0 Bento #231 - Bruschetta Chicken Bowties

Dinner for lunch!  Fresh tomato basil bruschetta with a splash of vodka makes the sauce, seared organic chicken thighs and tossed with whole wheat farfalle pasta and Parm.  REALLY good, and easy.  I'm using my two-tier Greentainer, which holds a ton!

Side salad of artisan lettuce and dressing.

...with a LOT of focaccia croutons (I emptied the bag, and it was more than I had expected!) Craisins round it out.  It's craisins again because I keep forgetting to get different dried fruit for those times when I'm out of fresh...like NOW.  That's going on my shopping list as I type.

No snack because they are doing a special one at lunch today.

0 Bento #226 - Gyoza & Tomatoes

This one's been hanging out in my bento folder for a few weeks now.  We've been on vacation from school and work, and enjoying our time off and relaxing!  Hope everyone else has been enjoying their time too.  My husband and I spend our 10th wedding anniversary at the Brasstown Valley Resort & Spa in the North Georgia mountains for a few days.  We went horseback riding, had spa treatments, a wine tasting at a local vineyard and more.  We even had our very own fireplace in our suite.  Heaven!

For this Planetbox bento, we have E's favourite chicken gyoza here, cut in half.

E has been bugging me about fresh tomatoes for the last few weeks.  She loves Romas!

Accompanying the tomatoes and gyoza are little cute bottles of ponzu sauce and ranch dressing.

All loaded up in her Planetbox!

Bento #226 - Chicken gyoza, ponzu sauce, celery sticks, ranch dip, roma tomatoes and multi vitamins.  Snack - Focaccia croutons and dried cranberries.

5 Carrot Cranberry Bread

I happened to have class snack today, this last half-day of school before a whole two weeks vacation; vacation for whom, I'm not quite certain!  I made the kids this low-sugar organic carrot bread, in muffin form.  I didn't tell Ella that the secret ingredient was pureed carrot, because I didn't want her to say anything in class and dissuade anyone from trying it.  Good news is that every child, except one, (who is fundamentally opposed to muffins on principle) gobbled these down.  At least according to E, who is generally a reliable raconteur.  Until she's about 8, anyway.

I used the Spice Carrot Muffins recipe from Mommy's Kitchen blog, and followed it to the letter except for three changes (as I really try to do when baking things...otherwise things tend to go awry....)  The first change was insignificant, I changed the raisins to dried cranberries.  The second change was to halve the sugar.  The last change I made was entirely unintentional and was borne of my inattention.  I accidentally lost count when I was scooping the flour, and I believe I used 1/2 cup more than was called for.  Whoops!  But, they came out really nicely anyway, the texture was great, not too dry, but if you want to make my mistake, I'd recommend adding a little more spice.  I doubled the recipe and it made 24 muffins plus an 8x8 square baking dish.  The recipe below are the measurements exactly how they should be (including the full amount of sugar) for 12 regular-sized muffins.

You'll need:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2  cup brown sugar

3/4  cup plain yogurt 

4  tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 

1/2  teaspoon vanilla extract 

1  large egg 

1/4  cup milk 

3/4 cup pureed carrots
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2  teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2  teaspoon salt
2  teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2  cup raisins or dried cranberries, optional

Preheat oven to 375, and spray a muffin tin or line with paper cups.

In a large mixing bowl combine sugars, yogurt, butter, vanilla, egg, milk and carrot and mix well.  In another bowl mix together all remaining dry ingredients except raisins/craisins, if using.  Pour wet batter into the dry and mix until just combined, then add the fruit and gently fold in.

Scoop batter into cups and fill 3/4 of the way full.  Bake muffins for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  The 8x8 dish took 35 minutes.

And, voila!  I added used Hello Kitty cups and little jungle animal cupcake toppers to make them extra-fun for their last day of school.

I topped the square loaf with a little powdered sugar.

If I can get 16 unsuspecting kids to eat some carrots this way, so can  you!