Little Bunnies

We are getting back into the swing of things!  Bento prep is vastly less complicated when I plan the night before.  I review what I want to make - both recipes and characters - and check to make sure I have the ingredients.  Being surprised in the morning by not having any egg sheets made is less fun than one might expect.  While I can make emergency egg sheets in the morning, I really prefer not to!

In the bento: Two cute rolled sandwiches, raspberries, blackberries, tiny carrot strips, sweet corn on the cob, potato salad and steamed broccoli.

The sammies have shredded cheese and mayo inside and are held together with toothpicks.  Even though the toothpicks were pretty obvious, A-chan was warned about them as we drove on the way to school.  The ears and mouths were cut from egg sheets and the other details from nori.

A-chan is enjoying her new dessert-themed picks that we purchased in San Francisco this summer.  They are cute and handy so I'm loving them too.

Weekend Fun Bentos

This past weekend was amazing.  We had an incredible time at Anime Weekend Atlanta.  Then we went on to participate in the Color Run 5k with A-chan's godparents.  And there was a Fall Festival after lunch at The Flying Biscuit.  Eating lunch while covered in colors was just a bit strange but also kind of fun.

These bentos were for our lunch at AWA on Friday.  Inari zushi are easy to make and quick to pop into bentos when I'm in a hurry.  I wanted A-chan's to be cute.   I wanted mine to be more elegant.  There were plenty of egg sheets left over from making Vash the Stampede the day before so I used them for fans and flowers.  Everything in this bento was about being quick to make and easy to assemble.

In the bento:  Inari zushi, corn on the cob, grapes, black plum slices, carrot flowers, baby tomatoes and cream cheese soy turkey rolls.

The bunny faces were cut from provolone.  The butterflies were punched from nori with one of my fav nori punches.  It was bought at Michael's and I love it!  I use it all the time on bentos for myself.

After the Color Run

A-chan at the finish line

What do you mean it's Monday?

I love how expressive faces can be on bento characters.  This rabbit's face expresses exactly how I feel.  How can it be Monday again already?  I will conquer the Monday, mwahahaha!  A-chan made sure to notify me that the ears would get squished when I put on the lid, but I laid them flat on top of the veggies and fruit to fix that problem.

In the bento:  Cheese sandwich, strawberries, kiwi, blackberries, corn on the cob, steamed broccoli steamed cauliflower and carrot bunnies.

The bunny's ears were cut from the heel of the bread and provolone cheese.  His mouth is another piece of bread cut in a circle with an x of nori on top.  It is held to the sandwich underneath with a pink pick. The white parts of the eyes were cut from (you guessed it) provolone cheese.  The green parts are zucchini peel and of course the black is nori!  The little carrot bunnies have mouths cut from tiny slivers of zucchini peel.

I'm experimenting with using more veggies to decorate with instead of nori.  It helps to use up some of the scraps that are created from making the charaben, so it feels better to me.  Plus it adds more color which is always a good thing!  The zucchini bits used in this bento were saved from the scraps that I cut out from another bento.  They were saved in an airtight container in the fridge.

Time just keeps slipping away

I have way too much fun with miniature pancakes.  You can do so much with them!  I'm way behind in my posts so I think this bento was from two weeks ago.  It is a good example of a Speedy Gonzales bento - under ten minutes not including the preheating of the oven.  While I wish that I had a small toaster oven for mornings like this one, I have no idea where it would fit in my kitchen.  Oh well, it's a dream for the future.

In the bento: Miniature pancakes, Morningstar Farms soy sausage links, edamame on a pick, carrot flowers and strawberry halves.  Hidden behind/underneath the bunny pancakes are more pancakes and more edamame.

The Bunny faces were made with nori and sesame seeds for the eyes (secured to the pancakes with a tiny bit of icing), pink icing and half of an edamame for the noses.  Small bits of uncooked somen noodles help secure the ears to the rest of the pancake.  The carrot flowers were decorated with mustard seeds.

I can hardly believe it's only been a week since Anime Weekend Atlanta!  It was a wonderful weekend and I'm so grateful that we got to go.  A-chan's favorite part was getting to cosplay.  Most of my favorite parts were the panels, although the Trigun manga that I found at the Super Happy Fun Sell was  probably the highlight.  (Huge Trigun fan, yep!  I have a crush on Vash.)

A-chan and I at AWA.  She was so cute with her angel wings! I wasn't very cute but I was wearing my favorite Purple Butterfly covered michiyuki with a matching butterfly hair stick.  I'm addicted to hair jewelry.

Quick Noodle Bento

This bento represents a victory for edamame consumption!  A-chan will eat edamame as long as I leave them in the pods so that she can pull them out herself.  If I remove them from the pods or, heaven forbid, purchase them already shelled she will turn up her nose in scorn.  I have finally realized this and voila - she's eating them like candy.

