I have too much time on my hands

I get waaaaaaay too into my cooking. I almost titled this post "Weird Things I Cook." Lately, I have been obsessed with beans. You get a lot of them for not many WW points - so they're valuable to me. I've learned that you can cook them all day in the slow cooker and they are delicious. And my new find...thanks to my friend Carla...are Lentils. These are Lentil and Smoked Cheddar Burgers (or as we call them....BEAN PATTIES!) They are lots of work, so dorky Holly took a picture. I have to say, these were probably my best Bean Patties to date.





And my other new obsession...preparing cutesy Bento Box lunches for Leo (aka King Picky). Another little tidbit I picked up from an online mommy chat board. Turns out there's a whole little community of people who like to pack these cutesy lunches. For those who don't know...Leo is in the middle of a very PICKY EATING phase, and it's driving me nuts. He likes everything separate...no spices...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! He doesn't know how lucky he is to have a mommy who cooks. But, anyway, I thought he would like this...and my first attempt was a huge success. Everything is cutesy and has its own little compartment. He said..."Thank you, Mommy, for making my lunch look like this." We have ordered Laptop Lunchboxes to help with this new obsession.

This is "faux sushi" (flattened bread and lunchmeat pinwheels), cheese cut with a cookie cutter, olives, pickle slices, wheat thins, and strawberries cut into hearts. All things I copied from other people. :)

Oh...and the olives...I have to share...just a glimpse into the machinations that I go through... Leo will tell you a million times that he DOESN'T LIKE GARLIC!!! He doesn't want to see me cutting it up to put in anything, tells me it stinks, blah, blah. But he loves these garlic-stuffed green olives. So one day he asked me what the white thing in the middle was. Being the super-quick thinker that I am, I said..."It's called 'filler.'" Now he'll say, "Oh, mommy, I just looooooove filler." I'm saving that story for a college graduation or something...when he's eating sushi and all kinds of foodie things that we've exposed him to...hopefully.