Girl Scouts Bento

A friend of mine who is a Girl Scout troupe leader here in town asked me to come and talk about bentos at their meeting last night.  The girls are doing world studies and this week's theme was Japan.  I took along a lot of show and tell items including this bento.  It was a lot of fun!  The girls were a lot more interested than I initially thought they would be.  They made fantastic observations and had great questions for me.  We used the cling film method of onigiri making to let each of the girls make their own.  Most made ball shapes but some made hearts.  I took along some nori punches and nori sheets so that they could each decorate their onigiri with faces.

In the bento: Two onigiri with cucumber decoration, carrot ribbons, grapes, a corn croquette, a cherry tomato, two cucumber slices and two veggie hot dog flowers with green pea centers.

The 100 year celebration logo was carved out of cucumber with an exacto knife.  It's a bit rough around the edges but I'm pretty proud of it for a free-hand cutting that I've never done before!  It's held onto the onigiri with a tiny bit of uncooked somen noodle - one end poked into the cucumber and the other into the rice.  The numbers were cut from provolone cheese and the letters cut from more cucumber peel with my letter cutters.  This bento also features a soy sauce bottle that it actually inside the box!  The cute little pink rabbit bottle is from a set that was in my Christmas stocking.