Friday, February 4, 2011

Elephant pancake

It's the last day of the zoo themed week of bentos. I had no idea how much I was going to enjoy having a theme to work with. It felt like my creativity skyrocketed! Not only was it fun, but it provided a great chance for A-chan and I to talk more about the animals in each of her lunches.

I wanted to do an elephant for today's bento. Since elephants are often portrayed in henna designs, it seemed like a fine idea to do one on a pancake with icing. For some reason elephants and mice are incredibly difficult to get proportionally correct in henna! I had intended to do more detail but got nervous and decided that I would mess it up if I kept going :) Elephants have a nostalgic feeling to me. My mother collects elephants and has them in every room of her house. I have lovely memories of elephants from our trips to Thailand and India. A-chan was too young during those trips to truly remember any details, but I'm hoping that they will have ingrained a deep love and respect for elephants somewhere inside her.

In the bento: Main tier: Miniature pancakes, Morningstar Farms bacon, carrot and raspberry flowers with cucumber leaves and a solitary elephant shaped rice pasta. Second tier: Lots of raspberries, black olives on elephant picks, carrot slices and heart shaped pan-fried potatoes.

The elephant design was done with vanilla icing. I drew the design out by hand the night before so that I could practice. I like it so much that I probably will keep it and use it as a henna design!

To get the veggie bacon into twists I cut the strips in half lengthwise as soon as they were out of the oven. Then I immediately wrapped them around chopsticks and let them cool. In a few minutes they were cool enough to slide the chopsticks out and voila!

7 comments:

Sonoma Bento said...

Wow! That's really lovely. Your elephant design is perfect. And thanks for the tip on the bacon, what a great idea. :)

Bento Cat said...

Awwwwww this is so cute! & its such a great idea! I've just became your latest follower and I look fwd to your posts :D

Xelia said...

Wow!! Wow!! I love the elephant!! So cool n thr's so much detail in it! U r very very creative! ;)

Natakiya said...

Thanks, Sonoma Bento! :D I'm glad that you liked it!

Natakiya said...

Thanks, Sonoma Bento! :D I'm glad that you liked it!

Natakiya said...

Hi Bento Cat!! I'm so happy that you like my bentos :-D Thanks for becoming my follower!

Natakiya said...

Thank you so much, Xelia!! Henna tattoos are one of my crazy jobs and it is really fun to transfer that art into food form :D