Minecraft Christmas

I'm going to be honest with you.  It's a difficult proposition to take a pretty picture of a pig.  Especially a Minecraft pig which is blocky and awkward and has eyes pointing in opposite directions.  But the strawberries in this picture are beautiful which totally makes up for the pig.  As you might be guessing, my daughter is in love with Minecraft.  One might even say that she is obsessed.  So I'm trying to accommodate this new found love with some charabens to match, which ought to be fairly easy considering that they are all square shapes.  I'm finding it to not be quite as easy as I'd thought!

In the bento:  Sushi rice, strawberries, asian pear, carrot flowers, soy-turkey flower, and cucumber slices.

The pig was made of pink colored egg sheet, soy turkey, nori and raw turnip slices.  His santa hat was made from half of a strawberry and a raw turnip.

Tonkatsu kitties

How do I describe tonkatsu?  Crispy deep fried bundles of joy.  Tonkatsu is wonderful by itself but pair it up with the gastronomic delight that is tonkatsu sauce and you have one of my ultimate top comfort foods.  Normally tonkatsu would be pork cutlets breaded with panko crumbs and deep fried.  My vegetarian version of this is extra firm tofu that has been frozen, thawed and breaded in panko before being deep fried to a crunchy golden brown.  The process of freezing the tofu gives it a much different texture that is perfect for this kind of dish.

This tonkatsu bento is also an example of my stunningly brilliant freezer stash plan.  Over the weekend we had tonkatsu for dinner and the leftovers promptly went back into the freezer for easy reheating bento-style.  I popped them straight from the freezer into the oven for about 12 minutes before cutting into slices for the bento.   Reheating in the oven thaws out the tofu and dries it a little bit (freezing tofu always creates extra water that needs to be either squeezed or baked out) and makes the panko nice and crisp at the same time.  

The only problem with our love of tonkatsu is that A-chan is now old enough to eat way more of my tonkatsu sauce than I would like.  But that's okay because I taught her how to make it this morning.  She can now make more whenever she runs out.  Or I run out, whichever...

In the bento: Basmati rice, tofu tonkatsu, pomegranate seeds, baby corn, checkered cucumber slices, black pluot chunks and a carrot flower.

The little kitties were made from provolone cheese and yellow egg sheet.  Their faces were punched out of nori and glued on with a tiny bit of mayo.

Not shown: the huge container of tonkatsu sauce that A-chan took with her this morning.

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.

Fall is here!

Apparently Halloween ushered in the proper fall weather and now it's time for us to pull out all our sweaters and gloves.  There are at least seven different colors of leaves in the trees around our house.  It's the perfect weather to sip coffee and ruminate.  I decided to post a bento of mine today, clearing the bento palate from the glut of Halloween cuteness.  My absolute favorite part of this bento was the tiny purple flowers!

In the bento:  Rice (haha, like you didn't already know that), tonkatsu-ish tofu slices, broccoli sprouts, tiny purple potato flowers, apple, potato salad, checkered cucumber slices, snap peas, a veggie gyoza and carrot leaves.

In other news, A-chan and I have joined the ranks of crazy people participating in NaNoWriMo!  If you haven't been clued in to what that is:  National Novel Writing Month.  Yes, that's right.  We're attempting to write a novel in a month.  Two of my very best friends have been participating for years and this November I decided to throw myself into the frenzy.  A-chan got all excited about it and wanted to sign up too.  It's been three days and so far we're both keeping up our daily word goal.  For me it's just a fun challenge.  I'm hoping that for A-chan it will be a great time-management learning experience as well as fun.

Mummies and Spiders

Oh my goodness, tomorrow is Halloween!  What is your favorite candy?  Skittles are my guilty pleasure.  A-chan is totally ready to go trick or treating.  She wants me to join her in the candy gathering extravaganza and so far doesn't believe that I'm too old to trick or treat.  Since I haven't had a chance to post a lot of Halloween bentos, I'm putting up two at once today.

In the Mummy bento: Rice, a cherry tomato, grapes, sauteed squash, checkered apple, carrot hearts, teriyaki tofu and vegetables.

The Mummies were so much fun to make.  Wrapping and layering the provolone cheese over the nori was pretty cool.  The hearts were cut from apple peel and the line of black sesame seeds were placed meticulously with out kitty cat thief looking on in fascination.  Luckily I have learned some tricks to keep Stripey the kitty thief from stealing broccoli out of the bentos in the morning!

