Pink

This bento is all about pink. And that's quite an abnormality for me as the color pink and I normally do not get along. In fact, I try to avoid pink as much as is possible for someone with a 5 year old daughter. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice enough color. But when I was younger pink was perhaps a good bit overdone. In our old house my husband and I lived for many years with an office that was pepto bismol pink. I think I'd just had enough. When my girl was born I declared that I wanted no pink baby clothes, no pink baby toys and absolutely no pink room. That worked about as well as one might think. Just try shopping for girls' baby clothes that don't have pink on them. It's not easy. The older that my daughter gets the more I'm finding pink creeping back into my life.

Today's bento, however, is different. It's about Breast Cancer awareness. It's about being a responsible woman, mother, wife. I actually had no idea that October was associated with this cause. Usually October for me is all about my daughter's birthday, halloween and adjusting to the new cold weather that seems to get worse every year (or just me getting older). So I haven't paid much attention to anything else. But yesterday I came across this post at Bento Blog. It made me start to think. Not only about how to make a bento to participate, which of course happened immediately, but also about the issue.

I have friends who talk about these types of campaigns and wonder if they actually do any good in the long run. Well, I think that the Pink Ribbon Bento Panorama has made a difference. At least it has caught my attention and made me start thinking about something that I normally put in a box labeled 'Don't open, not ready to think about'. And it has made me realize that it's time for me to start paying attention.

About the bento: The pink ribbon (which is really more of a red than pink, but it's tough to find pink things when you're vegetarian!) is cut out from a fuji apple. Next to it is a pink mochi, corn croquette, block of feta, soy turkey rolls with green beans and carrots, vegetarian Japanese glazed meatballs on a bamboo pick, a small bit of gari (more pink, yay!). The pink icing was done using a henna technique and a traditional-style henna design on top of a white cheddar sheet. Underneath the cheese is vegetable fried rice. There are a few tiny carrot flowers scattered around.

My camera is just not good enough to catch both the color of the icing and the details of the darker ingredients so I apologize for the darkness of the photo! I really wanted to do something with the henna technique. I couldn't get it out of my head as being perfect for this message.