The Last Candy Corn Onigiri

I was trying to be selfish and keep the last one for myself, but in the end I gave up and made it into a school bento for A-chan. I tried really hard to talk her into believing that I can just make more any time. It never worked. Then I decided that it would just be easier to give her the last one and convince myself to make more :) It made her very happy.

There is another small green triangle onigiri, a cherry tomato, some cheddar bunnies and a few sweet midget pickles.

This bento also contains the teeniest tiniest apple bunnies I have ever made. They were so incredibly cute!! I used a Lady apple to make them. In the picture below the large apple is a Gala which I love and usually use in just about anything. The small one is a Lady apple that we got at Super H Mart. I have since learned that our local Kroger carries them! A-chan thinks they are the bestest cutest apples in the world. She has trouble biting into them since they are rather firm, but loves them once they are cut up.

Kreativ Blogger Award

Sherimiya from Happy Little Bento gave me this awesome award, thank you so much Sherimiya!!! It's taken me a while to have some free time to come up with seven things about myself...I hope that you didn't give up on me :) Sherimiya makes wonderful and inspiring bentos, it makes me so happy that she always comments on my posts and likes my bentos enough to give me this award.

The requirements of the award are to list seven facts about myself and then choose seven other bloggers to recieve the award. So here goes!

7 things about myself:

1- I love spicy food. Really spicy food. The hotter the better! In fact, most American foods are way too bland for me and I end up adding spice to everything: pizza, fries, burgers, potato chips, mac ‘n’ cheese, tomato soup…

2- I love to play the harp.

3- Just like Lia Chen of Bentolicious, I’m horribly scared of cockroaches. There is absolutely no reason for it, but I am!

4- I have always wanted tattoos but am unable to get them because of my blood clotting disorder. It is a huge frustration! I particularly covet the traditional tattoos of the Rabari tribes in Gujarat.

5- My biggest fear: claustrophobia. It seems to be getting worse as I grow older.

6- As a child I was raised as a meat eater. I became a vegetarian when I was 21. But the traditional way of eating that I was brought up on is still very much a part of my cooking methods. So every meal has to include a ‘meat’ as a main dish, or these days a substitute soy product. This annoys me a great deal and I wish that I could change it.

7- I don’t like sugar. Sweet things in moderation are good. But ultimately we only eat something with sugar in it about once every two weeks. Of course we indulge heavily in sugary items when we attend conventions. Cons are not for healthy eating, you know! :)

7 Great Bloggers:

1-Teapriestess at - Bento Mania
2-French Bento
3-Gnoe at Graasland
4-Tanabata who does the Hello Japan! challenge - In Spring it is the Dawn
5-Lunch Bucket Bento
6-Bento Corner - Who gave me tons of inspiration and I wish was still updating!
7- Emilie at - The Conscious Kitchen

Cartwheel girl bento

My daughter chose this design out of my newest bento book by Akinoichigo which I love, love, love. I personalized it a little bit, but the basic design is from the book. The girl is made from mozzarella cheese and american cheese, cucumber and soy turkey. The bow in her hair and the stars are all carrots. In the other half is a portion of sesame tofu (leftovers from the chinese restaurant the night before, yay!), a cherry tomato, a black olive on a squirrel pick, a spear of baby corn and a heart shaped cup of tiny red grapes.

She seemed to love it when I showed it to her before school but she didn't eat much of it. I'm not sure why and she isn't offering any opinions. Maybe she just wasn't hungry that day :)

The book that she looked through for the design is available from Jbox. There is a link directly to it at the very bottom of the blog: The Waku waku bento book!

Hello Japan November Challenge

The Challenge for this month was to eat Japanese food. Since I eat japanese food all the time and love it, I wanted to do a more in-depth response to the challenge in keeping with the spirit of learning more about Japan. So I looked on my cookbook shelf for a book of Japanese recipes. I wanted something that I had never tried before, something outside my normal realm of taste and something that was in English. (I have tons of Japanese recipe books that are all in Japanese - I keep saying that I'm going to learn Japanese just to read these cookbooks!)

I came across a cookbook that I'd had for about a year and never cooked from. My mother had taken me on a trip to Denver and we had eaten at a fabulous Japanese restaurant called 'Domo'. They had a cookbook for sale, written by the proprieter and apparently I was so effusive in my liking for the food that the author even signed the book for me! So when I saw it I was overcome with shame for not having done anything with it, but also with a great desire to cook from it. But first I had to read it!