One of the challenges of the new school year is that one of A-chan's schoolmates has a very bad peanut allergy and no peanuts are allowed in their lunches.  Being a mom whose child has food allergies, I am happy to see the school enforcing this.  It does make for some changes in my routine.  I had gotten used to having a peanut butter and jelly sammie as a backup for busy days or morning when I wasn't feeling good.   Different sandwich choices are fun and strange all at once.  Inside these spider sammies is a lovely chopped cheese and mayo mixture.  Unfortunately A-chan doesn't appreciate pimento cheese sandwiches yet, to my chagrin.

In the Spider bento:  Two cheese and mayo sandwich balls, cucumber spider webs, orange slices, strawberries and steamed broccoli.

A-chan's favorite thing about this bento were the spider's huge eyes.  They were cut from provolone cheese and nori.  The spiders' legs were fried spaghetti noodles.

Cheerful Jack o'Lanterns

Thank goodness fall is here!  Cooler weather, falling leaves, acorns and pumpkins are some of my favorite things.  We were a bit late with the Halloween decorating this year, finally getting it done this past weekend.  And I've been behind in making Halloween themed bentos too.  I spent the last two weeks without my computer again (can you say 'torture'?) and so I've missed two whole weeks putting up photos of my favorite holiday lunches.   To make up for that, I'm posting this horrible Jack'o'lantern pancake bento even though the edges of the face cut-outs are so awful and ragged looking.

When you are using exacto knives to cut food it's necessary to replace the blades every so often as they tend to go dull very quickly, not being made for slicing through things like pancakes and egg sheet every day.  Mine obviously needed replacing but I keep forgetting to go and buy a new set of replacement blades.  Today's bento is a very strong reminder for me to go shopping!

In the bento:  Miniature pancakes with cake icing, cucumber slices, carrots, cheese slices, french fries, dragonfruit, raspberries and blueberries.

The pancakes were frozen and took only 5 minutes to cook.  I cut out the facial features with my way too dull exacto knife.  The strawberry flavored cake icing was spread in a thin layer between the pancakes to make them sweet and make the faces pop at the same time.  Some thin slices of green onion helped them look like proper Jack'o'lanterns with stems and a couple of candy-themed picks finished it off.  The raspberries were fresh but the blueberries were frozen and popped into the bento just a moment before I snapped the picture.

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!

Princess Merida

For the last bento before our trip A-chan requested Merida.  Though she loves all the Disney Princesses, Merida is currently her favorite.  She has been learning Scottish Highland Dance since January and mentioned yesterday that she wanted to do some dancing for Merida at Disney!  There is a new fruit in this bento - dinosaur egg pluot.  I couldn't pass up the chance to eat a fruit with a name like that.  And I love it!  It's a very nice pluot with a mostly sweet taste and luckily A-chan loves it.

With complicated character bentos I sketch out the designs the night before and often do most of the prep work then as well.  In this case, the sketches, multiple egg sheets and the little bear onigiri were made the night before.  I neglected to check the sizing of the bears, leaving them much too big to fit into the actual bento.  A-chan claimed that she didn't mind if one got squished a little.

In the bento: Merida figure on top of a lovely block of rice, checkered apple, three bear onigiri, steamed broccoli, a cherry tomato (completely hidden under/behind the bears), garlic and basil encrusted tofu, baby corn spears and slices of dinosaur egg pluot.

Merida was made from (can you guess?) many layer of egg sheet and provolone.  I'm sure that no one is surprised by that since those are my standard ingredients for charaben.  I was excited about making the arrow and bow string, though.  The arrow is an uncooked udon noodle and the bow string is the edging cut from a slice of soy turkey.

The three bears are onigiri made from fried rice with lots of extra soy sauce to get them a deep brown color.  Soy turkey and nori were used for their faces.  I should have made their faces a little differently, but I was too concerned with trying to make them all fit into the box!

The target that proclaims our count down to vacation was cut from provolone cheese, cucumber peel and carrot.

Sketch of the Merida bento.

