The Lunch Box Club-Charabens for Picky Eaters

It's common knowledge that cliques and schools go hand and hand, like peanut butter and jelly. What may not be so common knowledge (or at least it wasn't knowledge I was privvy to) is how early those cliques start. My daughter Rini started first grade this year. Her friends from last year all ended up with the same teacher. Luck was shining down on us.

My daughter is a very picky eater. We started a new rule this year because of it. She has to have one school lunch every week. Which basically means she starves one day every week until she comes home. Which is rediculous because she knows whats for lunch everyday and gets to pick the day she wants to eat school lunch. For the other days we do boxed lunches which usually consist of lunchables or pb&js as the main course.

One day Rini came home saying that all her friends were now taking lunch boxes. " It's like a club. We're now the Lunch Box Club." she announced.
A few days later we came across a few images of charabens. "Oh! I want one of those! Please please please mommy..." *Giant doe eyes* It's the doe eyes that do me in every time.

For those of you unfamiliar with charabens they are character lunch boxes usually created in the image of japanese cartoons. You can search character bento or charaben on google and see some amazing examples.

After doing that myself I thought, I can totally pull this off. So I started looking at the ingrediants used in the bentos. Broccoli, fish, meat, cucumbers, eggs, scallions, okra....there is no way my picky eater was going to eat that. How was I going to make a charaben out of the little amount of stuff she does eat? After considering this for a few days, here is what I came up with.



Aurora sits on a background of white rice. Her body and skirt is made from bologna and pepperoni. The bodice is olives as is her headband,and facial features.The shirt is bread as is the white of her eye. Her hair is the finest American cheese...kraft singles. lol. And the wall is toasted bread crust.










This little mermaid sits on a bed of speghetti noodles. Her hair is speghetti sauce. Her tail is made from green beans and olives as well as her hair decoration. She herself is made from bologna. And I added shredded cheese simply cause she likes it. ^-^