Halloween Popcorn

Have you seen the Kambrook Tricky Treats Popcorn maker in the Big W catalogue? I had all these intentions of creating some cute popcorn Halloween treats to inspire you, but time got away on me.

Daycare is having a Halloween afternoon tea today but I forgot to take photos of the completed dish. You'll just have to imagine these cute little cups with plain air popped popcorn in them :-)


These were free-handed with a permanent marker and will be filled with popcorn at the table.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Jack-o-Lantern Mandarins

These caught my eye on Pinterest last year but I never ended up making them. This year I saw some super tiny mandarins and knew it was a must!

I used regular felt tip nickos for these, and you can see by the section of the lunchbox they fitted in how small they really are!


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Count Duckula

In the heart of Transyl-vania . . .
In the Vampire Hall of Fame, yeah . . .
There's not a vampire zanier than . . .
DUCKULA!

I could hardly believe it when Miss M chose a Count Duckula DVD from the library last week. I remember watching this many (many, many, many) years ago and was a little excited that she might enjoy it too - which she did!






I of course had to make some vampire carrots to go with this spinach tortilla, and I couldn't leave out the broccoli bouquet or the all important 'ketchup'. Count Duckula is filled with ham & cheese - my own little inside joke seeing that he's a vegetarian. That, and it meant I could serve a spread in Miss M's sandwich for the day :-)

What self-respecting vampire could step out without some bats in tow? These little guys are filled with Vegemite and coloured with FooDoodlers. I stole the idea of hanging them upside down from One Crafty Thing and Organized Bites. I quite like their little crust branch too.

These are from the new CuteZCute Animal Palz set which I received last week. I'll get around to posting a review once I've made eggs with them too - can't wait!!

And just in case you want to create your own Vampire Carrots, I had a go at creating a little graphic - what do you think?

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Simple Ghost Sandwich

This was a quick little creation after Miss M told me about the ghost footprints they made at daycare . Top cut with a large circle cutter and the bottom cut with smaller circles. The nori was freehand.

The pick and confetti were from Big W, details of my other tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Quick Snack Box

Today's Flashback Friday is a quick throw together snack for one day we were running errands. Some biscuits in a square silicone muffin liner, a cheese stick and a handful of grapes.

I love this little box, it's a perfect snack size and with the clear lid you can see exactly what you've got, and what's left. I also love that the cute design on top decorates your lunch for you :-) This particular pattern is no longer available, but there are some super cute ones to replace it.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

FooDoodlers Fairy

There's so much fun to be had enjoying the simple things, and quite often I forget what that is. . . until of course Miss M asks for help colouring in. 

This Lunch Punch Fairy was from when Aunty BB was visiting, and this is her beautiful handy work. We simply had to see what each colour in the pack of FooDoodlers looked like ;-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

 With all the visitors coming & going after the arrival of Honey, I thought it wold be appropriate to do a travel lunch for Miss M. . .

Silicon cups from Daiso hold a car egg and bolognese sauce. Loose in the lunch box is some Thomas the Tank Engine pasta.

Our airplane ham & cheese sandwich is cut with a Lunch Punch.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Witches, Bats and a Hop

It's not quite Halloween and for those of you that celebrate, the Bento Bloggers & Friends have teamed up for not one, not two, but three inspirational hops for you! So once you've completed today's circuit, do check out the other great creations. And for those of you that don't celebrate, hop along and check out some of the awesome Autumn/Fall inspired lunches. Simply click on the button at the end of this post to hop over to Amanda at Food Family Fun.

We don't really 'do' Halloween, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun with our food.

Last year I made a 'Squished Witch' lunch which I  quite liked, so thought I'd do something similar. Our witch legs this year are made from cheerios & cucumber. There's tomato sauce in the white container and cucumber stars in the orange 'pumpkin'. I always think of orange & green colour schemes for Halloween so we have some cucumber & carrot circle/stars.

I wasn't sure what to send for our sandwich today, and then Miss M said she saw some flying foxes - 'They're the same as bats, Mummy!' - so bat sandwiches I thought would be cute.