It's full of incredible amounts of information about traditional Japanese foods, cooking methods and food history. Reading it filled me with the joy of the geek who loves to know weird historical tidbits like the fact that tofu was originally a food reserved for nobles! But then it took me a long time to decide exactly what I wanted to cook. And then I kept changing my mind. Finally an idea hit me: I'd never eaten a Japanese breakfast so I should pick recipes from the breakfast section.

And then...I hit a stumbling block. I am more of a hidebound American than I thought because I suddenly kept putting off the actual cooking. Why, you ask? Because traditional Japanese breakfasts include things like vegetables and soy sauce, things I considered delicious for lunch and dinner but not so much for breakfast where I am fond of sweet, buttery foods. Notice the date that I am writing this - the very last day of the challenge - I was procrastinating! But this morning I folded up my sleeves, put on my apron and committed to a Japanese breakfast.

My breakfast bento was very easy to prepare and though I was initially reluctant, by the time I had finished cooking and gotten all the food in the box I was ravenous. I managed to wait long enough to take pictures of the bento and then armed with my trusty red shoyu pig and my chopsticks, I ate it all. Every bite. In record time. Even - and this is amazing - the cauliflower, which I usually hate. In fact, I only included the cauliflower in the menu because I was partly convinced I was going to not like the whole thing anyway so why not use a vegetable I despise. (I must note here that the only reason I had fresh cauliflower in the house was because at our grocery trip last week my daughter asked me "what is that? I want to try it." and I was so very proud of the fact that I didn't say "Eww, it's yucky, no way." but instead bought and cooked it and let her make her own conclusions. She likes it. Go figure!)

I am amazed at how much I really did like it. It tasted wonderful and I will be happy to have it again for breakfast! My bento was not completely traditional since I added a few items that made it more bento-ish. The traditional breakfast includes: Okayu: rice porridge, tsukemono: pickles, ohitashi: boiled vegetables, daizu seihin: soybean products, yakimono: grilled or broiled dishes and jobina: pre-prepared side dishes. The last 4 items are side dishes that you choose from, not include all in one meal.

Instead of okayu I used a rice ball because it's a bento :) For the pickles I chopped some gari and placed it on top of my soybean product which was yaki dofu. I chose carrots, snap peas and cauliflower for the ohitashi. The vegetables and tofu are supposed to be dipped in shoyu (soy sauce) and for that I had my soy sauce piggy. The tomato flower is completely out of place in a traditional breakfast, but I wanted to do something more pretty :)

The recipes were from the book "The Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking" by Gaku Homma.

Looky, looky - New title!

Ah hah! The first of many changes: a new title picture, yay!!

There was absolutely no reason to make bentos today because we were staying home all day. It was just fun to make them anyway and play with the new letter cutters that I got from Jbox. I'd been drooling over letter cutters for about a year or so but just never could commit to getting them. But when I started making bentos for my daughter to take to school...well...I was already buying stuff for her bentos and it was the perfect time to get them cause they could piggyback on the shipping with the other stuff...and they weren't very expensive! (They were definitely worth it!)

Jasmine rice topped with carrot letters makes up the bulk of the bento. On the left side: one half of a veggie hot dog (I actually made a veggie hot dog look kind of elegant, woot!), some steamed broccoli, a baby tomato and mozzarella cheese sandwich on a star pick, a cute mozzarella and nori kitty, apple flower petals and one tiny fruit chew flower.

When we sat down to eat our bentos my daughter stole all the carrot letters from mine and ate them in about ten seconds. So I think maybe she's going to enjoy eating words in her own in the future!

Her bento had stirfried tofu and baby corn on jasmine rice, raw carrot slices in a heart container(apparently not nearly as fun or tasty as the carrot letters...), black olives on a heart pick, baby tomato, sweet pickle, and a hunormous mozzarella cheese butterfly. I had originally wanted to make the butterfly fancier and prettier, but she just wanted it plain so I complied :)

Hello Kathy

A school bento made in the wee hours of the early morning with loving care and with much attention to my coffee mug.

Top layer: two small square onigiri with carrot flowers on top, a triplet of baby corn, some Morningstar Farms chik nuggets cut in halves, a purple pig filled with soy sauce and a Lady apple.

Bottom layer: Hello Kathy onigiri with carrot flower, more baby corn, a baby tomato, udon noodles with peanut sauce and carrot flowers.

