A Fishy Lunch

Feeling a little low on inspiration when making lunch recently, I decided to take my cue from one of the lunch ingredients - tuna - and give the whole lunch a fishy theme.

In this lunch Small Child had a wholemeal toasted pitta bread, cut in half and stuffed with tuna mayo.  I painted on a whale and a couple of fish with a little food colouring, and added some cucumber that had been cut to look vaguely like seaweed.  On the side he had some raw carrot fish and a Babybel cheese with a fish cut from the wax to decorate.

For his after school snack I packed a piece of banana chocolate cake (made using this gorgeous recipe from BBC Good Food - I replaced the milk with rice milk and used dark chocolate chips so that my dairy-free husband could eat it too), decorated with a little fish made from sprinkled icing sugar.  He also had some red grapes and blueberries, arranged in and around a cookie cutter in an attempt to look like a starfish.

Everything got eaten, so it looks like sending smaller lunches with a snack for after school is working out much better than sending a large lunch.  I was concerned that an after school snack would ruin Small Child's appetite for his dinner, as in the past he wouldn't eat much after having a snack, but he's still eating well at our family meal times, so he must be burning up lots of energy at school!

Grace