Food gifts for women: The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities and ideas

Food gifts for women: The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities and ideas

Looking for some The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities and ideas to add in lots of fun and learning? Here are some of our favourite ways to use one of our all time favourite story books.

Read More

Carving art: How to make vegetable flowers

Also great for a party!

Carving art: How to make vegetable flowers

Flat vegetable flowers are great for dressing up your bento to finish up. Put them on broccoli, on rice, on sandwiches, etc… anywhere you want. It adds a nice finishing touch and will definitely cutify your bento.

Carrot flower:
- Carrrot
- Cheese for #2 (optional)

[Carrot flower #1]
1. Slice a carrot and make upside down V-shape incision around the carrot.

2. If you don’t like eating carrot skin, you can cut the outside part.

[Carrot flower #2]
1. Slice a carrot, and use any flower shape cookie cutter to cut out the carrot. *You can just stop right here, and your carrot already looks much cuter than ordinary boring carrot like. (Check out the Path to Totoro Forest)

2. Use a straw to make holes on where petals are, and on the center.

Carrot flower #1 looks really adorable on broccoli. I usually use baby carrots for this, but you can just use the smaller part of a carrot. The secret weapon to make simple yet fancy-looking Carrot flower #2 is a straw! You can also make flowers out of cheese, apple, ham, anything that’s soft enough to make a hole with a straw. In the picture below, I made a flower with cheese, and swapped carrot bits & cheese bits.

If you don’t have a cookie cutter, don’t worry. You can make a Carrot flower #1, and use a straw to cut out holes. (like the one at the right bottom) If you have hard time getting a veggie piece out of a straw, just blow it out from the other end. I save carrot bits I get from cutting carrot with a straw. You can use them as eyes or cheeks (if you’re making animals or people), or just sprinkle them around in your bento!

A cookie cutter and a straw can make an ordinary carrot look pretty fancy!

Carrot tulip is more 3D, so you can stick it in the corner of your bento box like veggie sticks.
[Carrot tulip]
- carrot
- cucumber

1. Slice a cucumber about 3/4 inch thick, and cut it in half.
2. Cut out V-shape where seeds are.

3. Cut the carrot like a tulip.

This is what a tulip looks like in my head.

4. Stick toothpick through the cucumber and carrot, and done!

Also great for a party!

Read More

Food gifts: Making Funny Food Faces

 

Making Funny Food Faces

When we got home yesterday afternoon from the school pick-up, my boys announced they had the hungrys and that they wanted to do something fun; maybe get the art supplies out. I remembered something I saw on Playschool years ago. Making funny face open sandwiches! Combining an afternoon snack and play all in one. This had the added bonus of upping their vegetable intake for the day….this is something I am slightly obsessive about. I grate, puree and hide extra vegetables in our meals all the time, anything to up the amount they eat.
To Make Funny Food Faces:

• Spread your bread generously with cream cheese or you could try peanut butter
• Have a selection of foods cut into different shapes, we used alfalfa sprouts, carrots, cherry tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber
• Let your kids make away!

There was lots of snacking on the vegetables on the platter as they made the faces and some very interesting creations were made.

The general consensus was that funny faces are delicious and lots of fun! Check out the empty platter at the end, I was surprised by how much of the veggies they ate, even my Mr almost 4 ate heaps.

Do you get your kids to play with food?

Read More

Unique food gifts: How to make an edamame stick

Unique food gifts: How to make an edamame stick 

This one is may not really be “kyaraben” food by itself, but it’s a great way to add green to your bento box.

This technique lets you put edamame together in one place without using a little cup. All you need is uncooked pasta! You can put it in the corner of bento box like in the Piggy & Gir bento, or use it as a divider like in myPortal bento.

Pasta gets soft enough to eat because the moisture from edamame in a couple of hours or when microwaved. But if you’re not sure about eating uncooked pasta, you can fry the pasta.

[edamame stick] (used in “Piggy & GIR”, “Portal” )
- edamame
- pasta

1. After boiling edamame, pop the beans out of the pods and peel the outer skin of the edamame.

2. Stick the soybeans on the uncooked pasta one by one.

Snap off the pasta on the both sides and done!

That’s it!

3. If you put #2 in a bowl of water and microwave it for a couple of minutes, the edamame stick becomes soft and bendy! Maybe you can use this as a necklace for a girl character food or have it surround other food. (be careful when you bend it. If the pasta isn’t soft enough, it might break off.)

Read More

Halloween food gift: Who's for Dinner?

Who's for Dinner?

 

It's that time of year...time for spooky food! First, let me clarify that I know some of you probably don't want to see anything about Halloween and I wouldn't say we necessarily "celebrate" Halloween but I have always amused my children with these creations during October. We don't make anything really gross or evil, just ideas I have found over the years that are cute and silly. We make most of these every year and the kids still get a kick out of them, kinda a family tradition now!

First are the three mummy meals, the English muffin pizza mummies, the hot dog mummies which are hot dogs wrapped in strips of refrigerator breadsticks and baked, and a new addition...the meat loaf mummy. This is meatloaf shaped like a mummy and then covered with strips of American cheese and returned to the oven to let the cheese melt a little bit.

A fan favorite to make is the vegetable skeleton.

A taco salad gets spook-a-fied with sour cream and black olive eyes.

This is a new find, swamp creatures made out of mac-n-cheese baked in muffin tins and sitting on cooked spinach. (will they eat the spinach??)

And finally, the grand finale, the slitherin' Stromboli! It is pizza sauce, pepperoni and cheese rolled up inside pizza dough and baked in an "s" shape. So cute and yummy too!

Read More