5 Days til Disney

The official countdown to our Disney world vacation starts with this bento lunch!  My character building skills are a little rusty, particularly in the facial detail areas and I could probably critique this bento for ages.  But honestly it's only 5 days til Disney so who cares?!  I knew that A-chan would be excited.  However, my current level of excitement was unanticipated.  I could have done a Micky Mouse bento which might have been simpler, but I wanted a challenge.  I wanted a princess.  So here is the favorite princess of my 16 year old self: Jasmine.

In the bento: Cheese sandwich hiding under Jasmine, strawberry slices, lemon slices, checkered cucumber slices and veggie hotdogs with carrot heart centers and a provolone cheese star with a carrot #5.

Jasmine was created with a background of provolone cheese, soy turkey for skin, cheddar cheese for jewelry and several colors of egg sheets for everything else.  Her little bird was made from white egg sheet, soy turkey and carrot.  I used nori for her eyelashes, nose and lips to give some definition.

I drew the character out on a piece of paper then cut each piece out around the edges of the paper with either my food scissors or an exacto knife blade.  Several different layers give a partial 3D illusion, especially with the hair.  A-chan loved it and gave me huge smiles, oohs and aahs this morning.  This might be the best loved lunch of the school year so far.

Disney owns the copyright to Princess Jasmine.

Birthday Bento!

Yesterday was my birthday.  I am old.  So old.  Don't get me wrong, though.  I am happy to be the age that I am and enjoying every minute!  A-chan used my new age to help her choose things all day long.  Can't decide which kind of candy to buy?  Just count them until you get to Mommy's age.  This was a great reminder of how much energy I don't have now that I'm so old.  Grocery shopping took way longer using this method, lol.

Even though I didn't have to go anywhere I decided to make myself a bento anyway, just to enjoy it.   I used one of my favorite boxes that I haven't gotten to use much recently.

In the bento: Tier 1 held carrot ribbons, quick cucumber pickles, potato salad, a lemon wedge and strawberries.  Tier 2 had green rice with black sesame seeds.  The largest tier contained strawberries, lemon wedges, soy turkey and cream cheese rolls, more carrot ribbons and three veggie gyoza.

It was a lovely day and I wish that it had lasted a lot longer than 24 hours.

First Day Back to School

Summer is over too quickly.  I can't believe that school is already starting!  Where did summer go?  In our house bento supplies are required back-to-school shopping.  A-chan was excited to get two new bento boxes and matching snack boxes and I was thrilled to get a few small decorating items.  It has been our tradition in the past for A-chan to request a special bento theme for the first day of school.  This year she couldn't decide on anything and left it up to me.  A mermaid seemed perfect since one of the most loved and most time-consuming activities of the summer was swim lessons.

In the bento: Pink rice mermaid onigiri, checkered cucumber, a huge cherry tomato, grape halves, sea themed biscuits, fried tofu, peach slices (hidden under the hair) and blackberries.

The mermaid's tail was cut from soy turkey slices and her hair was cut from an egg sheet.  Tiny carrot flowers decorate her hair and bra.  Sugar dots made a great pearl necklace.  I used a nori punch for her eyes and mouth and then dabbed on a bit of ketchup for cheeks.

Now let me show you our new bento loot!  A-chan loves taiyaki so getting the matching taiyaki set was a definite must.  That set was a surprise.  The skull boxes, however, she chose herself.  They are not my taste, lol.  She adores them - in part because they remind her of Monster High, I think.

Her old much-beloved bento bags were falling apart after being used continuously for two years and being washed a ton.  So she begged me for the orange piggy bag.

And here is the thing I got just for me.  Well, technically I will use it with her bentos.  But it's really for me.  Japanese letter cutouts!  Sweet!  I can't wait to start using these beautiful things.  Of course, first I will have to learn a little more Japanese than I currently know.  Can you see the carrot dangling in front of my face?

X-mas Presents

Are you ready for Christmas?  We're 75% there.  I'm pleased to report that our three kittens (five months old) have been ignoring the Christmas tree completely.  We were convinced that it was going to be climbed/knocked over/otherwise devastated within minutes of putting it up.  But with that worry out of the way I can concentrate on Finals (ugh) and Holiday bentos, yay!

In the bento: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich balls, frozen raspberries, a checkered apple, carrot stars, steamed edamame, half of a steamed Japanese sweet potato, cucumber holly leaves and pomegranate seeds.