Using dividers and containers add cuteness to a bento with lightning fast timing.  This is a wonderful thing on those crazy busy mornings when everything needs to happen at once and kittens are scrambling underfoot to add some adventure.  I love the pig container, it's just so cute!  You can close it for holding things that are a little juicy but I prefer to have it open so it's possible to see what's inside.

In the bento:  Plain macaroni noodles, a parsley leaf, baby carrots, boiled edamame, baby corn in the piggy container, strawberries and a slice of lemon.  On the side is a container of grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle over the noodles.

The container for the parmesan is a re-purposed sugar sprinkle container.  They come in packs of 6 at the grocery store with different colored sugar inside for making cookies and topping cupcakes.  Once they are empty I wash them and fill them with salt or parmesan or furikake for use with bentos.  The parmesan container is topped off regularly and stored in the fridge so that it is ready at a moment's notice.

Acorn Sammies

Whew!  I am so happy to be back to posting.  My sickness is finally over and I am human again with only a little bit of coughing and no fever :)  Last week was rough.  This week is exciting though - today is my first day of school!  And we're going to San Jose, CA later in the week.  I would love suggestions about things to do while we're out that way.

In the bento: Acorn sandwiches filled with peanut butter and sugar sprinkles, blueberries on picks, an apple bunny, corn on the cob, steamed broccoli and a container of carrot hearts.

The acorn sammies were cut with a Wilton cookie cutter.  Their cute caps were cut from the heel of the loaf and I used scissors to shape them to the right size. My carrot peeler was dirty this morning (I have a huge backlog of cleaning to attend to from being sick all last week) so I cut slices without peeling the carrot and then used a tiny heart shaped cutter to cut from the centers.  The rest of the carrot got scooped up to go into the compost, peel and all.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Butterfly Fans

Ahhh, the glories of Spring!  Everywhere we look there are butterflies and flowers.  And the fruit, don't forget all the delicious incredible spring fruit.  There is a farm nearby that allows people to come and pick huge buckets of strawberries.  Soon, very soon, we will be in strawberry ecstasy.  But until then I decided to stick with butterflies, flowers and an apple bunny.

In the bento: Two peanut butter and sugar sprinkle sandwiches with fan decorations, sesame carrots, corn on the cob, steamed broccoli, carrot flower petals, steamed sugar snap peas, an apple bunny and mango chunks that are hiding behind the apple.  (You can see a hint of the hiding mango because it has the circular pick stuck into it.)

The fan shapes were cut from provolone cheese, the butterflies were cut from nori, the tiny flowers are carrots with snap pea leaves and sugar dots to add some color.  I would love to be able to say that I had cut the butterflies by hand, but alas I cannot make that claim.  The source of their magnificence is a scrapbook cutter that I purchased at Michael's the other day.  Though I attempted to refrain from the purchase, my bento greed won out!

A-chan never gets peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for school.  Not only is there too much sugar in jelly but it has a potential for incredible messes.  Instead I use sugar sprinkles (normally used on cookies, cupcakes, etc.) because they give the hint of sweetness that she loves without the mess or the sugar crash.

The Nose Knows

Sometimes having a big nose is a big asset, especially for this guy whose nose is so cute!  A-chan asked for an onigiri for lunch today and I was delighted to oblige.  Actually, she first requested fried tofu but was denied and then decided on onigiri.  Moms have to make these tough decisions for the good health and well being of our children.  I told her she would understand in 20 years, but I don't think she believed me.

In the bento: Bunny onigiri, baby carrots, apple slices and a pick of green peas in the main compartment.  The smaller compartment contains steamed broccoli, an apple bunny, a pick with green peas and carrot slices, orange slices.  

The bunny's face is made from soy bologna, nori, and pickled ginger.  

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.

Love Bunny

I have decided that the exacto knife is the bento maker's Sonic Screwdriver.  That thing is awesome!  This morning instead of playing it safe and cutting hearts in the apple as usual, I took the adventurous route and used the exacto knife to cut the heart shapes instead. Eureka!  Clean edges and no bruising means that the perfect apple carving tool is finally within my grasp.  *Insert sinister laugh here*

In the bento: Miniature pancakes, a container of feta, carrot hearts, Morningstar Farms sausage links, apple, sugar snap peas, a lemon wedge, and blackberries. The little monkey container has strawberry icing inside.

The bunny face was made with nori, carrot, and provolone cheese with strawberry jelly for the cheeks.  The pancakes are part of my freezer stash - Frozen miniature Eggo pancakes.  They are easy to cook on early mornings but I still wish that I could make homemade pancakes.  One day I will learn, but for now I won't try my hand at burning more.