Flatbread Butterfly Lunch

Small Child really loves his 'crackers', a term which for him covers many varieties of savoury biscuits as well as oatcakes and flatbreads etc. He'd happily eat them dry, with maybe a scrape of butter, and the beauty of bento style lunches is that I can indulge him in that whilst adding all sorts of healthy bits and pieces to make a balanced lunch. The flatbreads I used in this lunch came from IKEA, as we made a recent trip to our local branch to buy some more storage in an attempt to tame Small Child's Playmobil collection, which had rather taken over the house since Christmas. As is usual with any trip to IKEA, we came out with a massive bag of stuff that we had no idea we needed until we were there, including 2 varieties of flatbreads and some lovely organic moose shaped pasta!

In this lunch Small Child had a pile of flatbreads, topped with a butterfly made from German sausage slices and part of a cheese stick (the face was drawn on with edible pens). On the side he had raw organic carrot sticks, cut with a crinkle cutter, a couple of pieces of broccoli, turned into a tree with the help of some fun food picks, a sliced plum, in a butterfly shaped silicone cup, some red grapes, and some organic strawberry yoghurt decorated with a few butterfly sprinkles.

Here's a close up of the broccoli tree. I skewered a couple of small pieces of broccoli onto a tree trunk pick from the clinging animal pick set to make the tree, and added a super cute little bee from the ladybird and bee pick set to decorate. I then rested the 'tree' on top of the carrot sticks and other half of the cheese stick to make a little scene.

Small Child said that he wasn't too keen on the broccoli, but he ate it anyway because the tree was so cool! I did give him raw broccoli on this occasion, as he has been known to enjoy it raw, but I'd probably steam it lightly before adding it to his lunch next time. He ate most of this lunch at lunchtime, finishing off the last few bits on the way home from school as a quick snack.