Peace and Peas Bento

This bento was all about the babybel cheese in the center. Yep, the cheese :) I wanted to do something striking with the round of cheese that A-chan wanted in her bento so I started thinking about round symbols. Then I narrowed it down to round symbols that I could make out of nori. And even further to round symbols that I could cut out of nori with my kitchen scissors...so it wasn't intended to be a meaningful bento, exactly. But then I wondered if the word peace would fit in the top of the box with the letter cutters that I have. It did! I was happy :)

The top portion contains: couscous with carrot letters and pea accents.
The bottom portion contains: One babybel cheese with peace symbol, one miniature corn croquette, one baby tomato cut in halves, one heart container filled with tiny peach squares, one tiny sweet gherkin, three picks with sauteed tofu and green peas.

The little heart container just refused to cooperate. It was determined to go all squished no matter what I did, so I finally admitted defeat and just let it be. A-chan mentioned that the peas got moved around while she was carrying the bento. Next time I will press them down into the couscous a bit more.

Funky Pasta Bento

Though the funky shaped pasta is not a large part of the bento, it was the item that fueled most discussion when A-chan returned home from school. She does not like funky looking pasta, that she does not. I, on the other hand, thought it was really cool! Plus, it only took three pieces of pasta to fill the spot in the bento where I needed something that wasn't rigid. I thought it was inspired and rather perfect. But the funky pasta has been relegated to my bentos and only mine now - she wishes never to see it darken a corner of her bento box again. Oh well, live and learn!

Top tier: Miniature pita, babybel cheese with flower cut outs, steamed broccoli, orange pieces and a hello kitty soy sauce bottle.

Bottom tier: Hello kitty onigiri, infamous funky pasta, morningstar farms chik nugget, hashrounds, cherry tomato, carrot flower.

I'd seen the cut outs on babybel cheeses on flickr a long while back from several different people (I think several - it has been a while) and thought it was a great idea. This is the first time I'd tried it for A-chan though. She seemed to get a great kick out of it and enjoyed using the cut outs to open the cheese rather than the normal way.

As I make the bentos, I am more and more amused at how my behaviour reflects the changes in the way I think about food. If I have a whole packet of cherry tomatoes and only one is going in the bento I search through the whole packet for the 'most appetizing looking' tomato. This is quite a change from how it used to be with me going for the one on the top for speed's sake. Now I usually end up choosing one with a nice looking stem still attached, and laughing at myself for scrutinizing them all.

New Pikachu Bento Walkthrough

A newly revised edition of the Pikachu walkthrough with music and notes! Otherwise it's much the same, but the music makes it much more awesome in my opinion :) (In other words I had tons of fun playing with the music editing software, lol) Let me know what you think - should I do more of these walkthroughs?

Froggies!

This froggie bento was heavily influenced by E-obento.com. I've been looking at her frogs in bentos for years and kept saying one day I'll do frogs...

So here they are, yay! Another school lunch bento for m'girl :) On the left were blueberries on picks, carrot ribbons in a mini muffin tin, baby corn all in a row and one miniature corn croquette, with a cucumber frog hugging a big red tomato, baby spinach is in the background. To the right was yummy veggie fried rice with a singing cucumber froggie. The musical notes and frog faces were made with mozzarella cheese.

Somehow I never thought of frogs as being cute until I started looking at E-obento.com, now they are definately on my list of cute, cute, cute things. Cats are still pretty much at the top of the list still, banthas are very high (it's the lips, lol) as are pandas and onigiri, but it's always cats and kittens that are most likely to catch my attention in a heartbeat. What goes at the top of your cuteness list?