Mini Corn Dog Mice Bento Box

My daughters and I decided to start the 2010 school year with a challenge to break our plastic habit. The plan is to completely eliminate plastic and disposables from our daily routine and pack a waste-free, green lunch, everyday. Lunch without plastic isn't going to be easy, but it's an important step towards our goal to reduce our impact on the environment by choosing eco-friendly reusables whenever possible. What's healthy for the planet is healthy for our kids too! I don't think we'll miss the addition of dangerous chemicals like BPA and phthalates from plastics leeching into our meals.

In preparation, we're putting some of the top-rated stainless steel lunch containers to the test this summer, so we'll be ready to roll when school starts.

Today I'm using our new LunchBots Duo stainless steel container for the very first time. The shape and depth of the Duo (orange lid) is perfect for making small, kid-sized bento box lunches. The attached divider is awesome and does a great job of keeping the foods separated until it's time to eat. The lid fits nice and snug, but is surprisingly easy to open. There are no plastic parts whatsoever on this container. It's very durable and the fact that it's dishwasher safe scores bonus points from me. I think LunchBots will be the perfect addition to our new collection of eco-friendly lunch supplies.

What's in the box? Today's bento is overloaded with fresh fruit at my daughter's request and because our grocery shopping trip got cut short yesterday, so we missed the second stop. I forgot the cooler and ice packs that I usually bring along in the summer months to keep things from melting before we make it home, so I never made it to the market where I buy our organic produce. We'll eat extra veggies tomorrow!

The little mice are made of VeggiePatch miniature vegetarian corn dogs with sliced almonds for ears. I used the small end of  a #10 decorating tip to cut the eyes out of black olives, but a drinking straw would also do the trick to punch little circle shapes. The noses are tiny ovals cut from cheese and glued on with mayonnaise. Their whiskers are broken bits of soba (buckwheat) noodles and the tails are linguine noodles leftover from last night's dinner. The little cheese wedge, a cute idea I borrowed from bento zen, is cheddar with a layer of mock Swiss (provolone) on top. 

The small round stainless steel container with yogurt covered pretzels is a To-Go Ware Sidekick that came in a lovely tiffin set, but it's so handy that I use it all the time for extra snacks, dips, and dressings.