Thinking Outside the (Bento) Box

I often get stuck in a lunch rut of serving the same foods the same way each day, so I went looking for some different lunch ideas a couple of weeks ago. I found some very cute Bento box lunch ideas. Some moms out there are super creative with lunch and serve sandwiches shaped like trees alongside ladybug tomatoes and flower shaped slices of cheese. I was wishing I was that kind of mom- the kind that could put together fun lunches.


We don't own any Bento boxes so I kept looking for other ideas. I found cute lunches served in muffin tins. Again, the themes were present: the lunches were all cut into shapes, or were the meal a character ate in a book or were "rainbow" lunches: red peppers in one tin (with hummus dip, of course, because not only are they creative, these moms also serve extremely healthy lunches), yellow pineapple in another, orange cheese in another, green kiwi, blueberries, and purple grapes. 

But I only have one muffin pan and three kids to serve, so that wouldn't work. So last night, Jason was gone and I was on supper duty (usually I do lunch and he does supper - yes, I'm lucky). I looked around the kitchen for some way to serve supper in unique containers. The most unique item in the kitchen are the boot shaped mugs that the kids brought home as souvenirs from the Dixie Stampede. I grabbed those for their drinks and decided to serve the rest of the meal in coffee mugs.

The kids thought it was awesome when I invited them to the "Coffee Cup Cafe" (Coffee Mug Cafe just didn't sound as good). I didn't change the planned menu - I just served everything in coffee cups. We had hot dogs (nitrate free, all beef), along with macaroni and cheese, steamed carrots (which the kids normally hate) and peaches. Before I could take pictures, one of the kids had already eaten all of the carrots. Ahh, the power of serving food in a coffee cup! As a special twist, I added a drop of food coloring to their water.

The empty cup is where the carrots were!

In case you were wondering how to serve a hot dog in a coffee cup...

Goal achieved: happy kids!

Proof that even us non-creative mommies can still come up with ideas for a fun meal! Are you a creative mom or do you get stuck in a lunch/supper rut like I do? If you're the creative type, I'd love for you to share some of your meal ideas in a comment!