The sammies were created using Lia Chen's technique which she posted a tutorial about and for which I am very thankful!  Each present has three eggsheet strips: two wrapped around and one for the bows.  I pinned them onto the sammies with small pieces of uncooked somen noodle, one piece in the back for the wraps and one for the bows in the front.  The cucumber holly leaves were cut with my exacto knife.

I hope that you guys are having a great December!  Good luck to everyone struggling with Finals like me :D

Frozen T-day Leftovers Bento

Getting into the swing of Christmas with Thanksgiving leftovers.  Cinnamoroll is made from a veggie sausage roll that was leftover on T-day and frozen for use in bentos.  There is also sweet potato casserole and corn on the cob that were frozen.  I love using pomegranate for holly berries.  It's one of my favorite things about Pomegranate besides the yum factor.

In the bento: Veggie sausage roll, carrot slices, cucumber slices and holly leaves, pomegranate seeds, sweet potato casserole, a checkered apple, carrot flowers and corn on the cob.

Cinnamoroll's ears were cut from Provolone cheese.  Her eyes and mouth were nori and her checks were cut from pieces of gari.

Underneath the bento is one of the cloth napkins that we tie dyed for Thanksgiving dinner.  (It's a tradition to make cloth napkins for T-day every year!)  There are also some chestnuts on the side.  I haven't been brave enough to try and cook them yet, so for now they are just being decorative.  The lady at the grocery store was scandalized that I only bought 3 of them.  She gave me a good ten minute lecture on how to cook them and made me promise to buy more next time.  (Apparently they take a loooong time to cook and it's a waste of effort to only cook 3.  Now I know!)

Yakisoba is Yummy!

Once again I deceived myself into believing that I would have a smidgen of free time during the Thanksgiving break.  Wrong!  On the plus side it was a fabulously fun week.  These bentos were eaten at Zoo Atlanta while we sat and watched the Gorillas have a snack.  I kept them plain and without characters since I would be carrying them through the zoo for a few hours before lunchtime.  This turned out to be a great plan since I got very excited about the Red Panda who was incredibly adorable.  There apparently was some jumping and squeeeing that could potentially have destroyed any characters.

After lunch I was excited to talk about bentos to the Japan Society of Georgia Perimeter College, woot! I really, really love to talk about bentos.  This was the second time that I had trouble remembering the name of a Japanese recipe, though.  It was Tsukune!  Next time I'm going to have it tattooed on my hand, I swear.  Thank you guys so much, I loved it and enjoyed meeting you all!

In the bentos:  Yaki soba noodles with sauteed tofu, cauliflower, broccoli and carrots was the main part for both of us.  A-chan had an apple bunny, baby corn and some black olives on picks.  I had the apple pieces that were cut off to make the bunny and some cucumber slices.

Fried Rice for Camp

Have you ever looked at a word, one that is very familiar, and been totally convinced that you'd spelled it incorrectly?  The word 'summer' went all wonky on me this morning.  It just looked wrong!  Ah, well.  I would attribute it to heat stroke except that it hasn't been very hot at all.

In the bento: Veggie fried rice, a huge cherry tomato, peach slices, grapes, pickled cucumber slices and black olives.

This bento is another one from last week's summer camp which A-chan absolutely adored.  Again, I kept it very simple.  The fried rice has green peas, roughly cut carrots, onions and scrambled tofu mixed into it. I put a little too much soy sauce in the rice as I fried it, so it ended up more brown than normal.  It seemed overkill to put in a soy sauce bottle with her bento, lol.

Caterpillar

Have you ever typed or written a word and had it look completely wrong even though you're sure you know how to spell it?  That happened with 'Caterpillar' today.  This cute guy was inspired by a caterpillar in the Yum-Yum Bento Box book.  It was just so cute!  Plus, A-chan is obsessed with caterpillars right now.  She has to stop and pet them and save them if they are in danger of being trod upon.

In the bento: Four plain rice balls, fried tofu, grapes, a cherry tomato, checkerboard cucumber slices, a tiny lemon wedge, an orange slice, and baby corn flowers.

For the caterpillar's face I used nori for the eyes and mouth, lemon peel for the nose and gari (pickled ginger) for the cheeks.  White sesame seeds help decorate the eyes and black sesame seeds decorate the body.  The baby corn flowers have cucumber peel leaves and orange peel centers.

