Kids Dish

I posted a bit about bento meals months ago, when I wrote about Vegan Lunchbox. I love everything that the mom at Vegan Lunchbox does, only I’m not vegan. I love eating vegetarian meals and I definitely don’t eat meat every day, but I have no interest whatsoever in cutting all animal products from my and Sam’s diet. Then I found something in between.

I seriously just spent more than an hour staring in awe at the Kid Eats group pool on Flickr. Holy Popsicle sticks, Batman, most of those lunches are unreal. What I like about the meals pictured in the Flickr pool is that there’s a total variety. Some moms are vegan and others are vegetarian, but there are just as many moms who pack their kids bologna sandwiches. You’ll see meals where everything’s homemade and healthy and meals that are almost entirely prepackaged. Some of the moms who seem to pack mostly prepackaged stuff use mostly organic, sugar-free, low-sodium snacks. Others pack all cheese-its and m&ms.

What the meals in the pool have in common is that all of the mothers have put some effort into making their kids lunches into something special that their kids will actually eat.

Here are a couple of Halloween-themed meals.

The first is a creepy Halloween lunch with ramen noodle guts, hot dog worms, ketchup blood, sweet potato and maple jack-o-lanterns with some candy on the side. The original photo page can be found here. This mom’s other lunches are awesome.

This preschoolers lunch looks like a great time to eat. It has mini carrots, apples with almond sliver teeth, Shrek cheese-its, jello jigglers with Halloween sprinkles, Halloween candy, fruity cheerios, witches brooms made from pretzel sticks and fringed fruit roll-ups, and peanut butter and fluff sandwiches on wheat cut into pumpkins. The original photo page is here. Again, the mom makes awesome lunches.

I’m sure I won’t say this in a couple of years when I have to, but right now I’m really looking forward to making Sam’s lunches. Since I already make Bob’s lunch every day I may have to invest in a couple of bento boxes now.