. I don't think I've mentioned it before on the blog, but my husband and I are both vegetarian (he is lacto ovo vegetarian and I am an often dairy sensitive lacto only vegetarian). We have raised our children to have some meat and fish in their diet, but not in large quantities. This means that most days they eat vegetarian food, like today. There aren't a lot of meats that they like. They like spicy sausages like chorizo and pepperoni and sometimes bacon. I like to give them some oily fish now and again, which my daughter enjoys but my son is not too keen on. I'm interested to see whether they will switch to complete vegetarianism with time, but the choice is theirs. 

Back to the ingredients! Yesterday I put in a large portion of curried mushroom risotto, today that has been replaced with leftovers from dinner, which was some deliciously garlic-y noodles with some stirfried vegetables. The sun and rain characters are cut from emmental cheese slices and coloured with food colouring. I put in a little cress. For some reason both my children get extremely excited about eating cress! It could be because we've been growing it in egg cups since they were both just babies. They'll eat it with bread and butter as if it were mana from the gods. The bentos have a fruit layer, with some dried Sweet William pears, raisins and Jaffa orange segments. Mmmm.

Today's Lego showcase has been made by my daughter and she describes it as "A swimming pool that constantly cycles it's water like one of those big fountains in grand houses, so that the water pours out of the giant lions head and makes a water fall. There is a separate swimming pool for the Lego frog, in case he gets hurt." Which I think is pretty fantastic! and says it all. 

My last picture is of a Great Spotted woodpecker, in honor of our pride in meeting one today. I wonder what we'll see tomorrow?