Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bento Box Lunch

This post is sponsored by Target. More Turtles, More Bold and Daring Fun: Blur the lines of fantasy and reality with your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Target.

If I were to pick the over-arching theme of my nine-year-old’s summer it would have to be comics. He wakes up early in the morning to read comics in the quiet house before the rest of the family gets up. He pulls something out of his dad’s enormous comic book collection every day. He checks out big, fat comic compendiums when we visit the library and he sketches his own stick figure comic strips in a notebook he keeps under his bed. He loves both reading and drawing and comic books are a perfect mash up of the two.

One of his favorite activities is riding his scooter to the comic book store a few blocks from our house and spending some time browsing. He always comes back from these excursions excited to tell me about the cool things he’s spotted. Sometimes it’s a new installment of a super hero comic book, other times it’s a new issue from Disney or the Simpsons. I do my best to keep up my end of these conversations but I’m not always as well-versed in the comic-of-the-day as he would like.

Recently he came home with news of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. “Mom, did you know there are Ninja Turtle comics? It’s not just a movie.” Yes! I did know that! Finally I could hold my own. “Actually, the Ninja Turtles started as a comic,” I told him. “All the other stuff came later.” He was suitably impressed by this bit of knowledge so I regaled him with all the TMNT trivia I picked up babysitting my younger cousin in the 80’s and scored some cool mom points in the process.

Was I going to let my comic book cred die out after one conversation? Oh no, I wasn’t! I wanted to milk it for all it was worth! The next morning I grabbed a few groceries for a special lunch during a trip to Target and since there was Ninja Turtles stuff everywhere, I may have picked up a few other TMNT treats while I was there too.

When we got home, Wyatt helped me brainstorm ideas for a Ninja Turtles lunch and we made it together. (OK, OK! I’ll admit that I did most of the work. He got bored after brainstorming and started to read his comic.)

Supplies for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bento Box Lunch

Ingredients

• 2 slices of sandwich bread
• 1 slice of cheddar cheese
• sliced deli meat such as ham or turkey (optional)
• mayonnaise or any other desired condiments
• honeydew melon
• cantaloupe
• pizza flavored crackers
• cucumber
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fruit snacks

Equipment

• Divided bento box that’s big enough to hold a sandwich and a few sides
• large round cookie cutter (you can also use a large cup or a small bowl)
• paring knife and/or kitchen shears
• large drinking straw (the kind you use for smoothies or milkshakes
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thank you card
• 1 inch circle punch
• Spritz 1 inch circle food pick (or a toothpick)
• double-sided tape
• melon baller or metal measuring spoons
• small alphabet cookie cutters
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch bag
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Thermos

How to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bento Box Lunch

Begin by cutting two large circles from two slices of sandwich bread. You can use a large cookie cutter for this, or you can use a big drinking glass or bowl — anything that’s about the same size as your bread. I used a stainless steel food storage container. Next trim a little bit of bread from the edges of the circles so the bread is a bit pointy at the top and thus more turtle-shaped. I stacked the two slices on top of each other before trimming so the shapes would match up.

Next, cut a mask and a smile shape from the cheese. I like to lay the cheese on top of the bread and score the basic shape I’m going for with the tip of a knife to get an idea of how it should look. You can get fancy and cut an extra bow shape on the end of the mask if you like, or if you want to keep it simple, just cut a strip that’s about an inch wide and trim it to fit on your bread. I used a large drinking straw to cut round eye holes in the mask but you can do those with the tip of your knife too.

Next I made custom TMNT food picks. I found some cool picks with large circles on the end at Target that were just begging to be customized. I used a 1 inch circle punch to cut the Ninja Turtle faces from a thank you card (also found in the party aisle at Target), then I affixed them to each side of a couple picks with double-sided tape. You’ll see how I use the picks down below.

Use a melon baller to scoop pieces out of a honeydew melon and place them in one of the side dish areas of the bento box. I don’t have a melon baller, so I used a set of metal measuring spoons to do my scooping. This is a great job for a kid. Wyatt and I thought the melon balls looked kind of like turtle shells. Do you see it?

Next, cut a slice of cantaloupe about a half inch thick. Use small alphabet cutters to cut “TMNT” from the melon slice. If the melon gets stuck in the cutters, ease it out by gently pressing on the edges of the letters with the blunt end of a toothpick.

Thread the letters onto one of the customized picks then add it to the box on top of the green melon balls.

No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box would be complete without some form of pizza, right? I took the easy route and added a handful of pizza flavored Goldfish crackers. I tucked the second customized pick into the section with the crackers. Finally, I stacked a few slices of cucumber in the smallest section of the bento box. Again we thought they looked a little like turtle shells.

Fill a water bottle and tuck it in the lunch bag with the bento box, some TMNT fruit snacks and a TMNT napkin. If you slip a comic book in the bag too, you’ll be all set for a scooter ride to the comic shop.

******************

This post is sponsored by Target. More Turtles, More Bold and Daring Fun: Blur the lines of fantasy and reality with your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Target.