Koala Luv and the Kabocha Adventure

A-chan has no school this entire week. So I'm going to be posting older bentos that I have in my backlog, yay!! It was very disappointing not to do a bento this morning, especially since I spent the morning mopping instead. I might have to manufacture an excuse to do a bento later in the week :)

In the bento: Pink rice, soy bologna koala face with mozzarella cheese and black olive details, steamed broccoli, cauliflower and baby corn, some veggie hot dogs cut interestingly, a piece of frozen peach and a strawberry. Not pictured are a piggy soy sauce bottle and a small container of ketchup. (I always forget to leave space for those in the bento!)

The koala face was very simple to make. I drew the outline on a piece of white paper and cut it out, then placed the paper on top of the soy bologna and cut out along the edge. It was kind of slow going because I wanted to get the ears perfect. Once it was all cut out I put it on top of the rice. I used a flower petal cutter to make the mozzarella ear fluff shapes and then cut off the insides with a large circle cutter. An oval shaped cutter was used for the whites of the eyes. Halves of black olives went on for the eyes, another halved olive was cut longwise for the nose. It went together very quickly!

The Kabocha Adventure

This weekend we managed to slide into SuperH just before it closed and score a kabocha for me to try. A-chan also insisted on running all the way to the other end of the store to grab some mochi, but we were there for the kabocha! I'd been wanting to try one for a while after seeing it in so many other people's bentos, but I was intimidated. Sherimiya of Happy Little Bento gave me courage (thankyou, Sheri!!!!) and I was determined to try it sooner rather than later.

Last night was our kabocha adventure night! It was great - a little difficult to cut but easy to cook and it was very yummy. A-chan didn't like it as much as I did. She thinks it requires a lake full of soy sauce to dip in. I enjoyed listening to Kodo while I chopped the kabocha, it had been a long time since I'd heard them. The drum beats helped the chopping - so much more fun to time the cuts to the drum beats!

I didn't think to take any pictures, though. Oh well. I'll get more next week!