A New Obsession

So here's the new obsession in our house!  Of course, A-chan loves video games.  I suck at them.  No, really.  I'm terrible.  Most of our game play consists of my daughter asking if I want her to get me through this part.  Or with me screaming as my poor character dies.  Anyway...there's nothing better than making bentos that are as much fun as the other things we enjoy.

In the bento:  Fried rice with lots of veggies, stirfried broccoli and baby corn, soy turkey flower, lemon slice, checkered apple, blackberries, radish, cheddar cheese, and tomato.

Mario's hat was fun to make with a tomato, provolone cheese and a carrot 'm'.  The stars are made from cheddar cheese with nori eyes.  The little radish's eyes are black sesame seeds.  All in all it was a simple bento to make, but the reaction that it got was huge!

Sweet Kitten

I love how this bento turned out!  So kawaii that I can't stand it.  One thing that I want everyone to know - practice is the key to cuteness.  After years of making onigiri kitties, I think I might have hit on the penultimate cute one.  Or ... maybe I'm biased.  Either way, the more you make bentos the more awesome they will get, I promise.  My girl's birthday is coming up soon and I'm already beginning to dread the day when she grows up so much that she doesn't want cute things in her lunches.  What will I do?  I'll have to start making them for me.

In the bento: Two onigiri with a bed of rice and black sesame seeds underneath, blackberries, steamed broccoli, cherry tomato, checkered apple, teriyaki tofu, lemon slice and carrot hearts.

The kitty's eyes and nose were uncooked black soy beans and his tail and other details were made with provolone cheese.  His whiskers were cut from nori.

Froggies and Fireflies

JapanFest was the best thing since onigiri molds!  We had a blast watching the sumo wrestling, taiko drumming and Bunraku puppetry, not to mention seeing all the smiling faces throughout the weekend.  Thanks so much to all the people who came to the lectures and stopped by the booth.  It's always a difficult transition back to normality after an exciting event, but we're trying our best.  Silly frog onigiri were a great way to usher in the week.

In the bento:  Frog onigiri, potato salad in a container, strawberries, lemon slices, steamed broccoli, a vegetarian tsukune patty, carrot and turnip flowers and a couple of nori dragonflies on cheese circles.

To get green rice I added a couple drops of food coloring to the water before cooking the rice.  The onigiri shapes were made with an onigiri mold.  Provolone cheese and nori were used for the facial detail.  The frog's tongue was sweet potato peel.  It was pretty simple to cut the dragonflies out of nori using a stencil punch from a local craft store.

I love using black sesame seeds for detail on flowers and things like the dragonflies' flight paths.  Sesame seeds are extremely versatile, not to mention yummy!

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.

Stamped Sammie Rolls

Hello Wednesday!  I'm glad to finally have time to post this week.  How does school become so utterly time-consuming?  Yesterday I was a volunteer model for the ultrasound students at my college.  They told me that I had a beautiful Aorta, how cool is that!

In the bento:  Two peanut butter roll sammies, Morningstar Farms sausage links, baby corn, steamed broccoli, a cherry, strawberry halves, three baby carrot flowers, some edamame pods and lemon wedges.

The sandwich rolls are fairly dense.  I took slices of bread and cut off the crusts before flattening them with a rolling pen.  Then added the peanut butter and sugar sprinkles before rolling them.  Each one has two slices of bread rolled up in order to make them substantial enough for the Hello Kitty stamp.  They were then wrapped in saran wrap and tied at the ends with large ribbons.  Getting the ribbon ends to fit into the bento enough to get the lid closed was quite the challenge!

I hope that everyone is having a great week!

Little Kittens

Today's bento is in honor of the three little kittens that are currently running our household.  They will be five weeks old tomorrow and have started learning how to cause mayhem and chaos this week.  Of course, they are the cutest things EVER!  Somehow it has been impossible for me to get a good picture of them, so here they are in inari zushi form.

In the bento: Three inari kittens, baby corn, carrot star, lemon slice, steamed broccoli (hidden behind the carrot star), a cherry, a checkered apple, half of a cherry tomato and a few green beans.

The kitten faces are made with white egg sheet and nori.  The whites of the eyes were 'glued' onto the inari skins with a tiny bit of mayo which was applied with a toothpick.  I squeezed the corners of the rectangular inari skins to make them resemble kitty ears.

