Jacket Potato Boats

One of the lunches that I made for yesterday's menu plan post looked rather boring when I first put it together, so I thought I'd make it a lot more fun for Small Child by giving it a boat theme.  It was the first time I'd sent  a jacket potato in his lunch box, and I wasn't sure how they'd go down with him (I love them cold myself, but they do taste slightly different to the hot version) so I thought the distraction of a fun theme might help him enjoy them more.

In this lunch Small Child had a jacket potato, split and topped with cheese.  I baked the potato along with our dinner the night before, then popped it back in the oven once I'd put the cheese so that it would melt nicely.  I then cooled it down and popped it in the fridge overnight ready to be packed for lunch the next morning. On the side he had some rolled ham, skewered on picks, some lettuce, a whole orange mini pepper and a banana.

You can see in the picture below how I transformed this simple lunch into something a little bit more special.  I started by using food picks to add ham 'sails' to the jacket potato halves, to turn them into boats. I shredded the lettuce, transforming it into a lettuce sea for the boats to sail on.  I skewered the ham rolls on boat picks from the transport pick set, and sliced the mini pepper into rings, placing it into a bright star shaped silicone cup.  The banana looked a bit plain, so I stamped fishes into the skin using a mini bento cutter, adding eyes to them with the tip of a food pick.

Here's a close up of the potato boats, as you can see the 'sails' stuck up out of the lunchbox, so before I put the lid on I took them off and put them back on at an angle, so that they were flatter.  I was pleased to see that they still looked like boats after they had been adjusted!  Small Child was very interested in this lunch as I was making it, so I showed him how he could put the sails back in a more upright position before eating them if he liked.

He absolutely loved his boat lunch, and finished it all off, with the exception of most of the lettuce (it was worth a try!).

Grace