Earlier this week I received a truly shocking gift from my grandmother that came as a total surprise and, after I picked myself up, for a while I was excited, giddy, insert word here.  But that didn’t last long.  You see the gift came to me as a result of my grandmother passing away.  It also served to remind me that we are entering the holiday season.  For as long as I can remember the holidays meant cornbread dressing spiced by my grandmother or mother followed by many tastings by the rest of us to decide if it was just right.  The holidays meant the smell of baking turkey wafting through the air mingling with the scents of homemade pecan pies and rolls.  The holidays meant baked macaroni and cheese made by my Nana, never to be replicated although we’ve tried.  Mac and Cheese is inherently a comfort food anyway.  To me, my Nana’s mac and cheese was the ultimate comfort food.  It didn’t have anything to do with the little puff of steam that would rise up when first cutting into the crusty top or the way the cheese covered every inch of macaroni.  It was the warmth that it brought knowing that it was made with love by Nana.  Each bite was like a little hug.  Even in the last few years when she was slowing down and the mac and cheese wasn’t exactly ‘Gordan Ramsey’ perfect, it was perfect to us because it was made by her. 

This year, she’s not with us.  So this week after the shock and excitement that surrounded the recent gift wore off, all I’ve been able to ask myself is ‘who’s going to make the mac and cheese?’.

Who makes your mac and cheese and have you made sure they know how much you appreciate and love that they do?

LOL - These were the words the my dd uttered after her very first roller coaster ride.  We took the kids to the fair Friday, it was early release day, and had fun.  The entire time were heading to the fair and walking in the gates, dd is talking about how she wants to ride a ’scary’ ride.  She first rode a very tame canoe ride, that she said was (and I quote) LAME.  So, we take her by some of the other rides in the kiddie area and she pronounces them all, even the two roller coasters, not scary enough.  She has decided that she wants to go on the Crazy Mouse roller coaster, this ride not only goes up and down hills but it also spins without warning in some places.  My dh decides, if this is what she wants we will try it.  So after making sure she understands that they will not be able to stop the ride for her to get off we head to the line.  Wouldn’t you know it, she is 2 inches too short to ride and promptly burst into tears.  After much cajoling, taking ds to see the snakes and riding the Skyway, she decides to ride on the Sleigh Ride (which some might know better as the Himalaya - goes round and round really fast, loud music, and on some the cars rock up and down).  She rides that, declares it fun but not scary enough and cons my dh into taking her on the Zizzler (or something like that - it’s a metal roller coaster that she is just tall enough for).  So they go on that, I’m watching as she goes up the first hill.  By the time the cars made it to the bottom of the first hill she is covering her eyes and practically melded into my dh.  When they get off the ride, I find out that she never screamed but kept saying ‘oh no, not another one’ every time they came to a hill.  I asked her if it was fun and she said - ‘yeah it was real fun, but I think that next time I will try one of the small ones’.  ROFLMAO

It’s so hard to think of them growing up so fast.  I mean, it was just a few months ago this same girl didn’t want to go down the frog water slide in the kiddie pool.  Where did the time go!?!?!?

Seriously, preparing these lunches don’t take any more time than throwing some peanut butter on a piece of bread.  They just come with added benefits it’s fun trying to make them different, I have a daughter excited to find out what her lunch will be each day AND she doesn’t beg to buy her lunch.  Most consist of plain pasta, gold fish or other crackers, a sandwich of some type (we call the sandwich rolls - faux sushi), fruit and a dessert.  Here are some more using some Hello Kitty boxes that we found and she fell in love with:

Have you heard of the new sensation that is sweeping the nation?  All the hip and trendy kids are going back to school this year with Bento Box lunches.  Not really, but that’s what I told my dd on her first day of Kindergarten.  LOL  You see my dd is super picky so I am very limited on the types of food that she will eat, which makes doing a real bento very hard to do. Most consist of faux sushi cream cheese wraps or even real sushi etc.  My dd would not go for that so I just went and got a round container that has 4 sections, the middle one is a cup that has it’s own lid, and have been sending her lunch in it each day. I found out that Hello Kitty makes boxes that would be perfect and may go get some.  I bet ’A’ would love them. Anyway here is an example of what she gets (each day she has plain pasta (she hates sauce), her choice of fruit, lunch meat, and gold fish. Then she has a juice bag with it. Until today her pasta was in one of the larger sections, but she wanted it in the middle today. She also asked for more fruit, hence the strawberries and green & purple grapes.

I use my Pampered Chef creative cutters set to cut the meat into fun shapes (today’s was a flower). I love the cutters because they are smaller and I feel like I am getting more out of the meat than I would a larger cutter. They come in a set of 8 and each set contains a maple leaf, shamrock, pumpkin, apple, chili pepper, flower, heart and star. Greatest $10 investment I’ve ever made.

Anyway, so all you Bento veterans who wound up here by googling for bento ideas- am I on the right track here or have I missed the train? She did tell me that one of the teachers in the lunch room commented on how cute her lunch was and that she really liked it.

My beautiful grandmother, Nana, passed away this morning, 8-20-07, at around 12:30am.  She was the sweetest lady with such a beautiful soul.  I’ll never forget all the time we spent with her growing up and all the little things.  Like how she taught me how to crochet or that she would keep snickers in her freezer and cut them up and then we would have them as a late night snack.  Nana was always concerned about everyone but herself and I think she tried her best to hold on through this summer because she knew everyone had made plans to go places.  That’s just how she was.  We were able to spend one last day with her yesterday and I am so thankful for that because it gave dh, the kids and I the chance to tell her we loved her, hold her hand and look into her beautiful eyes one more time.

She donated her body to one of the local medical schools, so there will not be a funeral but we will be holding a memorial service either saturday or sunday.  Any prayers you could pass on this week would be greatly appreciated, especially for my mom.  We knew it was coming, but you can never truly be prepared.  Thanks.