The Single, Working-Mom's Answer to Obento

Hi all,

If you in any way follow any of the blogs listed on the right, one of the most well-read ones is the Salsa in China site. The Salsa mom and her husband adopted from China and were blessed with twins. Like many others in the adoption cyber-community, I have been religiously following that blog from well-before they received their referral. Now, the girls are a riot and their mom always has something funny or helpful to say.

Anyway, the Salsa mom is a genious when it comes to getting her kids to eat. She has bought all kinds of helpful gadgets to make their meals literally look like works of art. She apparently buys the stuff mainly from a Japanese store and the stuff is called "Obento". She is truly an artist with food and has impressed all of her loyal readers with her creativity. I suspect we're all scrambling to copy her in some way.

Well, as a single, working-mom, I have neither the time nor energy to screw around making T's meals look like works of art. Hell, poor T is lucky that her meals are half-way edible. I have, though, borrowed some of the Salsa mom's ideas. I noticed that she serves her girls very small portions of a variety of things. So, I pulled out T's trusty old spongebob plate, and decided to copy that idea... sans the artistic bent. Voila! Here you have tonight's dinner...the working mom's answer to Obento! It consists of: 1/2 ham sandwich, rolled up cheese, applesauce, 2 chicken nuggets, and a few low-fat triscuits.

While T rarely eats all of any one thing on the plate, I'm happy to say that she is eating more when the food is served this way, than just one entre. Thank you, Salsa Mom for inspiring us all!