My favorite part of this bento was the tiny apple which actually fit into one of the smaller bentos we own. The bunny onigiri was made by my daughter with a mould! Her favorite part was all the carrot flowers.

I'm really enjoying making her school bentos, though some are definately coming out better than others. I think it depends of the amount of prep work I have done the night before and the amount of sleep I get :)

Alien attacks UFO!

This was one of a series of bentos that I made for a panel on bentos that was all about how to make cool and cute bentos without any special tools. Since I tend to use the tools on a regular basis, it was a very neat challenge and got me thinking outside the box. I have to say that I love the alien, absolutely love him!!

On the very bottom is a well-packed layer of jasmine rice covered with a sheet of nori to create a space background. In the near corner I created a shaped 'bowl' of white rice, filled that in with a mound of curry and made a 'roof' over the curry with blue rice. I topped off the UFO with a black olive and some edamame.

In the other corner is the hungry alien with a croissant body, tortellini pasta and black olive eyes held together by red toothpicks, green baby spinach hair and yakiudon tentacles. The mouth is a tomato flower with a nice pickled ginger tongue - the best use of gari that I've made yet!

I couldn't wait to get to this bento after dance class, it's definately going on my list of favorites. It was so much fun and really tasty, but mostly just plain hilarious. If I ever need a good pick me up, I'm going to recreate this one :)

The box I used was just one tier of a three tier picnic box. I would generally fill it all the way up with food for a multi-person picnic. Since there was a lot of blank space (yes, it's a pun) in this bento it was perfect for just me.

The Flowery Bento Walkthrough

Flower Pie Bento

Another Greek bento, this time with an adult flair. The experimental greek veggie and fruit pie with carrot flower petals on top was excellent! The fruit (apples and pears) added just enough sweetness to make it different and the feta just kicked it into high gear. There are also Keftethes (greek meatballs except using my meatless recipe) a greek baked potato, some steamed broccoli, cherry tomato flowers with cucumber leaves, a rolled up soy turkey slice, blueberries on a flower stick, and garlic bagel chips. It was perfect.

As fall begins to really turn cold I'm starting to feel more in the mood for heavier dishes and spicier dishes. Scottish flatpie is a fall family favorite, as is Shepherd's Pie. But while everyone else starts getting out soup recipes...I am again reminded of how much I don't like 'american' soups. I love greek soups, asian soups, Indian soups, but the generic american vegetable soups are too bland for me. It may just be that my mom made veggie soup way too often when I was growing up? Anyway...I've never really been a fan of Mr. Bento...mainly because I love the cuteness of my bento boxes and he's just too adult for my asthetic taste. But I want soup and he's perfect for soup, so he might get added to my Christmas list this year.

In Spring it is the Dawn: Introducing Hello Japan! - a mini-challenge about Japan

In Spring it is the Dawn: Introducing Hello Japan! - a mini-challenge about Japan

Check this out! Seriously. If you want to have a fun way to learn more about Japan and Japanese culture, this is awesome!

Happy Halloween!

My 'Halloween' bento is to honor the "Hello Japan" challenge that I found earlier in the month. It's a fantastic site that has a different challenge each month to celebrate Japanese culture and encourage people to learn more and maybe try some things that they wouldn't otherwise. That was definately the case for me with this month's challenge: Read spooky Japanese horror stories. Horror stories are something I don't often read, but I took the plunge and went to some of the links provided. I learned a lot about japanese ghosts and 'monsters', including things about Tanuki.

I learned two surprising things about Tanuki. First that they are a real animal. I saw pictures and they are so cute! But I had always thought they were mythological. Second was about their um...robe/weaponry which is not at all what it seems and is a bit surprising.

Also I truly enjoyed reading the stories by Lafcadio Hearn who compiled Japanese ghost stories in the late 1800s. One of the most fascinating things for me was the similarities to the Celtic fairy tales that were compiled in Scotland and Ireland by Joseph Jacobs during the same period. It was mainly the narrative style that reminded me of the Celtic stories, however it struck me that the stories in both areas had similar aspects. The fact that they were trying to have some understanding and control over scary situations by explaining them in terms of 'otherworldy' phenomena was clear. And it brought to mind the fact that no matter what culture you grow up in, all humans basically fear the same things and our imaginations run in the same direction when given the opportunity by the things around us.

