Cooking with Trader Joe's Cookbook: Easy Lunch Boxes

As you probably know (and if you don't, just look over the left sidebar), I'm a very proud member of the Facebook group Bento Bloggers & Friends and "The Cult of ELB." I am very thrilled to announce that several of my BBF friends (and fellow cultists) have contributed to a brand new cookbook by the amazing Kelly Lester -- Cooking with Trader Joe's Cookbook: Easy Lunch Boxes!

John and I both love our EasyLunchboxes and I was beyond thrilled when I was given the chance to take a look at a copy of the book in advance of its official release on the 15th of September. If you love gorgeous pictures of food, easy to follow recipes, and fun lunches then you have to check this book out! It's got fast lunches, cute lunches, allergy-friendly lunches, even grown-up work lunches (and more):

Now, I already have a ton of cookbooks in my collection and they rarely get taken out of the cupboard. Typically I'll pull one down just to check the timing for something I'm throwing together or if I forget how much flour to put in a sauce. This book probably won't even make it into the cupboard with all of the others because I'll be spending far too much time reading it and using it.

Some of the entries I'm most excited to try: Chicken Pepper Poppers, Reuben Pasta Salad, Waffle Pizzaaaah, Red Pepper Frittata, Spaghetti and Meatball Muffins ...... I think it might be easier to list the recipes I don't want to try (which would be the hummus. I don't do chickpeas.).

If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you don't let that hold you back from getting this book. I would have to travel for several hours in order to get to the nearest TJ's. Luckily, all of the ingredients are things I would be able to find in my local grocery stores. No excuses!!!

Now go ... order your copy of the book (and grab some EasyLunchboxes & the new awesome Mini Dippers while you're at it)! 

Toy Story Alien Dude -- with Step-By-Step Tutorial

A friend of mine asked me to do a sandwich art tutorial and Pin it for him to send to his sister but as wordless as possible so he could maybe understand it, too. (He's a college student and has to "read too much as it is! LOL!) I asked if he had anything in particular in mind and he asked for "that three eyed dude from Toy Story." Works for me and will definitely work for John because he loves all three Toy Story movies!

I think it's pretty self-explanatory except for maybe Step 7. That brown thing getting ready to cover the Alien Dude is a napkin I used to soak up some of the still-wet food gel. I typically don't need one with the natural colors, but I went for the gel this time because I knew I wouldn't be coloring it in completely so it would be minimal amounts of artificial coloring.
After the lunch got put together completely, this is what John will have in his lunch bag tomorrow:

"Alien Dude" ended up being ham and cheese. Under him in John's Toy Story container are yogurt raisins and star crackers. He also has a Yoplait Splitz and a Tummy Tickler Apple Juice bottle.

Leprechaun Trap!

Today's lunch got posted Tuesday for the Blog Hop and no lunch for Friday since John will be buying his lunch at school (it's Pizza Day), so today we're sharing with you John's Leprechaun Trap that will be set out before he goes to bed Friday tonight! (We decided to set the trap out tonight because the leprechaun will probably be home tomorrow night getting ready for all of the festivities on Saturday. He's far more likely to be out and about tonight!)

He told me that he wanted a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow with a door that the Leprechaun will go in but not be able to get out of. Hrmph. How in the world was I supposed to pull that off?

Off to the Dollar Tree!

plus

plus some gold glitter glue and a gold marker makes

The "Magic Door," of course, only opens for Leprechauns.

Of course.

Some gold coin chocolates, green packing popcorn glued to a piece of cardboard

and a rainbow colored onto cardboard and attached to that gets us:

Daddy had the brilliant idea of setting the trap up on our porch with a "double trap" of our recycling pin propped up with a stick (which I believe came from a horseshoe set):

Looks perfect!

I wish I could show you now what it'll look like after the leprechaun has been by ... but John's still up for a few more hours so check back later tonight or tomorrow if you want to see. I can give you a peek at what's going to be left, though!

And he's also leaving behind his hat (caught on something during his escape?) since I cut this find from Dollar Tree apart:



Post-Bedtime Update:
He came! He came!

Linked To:

Natural Coloring -- I'm in love!

I feel like I need to start out by saying that I wasn't put up to doing this by the company in question. A bunch of us got talking on Facebook about natural food color options and I decided to dig around and see what was out there and stumbled upon chocolatecraftkits.com and ordered their mini assorted pack of water-based natural color powders. I was wary. I was a little terrified. I was a whole lot of excited.

As you probably know, I use color. Sometimes a lot of color. The natural colors are a bit more expensive upfront than the cheapy gels I've been using .... but note the "upfront" part and keep on reading.

Thanks to a fellow blogger letting them know that I had told her about them when she also placed an order, I received 8 jars in the mail instead of 6 since they included 2 jars of "shimmer paint" as a thank you. John and I had to see what they looked like!


