Fairytail Bento

Two bento posts in two weeks?  Yes, it's true!  This bento is a rendition of the main symbol from one of our new favorite animes, Fairytail.  It's a lot of fun to watch with outrageous characters and tons of destruction.   I had originally tried to make the Fairytail symbol with nori but my dull exacto knife was not very cooperative.  Switching to provolone cheese on top of a piece of nori was the only way that I could get the symbol to work and I'm happy that it finally coalesced.  (Egg sheets would have been better, but I was totally out of eggs.)  A-chan was delighted.

In the bento:  A cheese sandwich with nori and provolone cheese symbol on top and carrot letters, Morningstar Farms chik nuggets, strawberries, checkered cucumber and carrot stars.

Tofu Totoro Musubi

A few weeks ago I ran across this fabulous YouTube video on how to make Spam Musubi Totoros.  It inspired me to try making them with slabs of extra firm tofu instead and this was the result!  Except...I didn't have enough nori left to make the bands of the musubi.  But I loved how the Totoros turned out.  I made four of them and since only two would fit into A-chan's bento I got to eat the leftovers for lunch.  Yummy!

In the bento:  Tofu totoros, rectangular onigiri (hidden under the totoros completely), raspberries, steamed broccoli, pineapple, carrot acorns and some frozen blueberries.

To make the totoro shapes I traced the bento box on a piece of paper, then divided it into two rectangles.  I drew a rough totoro shape in each rectangle.  With a piece of saran wrap between the drained slices of tofu and the paper template I used my handy dandy exacto knife to cut out the totoros. They were then cooked in a skillet with a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and mirin as I tried to get a spam-ish color from them.  The white parts were all white egg sheet, the black details were nori (of course) and the whiskers were uncooked soba noodles.  Getting the soba noodles to stick up at the correct angles was actually the most difficult part.  Tiny egg sheet flowers were stuck to the steamed broccoli with more uncooked soba.

Vash the Stampede

I am a huge fan of anime.  It's never been a secret, though I haven't made much mention of it lately.  Here it is, then.  One of my absolute favorite anime is Trigun.  I have loved it for years and still do.  A-chan is a fan of Vash as well, though she hasn't seen all of Trigun - only the first part which is lighter and silly.  It was so exciting to immortalize one of my fav characters in eggsheet, nori and cheese.  I feel as though this bento took much more prep work than other kyaraben.  Five egg sheets were cooked the night before and stored in the fridge.  And you should have seen the mess I made of my kitchen over this one!  

In the bento:  Jasmine rice as a background, carrot and nori stars, fried tofu, checkered apple, grapes, steamed broccoli and black olives.  

Vash was made on a platform of provolone cheese.  His hair, face and donut were cut from egg sheet while his distinctive red coat was cut from a red pepper.  All the black details were cut from nori.  The letters on the sign for his name were cut from cucumber peel.  Kuroneko-sama is provolone and nori with cucumber eyes.  He's slightly a crazy kitty in the anime so I'm not over worried about how crazy he looks in the bento.

Tomorrow we head up to Anime Weekend Atlanta for a day's immersion in anime, manga and cosplay!

The Magic of Love

Hello Kitty wishes for everyone to have a Happy Valentine's Day!  She is using her magic wand to create love wherever she goes.  A-chan thought that it was a pretty bento but she couldn't tell what was going on without a little narration.  I was so excited to use my lovely gold sugar again that I sprinkled it quite liberally.

In the bento:  Peanut butter and sugar sprinkle sandwich with Hello Kitty on top, carrot flowers, tofu heart, black olive, apple with hearts cutout and a huge chocolate heart.

Off to the side is a glimpse of our Valentine's project yesterday.  A-chan cut paper, stamped stamps, punched heart shaped holes, cut ribbons, made chocolates and tied them all up together.  She was so excited about giving them to her schoolmates today.  They are not as fancy as she wanted them to be, but we managed to get them all made in one afternoon!

Hello Kitty's dress and the magic hearts were all cut from a new product that I found at Hobby Lobby, called Sugar Sheets.  It was very stiff and wouldn't work with cookie cutters but the exacto knife did a great job.  I love the color, especially since my pink egg sheets don't seem to stay pink in the pictures that I take!  The rest of Hello Kitty was cut from Provolone cheese, as were the letters.  Her face was punched from nori and her bow cut from carrot.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kero-chan!

Over the school break for MLK Day I decided to do some egg sheet practice.  I wasn't sure what I was going to use all of the egg sheets that I made for exactly, so I wrapped them up in cling wrap and stored them in the fridge until inspiration struck.  I think I'm getting better at making them!  Although I'm still not sure why my egg sheets are always so shiny in pictures, lol.

One of A-chan's favorite manga is Card Captor Sakura so I decided to make Kero-chan for her.

In the bento: Cheese and soy turkey sandwich, egg sheet kero-chan, steamed broccoli, baby carrots, baby corn, grapes and plum slices.

I used scissors to cut the crust off the bread slices.  Most of the time when I try to cut bread with a knife I end up with a much smaller piece of bread and a lot of crumbs.  Instead of using scissors to cut the egg sheets, this time I utilized my handy dandy exacto knife which was way more fun.

Yay AWA!!!

AWA was awesome!!!

We had such a great time, and we didn't want to come home. I even found a couple of new bento boxes which I've never seen for sale at an anime convention before! Our Saturday lunch was packed in them and we ate on the floor in the lobby of the Waverly hotel, much more convenient than standing through the lines for the restaurants or going back to our room. We could watch all the cosplayers go by as we munched.

I was sooo nervous about the Bento panel, but it went really well and I still can't believe how many people there were! Thank you very much to all of those who came to the panel, I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. I hope that everyone enjoyed it and maybe got a little inspired to try making bentos. I'm so sorry that I didn't have enough handouts, I honestly thought there wouldn't be many people especially since it was on Sunday so I only made 20 copies. (My husband kept telling me to make more copies but I wouldn't listen.)

Here is a link to the handout, though there isn't all that much information on it. The best thing to do is just get into searching all over and see what all you can find, there is a ton of bento information out there! I will be happy to answer any questions if you want to email me (natakiya@gmail.com) and help find answers if I don't know them.

Handout: http://www.natakiya.com/Bento_Anarchy_handout.pdf

That was one fantastic thing about the bento panel, how many people offered information and tips. Thank you, thank you to everyone who participated and helped answer some of the questions that I couldn't. I learned a lot, too!

These are the two new bentos that I bought in the dealers room...so kawaii! :D I didn't have all that much to pack for bentos since I wasn't expecting to have bentos to use (I had all of my bento gear packed away in a seperate bag in the car for the panel, so close and yet so far away) so they aren't very pretty.

Petite Happy top tier: Peanut butter and jelly rolls, mini oreos and a lychee-coconut jelly.

Petite Happy bottom tier: Garlic and Herb mashed potatoes.

Nontan box: Sundried tomato, basil and parmesan Wheat thin crackers, babybel Gouda, a baby banana