Here is a picture of the kittens nursing on a very frazzled mama cat, lol.  A-chan and I have a difference of opinion in names.  She had already given them names five minutes after they were born.  The one on the left is Stripey according to the 7 year old, while I prefer Jewel.  The middle kitten is Cloudy or Quartz.  The black one is either called Brownie by A-chan or Onyx by me.

Birthday Treat and Review

Ahhh, the beauty of lunch is mine!  I bought myself a 'Bento Colors' box from Bento & Co. for my birthday. I might not have needed an excuse to buy a new bento box but a birthday is a good one.  For a long time I have passionately wanted one of these sleek boxes but kept putting it off because I didn't make many bento lunches for myself.  That's changing with my new schedule and going back to school!

At first I wasn't sure what to do with three entire tiers.  Filling three tiers required a new way of planning.  In actuality it wasn't difficult at all and I was amazed at how much food fit into this box even though it is relatively skinny.  The tier on the far right is deeper than the other two.  I was delighted to be able to fit the huge cherry tomato in without having to cut it and it fit absolutely perfectly into the rounded end.  The lids were a bit different from any of my other bento boxes, but I was very happy with the way that they fit and I felt that they made a good, solid seal.

In the bento:  The left tier held Fuji apple slices, steamed broccoli, steamed edamame, two cherry halves, two tiny homemade vegetarian meatballs and a lemon wedge.  The middle tier is stuffed with rice and topped with a sprinkling of homemade furikake.  The right tier had a huge cherry tomato, potato salad with edamame and mustard seeds, steamed squash and two carrot flowers on a bed of purple cabbage.

Purple is my favorite color.  You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to find purple bento boxes!  Now you know why I coveted this one...   The three boxes slide into the outer case very easily with guides on the inside to help.  It also closes completely with little effort and fit into almost all of my bento bags.  (Yes, I had to try it in all of them, just to see.)  Opening it is also pretty easy although I had to use the thumb of my left hand on one side and the right hand on the other.  My hands simply were not large enough to grasp the end and remove it in one fell swoop.

Overall I am just as delighted with the 'Bento Colors' box as I had hoped to be.  While having an extra tier was intimidating at first, I have since fallen head over heels for the extra space.  I loved carrying it and found that I didn't obsess about it falling over like I have done with other boxes.  The elegant case is just perfect and beautifully streamlined.  The only drawback was that my camera didn't want to take a good picture of the case - it was simply too reflective!  I had to put the elephant in front to give the camera something to focus on in order to get a relatively decent picture.

First Day of Summer Camp

Happy Summer!  We had a great time being lazy and catching up with friends for our first week of summer break.  This week is A-chan's first summer camp of the year at a nearby Nature Center.  Since I was pretty sure that lunches would be jumbled around at camp, I packed her bento very tightly with extra lettuce and kept the cuteness to a minimum.

In the bento: Two miniature homemade vegetarian hamburgers, lemon slices, carrot flowers, two onigiri, steamed broccoli, a cherry tomato and two picks of cheddar cheese.  On the side is a container of ketchup for the hamburgers.

This was an extremely quick bento to put together.  I already had rice made and waiting in the fridge to be microwaved and made into onigiri.  The triangular mold made it easy and speedy.  The mix for the hamburgers was also waiting in the fridge - I formed them into patties and cooked them in a small pan with a tiny bit of sesame oil.

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.

Friday Onigiri

After all the hearts yesterday I decided to do a bento classic for today and made happy onigiri because it's Friday!  This weekend is going to be pretty busy with A-chan's Taekwondo sparring camp and me going to dance rehearsals for a show in Feb.  I'm making our plans into excuses to make weekend bentos.

In the bento: Two round and happy onigiri, orange slices, a container of blueberries with a pink hedgehog pick, a baby tomato and a bread 'bowl' filled with tofu, carrot and broccoli stirfry.

The onigiri faces were punched out of nori except for the cheeks which were cut from gari.  The pretty bow was painstakingly cut from lemon peel and orange peel using the exacto knife, which was more difficult than I expected.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

A Heart-full bento

This bento turned out to have a theme, though I didn't know it until I was taking the picture.  Hmm.  I guess it's almost Valentine's Day!  Oh boy, we get to make chocolates!  A-chan is already gushing about the chocolate making tradition and has started counting down the days.  I was informed this morning at breakfast that there are only 19 days til Valentine's.

In the bento: A heart shaped container filled with chickpeas and feta, steamed broccoli, baby carrots, two bamboo picks with veggie hot dog slices and provolone cheese hearts, a lemon slice, two potato and cheese pierogies, pear slices, blueberries and a tiny tomato on a heart pick.