Only problem was that I don't have a bat cutter, so I improvised. The offcuts of the ham & cheese are stuffed into the sandwiches, while the bread off cuts were cut into stars and skewered with the alphabet picks. Mini shape cutters were used for the eyes & mouth with sultanas added for fun. The top layer of bread is spread with Vegemite.

Last year I also made some 'Witch in a Ditch' cupcakes which were a huge hit and I thought were a little funny, so I used that as inspiration for our snack.

Pepperoni from Walkerston Country Meats and cheese cut with mini cutters and skewered with food picks sit on top of rice crackers in a Halloween cupcake liner.

Fruit for today was rockmelon and blueberry 'eyeballs'.

I didn't take a separate photo of the 'Boo-Juice', so here's another of the eyeballs ;-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page. The bat confetti and owl cupcake picks were from Big W.

Now hop on over to Amanda at Food Family Fun for more 'Frightful Fall' inspiration, and keep 'hopping' until you return here.

Once you've completed this circuit, check out the other two hops over at Bento Bloggers & Friends 

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Pumpkin Sandwich - Prelude to a Hop

The Bento Bloggers & Friends are at it again with more blog-hopping for a 'Frightful Fall'. You'll have to come back at 12:30 tonight to see my contribution, but you can see two other hops right now by clicking on the badge below.

I'm a little disappointed I didn't notice this was out of focus until it was too late (i.e., after it was eaten).

'Pumpkin' sandwich cut with a cookie cutter and nori face. There was quite a bit if bread off cut from this one and Miss M has been a bit hungry lately so I used a mini star cutter to get the most out of it.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page. Pumpkin confetti and finger puppet from Big W.

Don't forget to come back tonight (or tomorrow) for my hop contribution. In the meantime, head over to Bento Bloggers & Friends for some Frightful Fall inspiration.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Loving Guests - Eats Amazing

Hi, I’m Grace from Eats Amazing, and I’m delighted to be here as a guest poster on the Loving Lunches Blog for Jackie today! Jackie wrote me a lovely guest post when I had my own baby earlier this year, so I thought it was about time I returned the favour! When I was thinking about writing this post, I couldn’t decide which lunch to write about, so rather than pick one, I decided to share a few of my favourite lunches to date.

This was one of my early bento attempts and was the first lunch I made that I was really pleased with! In this lunch: Homemade carrot houmous, raw red and yellow pepper sticks, cucumber sticks, raw carrot sticks, bread-sticks, butterfly shaped homemade tortilla crisps and some cheese butterflies. I decorated the houmous with a little bird and birdy footprints cut from cheese, and separated the ‘wet’ foods from the dry with some little silicone dividers.

 
 This lunch was a bit of a happy accident. I stuck on the ‘eyes’, intending to add other facial features to the bagel too, but the face I saw once the eyes were on was so funny that I decided to keep it as it was! In this lunch: A plain bagel, split and filled with chicken, decorated with cheese eyes (dotted with an edible marker pen) and lettuce hair. On the side were smiley face cucumber slices (my attempt to balance out the scared looking bagel!), carrot flowers and some blueberries. I also added a couple of cute little picks to decorate.

 
 This is my very favourite lunch. I made it as a part of a series of lunches based on books for World Book Day which we celebrated earlier this year. I was so pleased with how it came out! In this lunch: An assortment of edible patchwork pieces cut using the Funbites ‘Cube It’ cutter (raw carrot, yellow pepper, cucumber & ham), arranged neatly in square silicone muffin cases. On top were some elephant shaped homemade tortilla crisps, cut out using a large elephant shaped cookie cutter. On the side were a pot of houmous decorated with an elephant sticker on the lid, mini organix cheese crackers and a Babybel cheese with ‘E’ for Elmer/Elephant cut from the wax to decorate.

 Thanks so much Jackie for having me here today, I’ve enjoyed the little trip down memory lane to find my favourite lunches. Here’s to many more fun and creative lunches from the both of us in the future!