I should have remembered to cut the cherry tomato in two in order to avoid potential eye injuries, but I totally forgot!  I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

South Korean Flag

Today we are getting ready to travel!  Our first weekend adventure this month will be in Charlotte, NC for a Tae Kwon Do tournament!  In honor of all the practice and hard work that A-chan has been doing I made a South Korean flag bento for her.  The South Korean flag is synonymous with Tae Kwon do in the US, showing up everywhere in the sport.  Many people, including myself until recently, don't realize the significance and meaning behind the symbolism.  It's fascinating - check it out on Wikipedia!

My flag is a pastel version.  I'm having trouble getting true reds and blues in my egg sheets.  But since A-chan still recognized it, I'm okay with the pretty pastel colors.

In the bento: Japanese curry and rice, raspberries, steamed broccoli, baby corn, grapes and a daikon radish flower with a cucumber leaf.

The flag is made from egg sheets and nori.  The background was cut with scissors while the center symbol was cut with a circular shaped cutter and an exacto knife.  The egg sheets made the nori start to curl up so the trigrams aren't even.  I also used the exacto knife to do a bit of radish carving to make the inner part of the flower before embellishing it with sugar sprinkles.

A Butterfly Day

Happy Friday! There are butterflies on my brain today.  The weather is so beautiful and there are tons of butterflies around the yard.  And I needed another excuse to use this fabulous butterfly cutter.  I am right now thinking of other reasons to get myself to Michael's so that I can drool over other cutters.  It's possible that I might have an obsession.  Yep.

In the bento: Pasta, eggsheet, frozen strawberries, cucumber slices, orange wedges, plum, and veggie hotdogs.  Not shown: a container of grated parmesan cheese for the pasta and a container of ketchup for the hotdog.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Time to Plant Yet?

Spring is being confusing this year.  The weather won't make up it's mind.  It is way too cold to be almost May!  Georgia is supposed to be warm and comfy this time of year and instead I'm freezing.  I want to start planting.  When do I get to play with flowers?

In the bento: Two onigiri with scrambled tofu, purple potato flowers, cherry tomato, pistachios, carrot flower, steamed broccoli and chunks of mango.

The potato flowers are decorated with sesame seeds and have cucumber peel leaves.  I used a knife to slice the cucumber peel from the cucumber and then used scissors to cut the leaves.  The letters were cut from egg sheet leftover after making the Cupcake Kitty.  Have I mentioned lately that I adore my letter cutters?  The thought of trying to cut them out by hand sends shivers down my spine.

Making scrambled tofu onigiri is very easy, however since the tofu is colored using tumeric the yellow gets all over the rice when mixing them together.  The end result is not as striking compared to using scrambled egg.

Black and White

This bento unintentionally became a study in black and white.  After I finished packing it and stood back to take the picture I had to laugh.  Although I often think of pasta as being 'white', in reality it is more of a yellow color.  I am always surprised by this when I try to make pasta from scratch and make it different colors! Again it is a very simple bento instead of a charaben, but it contains some of A-chan's favorite foods which makes both of us happy.

In the bento: Penne pasta with black live slices and a carrot flower in one tier.  The other tier holds matzo crackers and butter cheese, a container of quick cucumber slice pickles, carrot slices, strawberries and mango chunks.  Not shown is a container of freshly grated parmesan cheese for her to sprinkle over the pasta.

The quick pickles are extremely simple to make and are a great way to introduce pickles to kids who aren't fans yet.  (Though mine is a huge fan of pickles and would eat the whole jar and then drink the juice if I would let her!)  You can use any veggie, but some like carrots or cauliflower are better if blanched and dried first.  With only a few ingredients you can make them while you're getting the rest of the bento packed.

Quick pickles: This makes just enough for one bento.

3 slices of cucumber, cut into strips
Salt to sprinkle
2-3 TB Rice Vinegar
Black sesame seeds

Optional ingredients:
Sugar to sprinkle (for sweeter pickles, either regular sugar or brown sugar)
Cayenne powder or flakes (for hot pickles)

1. Spread the veggie slices out in a single layer on a plate or in a bowl.
2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
3. Pour the Rice Vinegar on top and let soak for 5-20 minutes. The longer they soak the stronger the pickle.
4. If you want to add any sugar or cayenne, mix it into the rice vinegar before pouring onto the veggies.
5. Sprinkle with black sesame seeds.

Note:  You can dry them before packing.  Or you can leave some of the vinegar as long as you pack them in a container such as the panda above.