Octonauts Bento Lunch

Today I'm sharing a fun Octonuts bento lunch that I made for Small Child recently.  This came about because last week I had a lovely comment here on the blog from a lady who said that she'd been inspired by Eats Amazing to make some fun Octonauts 'fish biscuits' for her son, who is a big fan of the TV show.  She later emailed me to say that he ate the lot - which was particularly great news as he has some health issues that affect his appetite.  That lovely story alone was enough to make up for every little nasty comment that I saw on the Daily Mail article that I mentioned in my last blog post.  I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear that I have provided a little inspiration - that is the main purpose of this blog really!

I want to show how easy it can be to make healthy food fun - not to disguise it, as was suggested to me recently, but to showcase it!  I do believe that healthy foods such as vegetables and fruit don't need disguising, but instead by presenting them in a new way they can become more exciting and attractive to children (and adults!).  If you think about it, all the companies selling snacks aimed at children, which are so often packed full of sugar and/or salt, among other nasties, and can be very unhealthy, do everything they can to make their products more appealing to children, so why shouldn't we do the same with the healthy things that we really want them to eat?

I was inspired by the story above to create my own version of the fish biscuits for Small Child, who is also a big fan of the Octonauts, by cutting raw carrot into fish shapes with a  mini bento cutter.  Just as I'd hoped, there wasn't a single one left when I picked him up from school! So today I'm sharing my Octonauts lunch, inspired by the lovely Helen, to whom I'd like to send a big thank you for sharing her story with me!

In this lunch Small Child had a large wholemeal pitta bread, toasted and cut in half, then split and filled with organic houmous, ham and lettuce.  On the side he had a couple of slices of cucumber (under the carrot), some mini 'Octonauts fish biscuits' cut from raw organic carrot, and a mandarin orange octopus.  I decorated the vegetables with a couple of sea creatures from the Ocean Friends bento pick set.

Here's a close up of the pitta breads.  I'm no artist, but I googled a couple of Octonauts characters and did my best to copy them onto the pitta bread's with a couple of edible marker pens in red and black.  They came out a little wonky, but Small Child recognised them as Tweak and Peso, so I was happy with my efforts!

Here's the mandarin orange octopus.  It was really easy to make! I simply used a sharp knife to cut the 'legs' from the underside of the fruit peel, then gently peeled them away.  I added the face with a biro pen - the peel gets discarded so there is no need to use an edible marker pen for this.

 Finally I filled one of our reusable food pouches with organic natural yoghurt and added it to the lunch bag (not shown).  Small Child was absolutely delighted with his Ocotnauts lunch, I don't know why I didn't think of making one for him sooner!

Do you have any other suggestions for themes or ideas I could use in future lunches? Do leave a comment if you do - I'm always looking for new ideas!

Grace

Items used to make this lunch:

       

Disclaimer: This post contains some Amazon affiliate links; I may receive commission on items purchased through the links.