Now back to the bento! On the left there were one large pumpkin onigiri and one small, both with broccoli stems. Some Morningstar Farms chik nuggets, carrot maple leaves, a cherry tomato, and some baby corn spears. On the right was a large amount of udon noodles in peanut sauce with broccoli and a tanuki on top. Mr. Tanuki was made of bread, fruit roll-up and white cheese with a huge carrot hat behind him and an udon noodle hat-tie. He looks kind of silly instead of scary, but I'm not good at the scary stuff! I did want him to have that hat straight behind which is a traditional depiction.

Thank you, Hello Japan! I enjoyed this challenge so much and I can't wait for the next one!

The rice colors aren't showing up very well in the photo, but the Jack o lantern is orange rice and the robot head was yellow rice. Nori was used for the faces, a broccoli stem for the jack'o'lantern's stem and whole cloves for the robot's antennae. Carrot ribbons were a great addition to the bento for fun! A-chan loves to eat carrot ribbons. There were also some garbanzo beans in a half moon shaped tin with a feta ghost on top. The feta had a hole in it just where the ghosts's mouth needed to be!

Bunny Sandwich Bento

Can you guess that this was for my daughter? The featured ingredient: the pink mashed potatoes. She had started refusing to eat mashed potatoes though she's eaten them for years! I made an off-hand comment about "would you eat them if they were pink?" and she said yes. So...here are pink mashed potatoes. And she really did. And she has continued to eat them if they are pink, go figure! The pink color was acheived by means of food color gel.

Also included were a peanut butter and honey bunny-shaped sandwich, apple, peas and feta on skewers, baby tomatoes, chickpeas and a flower of soy turkey painted with blue food color as an experiment. While she loves the pink potatoes, the blue soy turkey was apparently very suspicious and didn't get touched. She did say that it was very pretty though.

I've seen a lot of people on Flickr using the black sesame seeds as eyelashes and I thought it was a fantastic idea! It's so cute :)

Candy Corn Picnic

On our way to Alabama my daughter and I had a picnic at a park. We shared this huge bento and had a good lunch despite the rain! This bento is all about fall. There are corn cob haybales and 'apple' trees made from broccoli and soy hot dogs. Cheese maple leaves and candy corn onigiri. The candy corn onigiri make me very very happy!

Candy corn has always been one of my favorite Halloween treats, but I hadn't been able to find vegetarian candy corn in years. I finally found some this year and bought four whole bags of it! My little girl is definately enjoying it just as much as I. In my turn, I was thrilled to finally be able to share this holiday treat with her! She loved the idea of candy corn onigiri. This is one of the things that I did with the fall colored rices from a few weekends back :)

The remainder of the ingredients are veggie gyoza, fried tofu sticks, blackberries, an apple picnic blanket, sesame carrots, some baby tomatoes, a babybel cheese round, hello kitty soy sauce bottle and one bottle of sriracha sauce.

Early Snow Bunny Bento

A-chan has been asking when it's going to snow. Apparently a few chilly days equates with winter and snow in her mind. So here is a snowbunny bento! Vegetarian japanese curry on one side and on the other a small onigiri with cucumber ears and nori face, pretzel sticks, baby tomato halves and corn in a cup.

We've been resisting the urge to pull out the electric blanket and turn on the heat. It's only been in the 50s but for us that's cold! Plus it's been raining like crazy. Yesterday we had 75% indoor humidity - we haven't been in that much humidity since we were in Bangkok. We're soldiering through it but I have to say I can't wait for some sunshine.

I'm also gearing up to do henna at a Bellydance convention tomorrow which means I have a batch of henna paste curing on my kitchen counter. The entire house had the scent of lavender from the essential oils this morning which was lovely! But it seems to make my nose go haywire when I'm cooking. I realized today that the curry I made last night was extra spicy maybe because I was counteracting the lavender? Little girl didn't seem to mind at all so I'm hoping that she will start getting her spice tolerance back soon!!!

Huge Carrot Flowers

This bento was all about drama! Dramatic pink rice, dramatic japanese curry featuring edamame, dramatic enormous flowers cut from huge asian carrots. I lined the bowl of the bento with the pink rice, filled up the center with curry (carrots, potato, onion, edamame, green peas and tofu in the Vermont Curry sauce). Cut out the flowers, placed them dramatically on top, topped them off with circles of nori, sesame seeds and shiso furikake. Then shoved in a few spikes of spring onion for extra drama!

Since I haven't been able to get online for a few days I'm working on a backlog of bentos. This one was for me to have as a dinner bento when I returned from teaching a dance class that occurs during my normal dinnertime schedule. It was so nice to have this waiting for me!!

First School Bento!

