1/15/2010- Pizza for Friday Bento

When I was a kid, the elementary and middle schools I attended would always have pizza on Fridays in the cafeteria. I always had a packed lunch. I didn't have a bento, but it was an attractive, tasty, and healthful assortment of foods. My little mama packed my lunch for a lot of my youth and then helped me to continue to pack a great lunch as I got to be an adolescent (Thanks, little mama!). But sometimes in middle school, the peer pressure was too much and on Fridays I would forgo eating my lunch and buy the crappy school pizza. Man, was it terrible. But it was pizza, so how could a 12-year-old say no?

In that tradition, a pizza-for-Friday bento!

Contents of Bento: Steamed broccoli with olive garnish, balsamic vinegar in elephant bottle. Banana bread man, frozen sour cherries. Two mini pizzas with 2 wing-a-lings behind flanking 4 cut out stars of bread and 1 of Parmesan cheese. Side car of sauce, with olive and broccoli garnish. Not pictured: side car of tortellini (just a few).

So, the banana bread man was an experiment. I should have cut out a more recognizable shape from the banana bread (he looks a little indistinct) but it was the only cutter I had available that fit the strip of banana bread I had cut. I suppose I could have cut out a banana bread pepper or something, but that seemed even sillier than a banana bread man.

(Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the banana bread man! But actually, a man made of banana bread would have squishy little legs and wouldn't be able to run very fast at all. That was the case here. He was deeeelicious.)

I ate my lunch with my new tiny chopsticks. Hurray! They fit inside the leaflet tight box, too, which is also super awesome. I didn't really use the fancy orange pick I packed, since the chopsticks were so perfect. Also, the pick was inadequate for eating the tiny broccoli. I really cut it down to doll-house size, almost.

Also, this lunch was packed on Wednesday night and stored in the fridge until Friday morning. I have to report that everything fared pretty well, all things considered. The pizzas were a little soft, but I stuck them in the toaster oven to rewarm. The wing-a-lings had also started to separate from their breading, but that wasn't a big deal. Interestingly enough, the texture on the banana bread man was perfect and the bread stars were also fine. Wednesday night was when I had time to make pretty lunches, though I suppose it's a little against bento-principles to make a bento lunch a few days ahead. Well, too bad. That's probably how my bentos are going to have to go this spring. :D