Clockwise from left: shimmer, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black

Today John was finally feeling well enough that we had plans to go down to the Museum of Science & Technology here in town. Before we left, though, I decided to work on the top slice for today's lunch to try out the new colors. I had looked but couldn't find any sort of guidelines anywhere for using powdered color (natural or not) for sandwiches so this really was winging it at it's utmost!

The first thing I did was layout the jars (except for the shimmer) and a silicone cup with 1/8 teaspoon of water in it for each one.

Then a teeny dab of color and stirred each up with a toothpick (because you know I can't survive without toothpicks)...

I opted for a rainbow on Italian bread so it could be fast, use all of the colors, and the bread was chosen because I figured the white would show off the colors better.

Used a watercolor brush for the rainbow stripes. Note to Self: Buy more brushes!

Wrote John with a toothpick (with the point snipped off) using the black.

Decided to give the shimmer a try and added a cloud to the rainbow!

John wanted to help paint the "sparkly cloud" and hit the outline a couple of times which is why there's some smudge going on.

My initial reaction? "I'M IN LOVE!" Even though the consistency is a lot different than what I'm used to, a little powder goes a super long ways and the colors really pop. The black came out more a very dark brown but I'm totally okay with that since we've been using brown for about 95% of our outlining anyway.

Popped the slice of bread in a ziploc bag in the fridge and headed off for the museum at about 9:30am. We got home just after 1:30pm and I took the bread out to make lunch. The rainbow was still a little damp (I'll have to work on the water-to-powder ratio), and amazingly the cups still had some color waiting to to be used ... so I took my handy-dandy toothpicks and wrote numbers at the bottom before drying the bread by popping it in the toaster at the lowest setting (a nifty trick I used sometimes with the gel).


1-Blue, 2-Black, 3-Green, 4-Orange, 5-Red, 6-Yellow

And then came lunch. Of course, in an Easy Lunchbox.

John loves knowing that the colors are all made out of plants (as do I). He's always been quite the environmentally conscious little boy and even more so since watching the original cartoon version of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. In fact, when he saw that there was still some color left in the cups after he was done eating he asked if he could have The Lorax for tomorrow's lunch (even though he's already planning on having him next week as well). I told you a little powder goes a long way and it's also why I made the comment about the upfront cost being more. These jars are going to last a lot longer than the gels!

So here's a preview for tomorrow:

Countdown Dilemma Solved!

No more worries about forgetting the countdown or trying to fugue out how to fit them in!

Thanks to some paper, frilly toothpicks, and packing tape I made a pick for each remaining day. If worse comes to worse I can just plop one in his box and voila! Instant countdown!

Hallmark's Jingle All The Way

Several weeks ago in our quest for fun holiday apps for the iPad, John and I came across an offering by Hallmark called Jingle All The Way. John immediately opened the app, read the book, played the games, and fell in love with Jingle.



As soon as the tv version hit the air we DVRed it and have watched it at least half a dozen times since. Hallmark really hit it out of the ballpark with this one!

Of course, it had to be made into a lunch.

I've had quite a few comments about how I get things so detailed and true-to-character. Well, here's how.

I start by finding and printing an image for whatever story/movie/whatever I want to make:



I cut out the most important parts (in this case we're focusing on the faces & the cardinal), and trace the outlines using food gel. I have been using mostly AmeriColor gel but just got some great jars of gel made by LorAnn Oils and used those for the majority of this lunch.



After the image is traced, transfer it on to the bread by flipping it onto the slice and pressing down.

(John almost NEVER has white bread but since Jingle is a white pup I decided to go a little crazy.)

After the transfer, fill in whatever details you want or that may have not transferred completely. For Jingle I used some watered down grey on a paintbrush for his fur detail and the red collar. (Watering down the gel not only stretches it out, but also makes it easier to dry and therefore less likely to get all over your little ones hands/face/everything!)

Since I already had the white bread out for Jingle I decided to also use it for Andrew's face:

I then cut the face part out of the picture and went to the normal whole wheat for his hair.

After detailing Andrew's earmuffs I placed all of the painted bread into the microwave for about 10 seconds on level 3. Heating the bread helps make the gel set and makes it a lot less messy for me.

I cut all of the individual pieces out of the bread and pieced them together on the slice of wheat that would be the bottom of the mini sandwiches.

I then cut each shape out using normal scissors (a lot easier than trying to do it with any kind of knife), cutting Andrew's head as a whole.

It's a Strawberry Cream Cheese sandwich day, so I smeared the bottom slices with the cream cheese and placed the tops, well, on top.

John really wanted me to include the cardinal that helped Jingle, so I grabbed a pack of AirHeads and molded the cardinal out of a cherry one using the picture I printed as a reference. (AirHeads are amazingly handy and versatile on top of being inexpensive! John also loves getting the little bit of candy since he really doesn't get any at home except of very rare occasions.)

Placed all together with some baby carrots that will probably go uneaten (a Mom's got to try, right?), here's the lunch:

(The 23 for the countdown ended up being drawn onto the bell on Jingle's collar -- also made out of a little piece of AirHead.)