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page. ~J
Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches and Eats Amazing. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Zucchini Slice Revisited

I first posted this recipe last year, and if you haven't noticed we use it quite a bit. Being that this it tried & true, and I'm trying to uniform my own recipe index, I thought I'd do an update. That, and this week I'll be skipping Flashback Friday in favour of participating in a blog hop with the Bento Bloggers & Friends - yay!






I did say I would get around to posting a photo with the tomato on top, so here you go. This is before baking. . .











And this is after. . .

As you can see I don't mind a little charcoal in my cooking :-)














Slice & serve

Apologies for the awful lighting, but you can also cut with a shape, like this flower cookie cutter.

Or with a Cube-It & skewer away.

You can serve as is, or with some extra protein. Miss M (and I) both like this served with sausages. There weren't enough in the leftovers, so she got cheerios.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.


~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Lunch Punch Flower

Today's simple flashback Friday is the first time I used the flower shape from the Sand*Wishes Lunch Punch set.

I still love that these cutters make very good use of the bread with little waste and with no more embellishments, you can serve up a 'something special' lunch.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Daiso Goodies

I've heard many wonderful things about Daiso and their vast array of bento goodies. They arrived in Australia last year & this year they made it to Queensland! Luckily I have a sister who is willing to Skype me while checking out the range & is happy to throw together a shopping basket full of treats before coming to visit. And with everything in store being $2.80, it's so easy to figure out how many cuddles we owe ;-P

Lunchbox with moveable divider. This one is quit deep and I haven't gotten around to using it yet, but I can see it being very useful for packing lunches for myself. It holds about 500mL. According to the packet it is freezer (to -20C) & microwave (without lid) safe. No go for the oven, and there's another symbol which I'm assuming is a dishwasher, which is also out of bounds.

Detail Carving Knife. I used this for the first time while making Professor Inkling for International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I was quite happy with it.

Silicon transport moulds. I've only used these as snack dividers so far, and really can't complain. They're a very fine silicon, so I'm not sure about baking with them. The packet says they can handle microwave, hot water, oven & dishwasher. (NB the vast majority of the packet/s are written in Japanese, but generally have pretty self explanatory images.)

More silicon moulds like above, just different shapes.

Bunny & Bear silicon moulds.  (You get either the 2 bunnies, or the 2 bears in a pack) These are thicker than the little guys above and you can get an idea of size from Captain Barnacles in my International Talk Like a Pirate Day lunch. I got a little excited & ripped the packaging for these before really reading it. It seems they're good for the oven, microwave & freezer (-40C-230C), but I'm afraid I can't shed any more light on the official details.

Pretty picks, and for $2.80 per pack, guess which ones are now being sent to daycare?

More pretty picks

Cute animal picks

More cute animal picks

Transport picks

Nori stamp cutter. Again the fist time I'd used this was for my International Talk Like a Pirate Day lunch. Check out Peso's eyes :-)
I've never really done much with nori apart from wrap sushi in it, and even that I haven't done very well. This was easy enough to use & seemed to cut fine. For the small amount of nori I would/will be using I think it will be fine. It's making me think about my regular craft stamps, if only I could remember where we stored them in the move. . .
If you do/intend to do a bit of nori work, check out this fantastic review at Bento, Monsters.

Large silicon bands. I've used some smaller ones for wrapping burgers for Miss M and thought these might fit better. I haven't had the opportunity to try yet, and I realise they are designed more for keeping your lunchbox together than your food :-) According to the packet they  can withstand temperatures from -20C up to 220C, so good for freezer & microwave.

Sadly we've already lost one of these. I sent the elephant to daycare with some sandwich balls in it. Miss M thought she was doing the right thing by throwing the plastic in the bin *sigh*. These have been moved the 'park only' stash now.
I'm a little confused about whether or not you can use these in the microwave (not that I currently have any intentions to). The packet states it has a max temp limit of 80C, but also says 'Please do not use it with the direct fire, the oven, the oven toaster, and the microwave oven.' I'd say play it safe & use it for cold/room temperature things only.

Now to start on the shopping list for my sister's next visit. . .hmmmmm. . . . ;-D


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.