A Spooky Ghost Bento Box for Halloween Lunch
Halloween falls on a school day this year, so here’s an idea for a Halloween bento lunch to take to school. Also, if you’re hosting a Halloween party, you can deconstruct these lunch components and serve them.
Ingredients you’ll need
- cucumber
- white bread
- sandwich fillings (I used cheddar cheese, but you should use what your child likes)
- Mandarin orange
- Ghost-shaped chips (I found mine at Trader Joe’s but I’ve seen similar chips at Target, too)
Equipment you’ll need
- divided lunch box (this one is made by PlanetBox)
- small ghost or tulip-shaped cookie cutter
- plastic drinking straw
- large ghost cookie cutter
- ghost cupcake pick
How to make a Halloween Bento Lunch
1. Start off by making some “ghostly cucumbers.” If you have a small ghost-shaped cutter, use that to cut the cucumbers. I didn’t have one handy, but I did have a little tulip cutter, so I used that to cut the veggies then flipped the cut-outs upside-down so they looked like little ghosts. Pretty sneaky trick!
2. Use a plastic drinking straw to cut the holes for the eyes and mouth of each ghost shape. If you pinch the end of the straw a bit as you’re pressing it into the cukes, the holes will be oval instead of circular. I’ve found the straw cuts best if I press it into the cucumber on the cutting board and then lift it up a bit and push it all the way through.
3. Put several plain cucumber slices in one of the lunch box compartments, then layer the ghost shapes on top of them.
4. Next, get the the ghost sandwich going by cutting a couple of ghost shapes from a slice of bread. I usually buy whole wheat bread for sandwiches, but in this case I picked up a loaf of white bread to give the sandwich that ghostly appearance. The cookie cutter I used has a bit of a ying-yang thing going on and I found that if I was careful when I positioned it on the bread I could cut two pieces from one slice. This makes cutting the shapes basically the equivalent of cutting crusts off and minimizes waste tremendously.
I had a little bit of trouble getting two perfect shapes from a single slice of bread, but they were pretty close so I just used the nicer piece for the top of the sandwich. No worries! I used the straw cutting trick to cut the face on the top piece of bread too.
5. Fill the sandwich with whatever fillings your child likes best. I used a slice of cheddar cheese because I liked the glowing effect from the orange cheese peeking out the eye-holes. Put the sandwich in the largest section of of the bento box. If your child has a bigger appetite at lunch time, make two sandwiches and stack them on top of each other.
6. Peel and segment a Mandarin orange. Arrange the slices in one of the remaining sections of the box and poke a cupcake pick decorated with a ghost into one of them.
7. Fill the remaining compartments with a handful of ghost chips and a spooky candy.
Happy Halloween!