Teddy Bear Celery Cuts

Today I washed and cut up all of my produce for the upcoming week, and stumbled upon something really cute. If you cut celery just right, you can make adorable bear shapes! These will make a great decoration for my bento lunches, and any other cute food dress up. These bears are really easy to make, but you can only make a few of them because you have to cut them out of the branch part near the top of each celery rib. If you pick a celery stalk with several ribs, you can make more bear cutouts than if you use a sparse celery stalk. Here's how to cut them out:

Place knife about 1/8" above the indented part of the celery and cut.

It should look like this. Or close to it.

Cut on the indentation.

Teddy bears!

Grilled Cheese Bento

Right now I am trying to transition my way of cooking and eating to include more organic and local goods as possible. Organic goodies tend to be more expensive, so I have decided to take some time to make the permanent shift. I am a frugal person, so I cannot just waste what I have in my pantry and freezer. The good news is that I have very little processed goods so far. Meals in boxes and freezer bags are not in my house any more. So while my diet and my choices are far from perfect, I am taking some time and making it my goal to get there by January. Wait, not that I think that I can be perfect, but that I think I can give my best effort to be more conscious about where my food comes from and how it is produced.

I give myself kudos for baking my own bread when our last loaf went bad (in Germany the mold grows very fast!). My bread always seems to be smaller than what I get at the store, so it works perfectly for my bento boxes. After I slice my bread, I butter one side of a couple of pieces of bread, slip in a half slice of havarti cheese, and heat it up in my skillet on medium heat. I lightly brown each side, and get it ready to serve my daughter. Since she rarely eats a whole sandwich, I cut it in half, and give her one for dinner, and wrap the other one for her bento box. For my own bento, I cut my sandwich in half and stack the halves on top of each other, keeping the curves together. I wrap my two halves and my daughter's one half in cellophane, then add them to the boxes. My heart-shaped silicone cups hold some cut-up tomatoes, and I cut a plum in half, using cute blue elephant picks to decorate each half. Since the sandwich remains loose, I wedge in a few slices of cucumbers to secure it. My daughter loves hearts, so I add a paper heart with some tape. Cute stuff!

Chicken Quesadilla Bento Lunch




Today I needed to cook up some chicken that was in the fridge, so with the request from my daughter to have tortilla's for lunch, I decided to make some quesadillas. They were super easy to make, so I figured it would be wonderful to have saved myself the trouble of making lunch tomorrow if I made bento box lunches with the leftovers. Since bentos are so small, I decided to play with the shape a little. I sandwiched my cooked chicken (sauteed in olive oil and sprinkled with seasoning salt) and cheddar cheese between two wheat tortillas and carefully placed it into my skillet.

On medium heat, I lightly browned both sides. I pressed them flat before I flipped them because I wanted to make sure the cheese acted as a sort of glue for keeping it together.

Once they were done, I cut out four circles with a biscuit cutter and sat the circles aside for the bentos. My daughter devoured the rest of the pieces.

The bottom tortilla was a bit harder to cut through than the top.

I placed the circles into each bento box and added a container of salsa. These containers were actually easter eggs with neat patterns along the sides. They were food safe and closed decently, keeping the salsa properly contained.

These eggs had enough space for the right amount of salsa.

Next, I added some containers of sour cream. These don't have tops, so I used dividers to top them.

The sour cream on the top edges helps the divider sheets stick on.

I finished the boxes with some sliced cucumbers. Both bento boxes turned out beautifully!

I think my daughter can have the elephant one.

This cute bear one will be mine tomorrow!

Market Day

I love living in Germany, and some of the great perks of living in the Eifel are the farms and open spaces. I remember when I learned we were moving here. I was under the impression that everything in Europe is smaller, especially houses and apartments. However, when we got here, we found these amazing towns clustered together in beautiful little communities, and the houses are much larger than I ever dreamed they would be. They may not have closets built into the rooms, but they make up for the lack of space in storage spaces and bedrooms (ours has five bedrooms). The people in Germany are very outdoorsy, so you can spot them in the fields walking with long walking sticks (which reminds me of the travelling Uncle from Fraggle Rock) or just walking with their dogs. Several homes have stunning gardens and many people grow their own fruits and vegetables. I love driving through the towns in spring, when the flower boxes on the houses bring an explosion of color that instantly makes you feel happy and welcomed.

The people here are very friendly, and even though my Deutsch is not by any means perfect, I find that when I try to speak German, they are put at ease, and usually can speak better English than I can speak German. In most cases, people are terrified that their language skills are worse than they really are, so when they see me struggle, it lets them know that I feel exactly the same way about my own skills.

I recently went to a market in Wittlich. I've been really wanting to eat more local fruits and vegetables, so this was the perfect opportunity to find some! Even though there weren't many vendors, we found everything we needed, and I even saw some new foods that I'd never seen or heard of (purple carrots!). I saw some amazing carrots with the green leafy part still attached, so I instantly snagged those. Aren't they gorgeous?

I was amazed at the quality of the foods offered, and even more at the prices. I got a bunch of carrots, a bag of celery, four apples, five lemons, a bundle of cherry tomatoes that smell amazing, and an english cucumber all for eight euros and some change. The bag was pretty heavy when I finished shopping. Since my family eats a ton of veggies and fruit each week, this really makes me happy.

The kind lady who was selling at this stand gave my daughter a free banana. She was really great. Since this was my first experience going to the market, I felt a tad bit awkward with what I needed to do, so I asked if I could use the bag I brought to corral my items while I shopped. She was pretty helpful, and assisted me in getting my goodies into the bag. The market had fruits and veggies, organic fruits and veggies, eggs, baked goods, fresh meat cuts, deli meats, and olives/spices/jars of oil with foods inside. While we waited for our friend to get her donut holes, the lady even gave one to my daughter for free!