Yay! I did it!! The first school bento was a success. A-chan requested the rolled sandwich and character face for this bento. The saran wrap on the sandwich made it hard to photograph (at least for me). I was very nervous making this bento which is very silly. It's so nice to know that she liked it and I can't wait to do another one next week!

Top partition: 2 huge blackberries, steamed broccoli, baby tomatoes, one carrot heart, one fried tofu ball, one tiny veggie dog octopus.

Bottom partition: rolled peanut butter and honey sandwich wrapped in saran wrap and tied with embroidery thread on the ends, pokemon face of cheese, nori and pickled ginger. Steamed broccoli, mozzarella cheese, carrot heart and another blackberry. Hidden underneath the sandwich were a hello kitty soy sauce bottle and a hello kitty candy.

Problem area - Veggie hot dog: I can't do anything pretty with veggie hot dogs. They just don't want to cooperate :( I tried to make a pretty flower with this one and worked on it for about 10 minutes before giving it up as hopeless. Then I inverted it and put on the face to make a little octopus instead. It turned out well, I think it's cute - but it's not what I had intended to do.

Bonus - The sandwich wrapping: It kept the character design perfectly in place while I positioned and repositioned it to make it fit AND have the face visible :) It was also great because I didn't have to worry about the broccoli and blackberry making the sandwich soggy!

She ate most of it at school, though apparently she found the piece of candy and didn't want to eat anything else after that. The only things left were the tomatoes, one piece of broccoli and the little octopus. As soon as we got home she wanted to eat the rest and I soon had a very empty bento box to wash :)

Weekend Bentos

We had to be out for lunch while I was doing henna all morning and afternoon, so it was a perfect excuse to make bentos! The doggy above has a missing tooth because my little girl lost her first one on Friday. There was almost a disaster with the tooth which came out while eating corn on the cob: it was almost lost when I was over-efficient in the plate washing. Luckily we found it and put it in the tooth pillow for the tooth fairy. In relief and in homage I decided to do a cute doggy who had lost a tooth. A-chan definately seemed to like it!

The doggy is a Boca chik patty sandwich and hamburger bun, part of the patty was cut off to make the ears and paws. The bows were cut out of carrot. Mozzarella cheese and nori for the face. A tulip cup full of chick peas, baby tomato halves and tiny cubes of feta took up most of the bottom portion of the box, with just enough room left over for two miniature potato pierogies and a HUGE blackberry.

All of the same stuff was in my bento as well, with a few differences. My sandwich had habenero BBQ sauce on it. I got a pick with three carrot circles. More blackberries could fit into mine so I put in a few extra to give A-chan. Also there were two babybel cheese rounds hidden beside the sandwich underneath the extra blackberries.

I had a wonderful time with the henna designs and met some very nice people. A-chan also had a great time and her bento did a fab time of picking up her spirits just when she was starting to get bored.

Rice Cooking Day

Today was rice cooking day! I think I wore out my poor rice cooker. Three batches of rice to put in the freezer: one white, one yellow and one orange. Fall colors were definately going through my head :) My little girl and I made rice balls out of some, and put some in storage containers and then froze all of it for easy bento (and dinner) making later in the week and probably next week too.

I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a Sunday at home. We've been so busy lately - this is literally our first weekend at home in about 2 months. And the next three weeks we'll be away again. But for now I'm just glorying in the ability to be at home and prepare for the week ahead without feeling rushed!

Along with the rice cookery, I'm making fried tofu to freeze as well. I'm sure that there is more that I could be doing, but the rice and tofu will have to do because we're going to see Ponyo this afternoon! Yay!!!

A-chan's interest in bentos has really taken off - she's been making pretend rice balls for a while (including some out of playdoh) but today she wanted to make real ones all by herself. She made a rice ball by hand and then several using moulds - her favorite was the hello kitty one. It was such a wonderful time to spend together. Even easier than making cookies together!

Funky Birdies

I had absolutely no plan in mind when I made this bento. My only goal was to use up the leftovers from ChooChoos the night before.

Teriyaki tofu, mozzarella cheese clouds, korean veggies, rice with teriyaki sauce, baby tomato birdies with spring onion tails, house full of cheese cubes, nori kitties watching the huge birds.

I'm not very happy with how it looks, though I think the birds are cute. The artistic part of my brain was on vacation!