I find it difficult to make the heart shaped container fit into my bentos so it usually sits unused in my bento gear box.  However, this bento was designed around it!  It was the first thing to go in and I worked everything else around it.

Hug Me!

What is your opinion on kissing frogs?  Mine tends to be along the lines of 'Ewwwww'!  But I'm okay with hugging one.  Anyway...

It's Friday!  The happy Friday dance commenced a little later than normal this morning.  Ahhh, lovely Friday.  I am so looking forward to the weekend.  Not only am I planning to put away the Christmas decorations, there is going to be a huge cleaning spree!

In the bento: Vegetarian spaghetti, picks of black olives, a lemon slice, nectarine chunks, baby corn, a strawberry balloon, cucumber froggie and cheese letters.

The tiny letters were made with my brand new letter cutters that I got at IchibanCon.  Aren't they cute?  I'm loving them!  The frog face was cut from cucumber peel using a frog/teddy bear face cutter.  His body was cut with a knife but the arms were left over from the face cutting.  The eyes and mouth were cut from provolone and his nose is sesame seeds.

Here is a link to my vegetarian spaghetti recipe (on my other blog): http://incaseofasparagus.blogspot.com/2012/01/make-spaghetti-vegetarian-style.html

Simple ravioli bento

There are days when I just can't help but smile.  Today is beautiful!  Bright sunshine, blue skies, temperatures are back to levels that are not crazy cold.  2012 is starting out as a wonderful year.  A-chan and I are heading to IchibanCon in Charlotte, NC tomorrow.  It's our first event of the year and we can't wait!

In the bento: Four cheese ravioli with red peppers and feta, Morningstar Farms veggie link sausages, clementine pieces, steamed broccoli, apple bunny and a tiny wedge of lemon.

This bento is very simple, but very filling!

Fruit in a Bear

Isn't it cute?  The box, I mean.  Pizza day was the best excuse to pop out my new bento box and give it a whirl.  It's the Kuma White Donburi from Bento and Co.  Dude, it's a deep bento box!  Those aren't orange wedges they are half slices.  Half a black plum fit alongside the oranges.  Some might call the lemon wedges citrus overload with all the orange slices, but I wanted something to fit perfectly in that tight curve.  The side container holds a ton of blueberries and pomegranate seeds.

In the bento:  (Hmmm, I think I've already told you everything, but oh well!) Lemon wedges, half orange slices, black plum chunks, blueberries and pomegranate seeds.  There are a few provolone cheese stars and a strawberry divider because it went with the fruit theme and made things cuter.

You may have noticed that the blueberry/pomegranate seeds combination has been going on all week.  That is usually part of how I plan my bentos - A-chan chooses two fruits and then I combine them in different ways all week.  Only...there aren't a lot of ways to combine blueberries and pomegranate seeds.  They do look pretty jumbled together in a container, though!

Happy Friday everyone!

Cutie pies?

The day after Halloween dawned bright and way too early for my liking!  And even worse, without any bento ideas in my head.  Things were basically thrown into the bento box at random with some lettuce for padding and crossed fingers for luck.

In the bento: Lemon wedges, pomegranate wedge, blueberries, grapes, carrot flowers, green peas, cheddar cheese cubes, soy sausage links, heart shaped onigiri cutie pies.

I'm calling the onigiri 'cutie pies' because I don't know what else to call them.  They aren't anything in particular - just something cute that I could make out of frozen onigiri.  Their faces were made from nori with pomegranate juice for the cheeks.  The tiny flowers were cut from provolone cheese and I used leftover nori punched pieces for their centers.  There are random pomegranate seeds and carrot flowers all over the place for no good reason, lol.

Did you all have a wonderful Halloween?  I hope that you got tons of candy!  There were a few hiccups to our Halloween evening but overall we had a great time. One of the cats stole my dinner while I wasn't looking.  Snatched it right off my plate and under the couch.   A-chan and I had fun Trick or Treating until the poor girl fell on two different staircases, after which she decided not to continue with a hurt leg.  Luckily it was just bruised and felt much better this morning.  She looked very cute in her Garden Fairy costume.

It was designed by her and sewn together by me.  The wings were purchased at the Ren Faire several years ago and we added some flowers and sparkly beaded strings.  My roman outfit was not quite suitable for the freezing temperatures, but I was crazy enough to wear it anyway - any excuse to dress up in costume!