Lunch Made Easy: Luck of the Irish

Saint Patrick is the most well known patron saint of Ireland.
St. Patrick's Day (basically) commemorates him and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It was made an official feast day in the early seventeenth century but has become a celebration of Irish culture in general.
Keeley (meaning beautiful in Gaelic) was given to me not only because of our Irish heritage but because I was born right in between the Ides of March and St. Patrick's Day (on the 16th - this Friday). I also was given our family name that moved to the States from Ireland as my middle name (McGuire).
My Irish ancestry is something I cherish and love sharing with my daughter.

My bento blogger friends and I are doing a St. Patty's Day blog hop today ~ Rather then waiting until the end of the week, we figured share ideas now so that y'all can use them! Right?! :)
I'm really excited to see every one's work.

I wanted to do a different take on it for the blog hop, so I focused on the flag of Ireland ~ AKA the Irish Tricolour ~ Green, White, and Orange. The green represents the Gaelic tradition, the orange represents William of Orange, and white represents the peace between them.

In the main compartment of Little Miss's green lid EasyLunchBox I created the flag using salad fixins'. The green showing through is spinach (it's filling the entire compartment under the other toppings), the white section in the center is mozzarella cheese and hard boiled egg dices, the orange is fresh carrot gratings. In the very center of the salad is a small clover I (tried to) hand cut out of cheddar cheese.

Top left is freshly peeled mandarin orange slices and a small clover shaped cup of mini marshmallows.
Bottom left is natural applesauce that I colored green with just one drop of green food color mixed in.

Even Mama got in on the action - I had made this cold spinach pasta salad over the weekend and it happens to be the tricolours!
I also have in our orange lid LunchBots container a mandarin orange, sugar snap peas, dried banana slices, and a beef sausage stick.

Be sure to check the next blog on the hop out: Bobbi's Bentos
(Bobbi's post is up but some of the bloggers won't be linked until tomorrow - Tuesday - so please check back and see them all!!)