Day in Africa Bento

I suddenly realized for no reason at all that I hadn't made any Greek food in a long, long time. Then I couldn't get it out of my head! So I had to make a Greek food filled bento. I love how the lion turned out, I just think he's way cute :)

Top tier: Vegetable pie with cheese & soy turkey giraffe, tomato flower with cucumber leaf, greek baked potato and blueberries.

Bottom tier: Lion body is of couscous, mane of soy turkey and face of cheese with nori and carrot detail, carrot ears and paws. Hiding behind the lion's head are some garlic bagel chips. Steamed broccoli, greek meatballs (in this case the recipe is altered to be vegetarian) and a blueberry with an elephant pick.

School Bentos in 4 days...

My daughter is going to Pre-K this year. It's her first year of school ever and it's only a half day, I pick her up at noon. So I've never actually had a chance to send a bento to school with her. But on Monday that is changing! She will start going to Lunch Bunch at School on Mondays while I teach my dance class and that means I get to do school bento!!!

I'm really excited about it. In fact, I dreamt about bentos last night! My girl has a list of kyaraben that she wants me to make her for school. She and I looked at Jbox.com yesterday to see if they had "special school bento stuff" that I could get for her to make it a little more well, special for her since she's already used to having bentos. This is the first time she has actually shopped for bento stuff and picked out things for herself, it's soooo cool! (The items that were necessities: the soy sauce bottles shaped like pigs and a pikachu bento box)

To be absolutely sure that everything is perfect for the first school bento, I'm planning ahead. I already know exactly what I'm going to make and have pre-thought all the ingredients and steps. We'll see how it goes. So excited!!!

The Pikachu Bento Walkthrough

The Pikachu Bento

Gaara Bento!

Here is the Gaara bento that I mentioned at AWA! It didn't turn out as well as I had envisioned so I will try again sometime to do a better job.

I used a gourd shaped rice mould to make the fried rice onigiri and cut strips of nori for the designs. There are fried tofu sticks on the left side with a small container of korean bbq sauce to dip them in. Steamed broccoli, cheese sticks and soy turkey fill in the gaps. Gaara's clothes are nori and soy turkey, his face was the white part of morningstar farms soy bacon, His hair was the red part of the soy bacon. Eyes from nori and white soy bacon part.

I skipped the symbol on his forehead this time - one of the things I want to fix next time :) He has a fantastic glare I think, though!

The small bottle was originally from a set of sugar sprinkles for cookie decorating. As soon as it was empty I snatched it straight into my bento tool set.

Pink Rice Bentos

Pink rice flower-shaped rice ball (made using a flower shaped rice mould) with an apple center, steamed broccoli, one tiny carrot flower, 3 mini potato pierogies (steamed and then shallow-fried in butter), a lovely strawberry and 3 spears of baby corn.

The adult version with pink rice triangle onigiri (again with rice mould) wrapped in mamenori, carrot and apple hearts, steamed broccoli, 3 mini potato pierogies (steamed and then shallow fried in butter).

AWA update

Hi!

This is just a quick note to everyone who attended the bento panels at AWA this year - thank you soooooo much for coming, I enjoy doing the panels immensely! I'm sorry that my friend Dee wasn't able to join me for them this year, and hope that she can next year. (You're awesome, Dee - I missed you this year!!)

I'm working on uploading the step by step presentations, but have run into the snag of not knowing how to do that. So I'm learning and should be able to have them up soon! Please be patient with me :)

Thanks!

Heavy on the peas Bentos

Green peas, carrot circles, mac'n'cheese with apple eyebrows, soy hot dog rounds with black olives and 1/2 mochi for each ear.

Jasmine rice covered with stripes of sesame carrots, green peas and sweet yellow corn. On the side are cherry tomato halves, black olives and cheese cubes with a koala pick.

Hello Kitty Rice Ball

I love my HK rice ball kit!! It's just so neat! And fun. My daughter likes to play with it in her toy kitchen. In this bento: Hello kitty rice ball with apple bow, heart shaped pb sandwich, flower pb sandwich with pink sprinkles, broccoli, sesame carrots, veggie gyoza, black olives, carrot butterflies, 1 apple slice, hello kitty soy sauce bottle.

A snack bento for a healthy bite on the run: green grapes, apple bunnies and two hello kitty candies.

Xtra Simple Bentos

White rice with green peas and tomato flower, apple bunny, sesame carrots, blueberries, sweet pickle and pretzel sticks.

Apple slices, blueberries, vegetarian dumpling, Jasmine rice, green peas, tomato flower, sesame carrots and cucumber bamboo leaves.