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.

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.

Highland Dance

This weekend is A-chan's first Scottish Highland Dance competition.  She's both excited and nervous.  I'm totally exuberant!  The Highland Games are always fun.  I mean what's not fun about bagpipes, kilts and lovely, yummy scones?  Plus it's an excuse to make Scottish Forfar Bridies for our bento lunches during the weekend.  Ghillies (Highland dance shoes) are one of the main icons of the Scottish dancer so I decided to make this bento to cheer A-chan on.  I wish that I'd made them a wee bit smaller, but otherwise I love how they turned out!  You can see bits of our clan tartan and badge in the background.  And of course I had to include a couple of plaid picks for the occasion.

In the bento:  Veggie fried rice, raspberries, blueberries, pineapple, steamed broccoli and carrot flowers.

The ghillies were cut from white egg sheets.  Nori designs were cut out with scissors and then were applied directly to the egg sheet.  See all those strangely cut pieces of carrot in the fried rice?  That's what I do with the bits of veggies left over from cutting out flowers, etc.  They get frozen and then used in fried rice and soups.

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.

Sweet Lamb

It's been a while since I've done any blogging and I was a little worried that I wouldn't remember how!  I'm  grateful to have a new computer so that the internet and I can be playmates again.  It is doubtful that I can catch up on all the bentos that I've missed seeing during the last few months, but I'm going to try, darn it.

This lamb bento was made for one of A-chan's summer camp days.  As always, summer camp lunches need to be simple because they get tossed into a huge plastic container and carried around the camp.  Anything with complex characters tends to be a huge mess by lunchtime.

In the bento:  Rice lamb with egg sheet face, ears and feet.  His eyes and mouth are nori and his cheeks are tiny buds from a raspberry.  He has carrot letters, a side of soy sauce tofu hearts with nori centers, steamed edamame, raspberries and blueberries.

The strange tofu shapes that were left over from cutting out the hearts were also cooked and are hidden underneath the hearts.

Santa!

OMG, it's only a week away! How many bento items are on your list to Santa?  I've asked the big guy for quite a lot of bento gear.   Christmas is very different for us this year and A-chan is having a rough time.  We're trying to do our best to be jolly and enjoy the season and that includes making Holiday bentos.  I love using red bell pepper in holiday bentos.  It's the only time of year that A-chan will accept them in her lunches.  Note that she doesn't actually eat them - she just allows me to put them in to make Santa hats.  And in the background is part of the Advent Calendar that I made for her this year:  cupcakes!

In the bento: Lots of rice, eggsheet, veggie hot dog, red bell pepper, lemon, black olives, steamed broccoli and raspberries.

Santa's face is made with pink eggsheet with nori for the eyes and nose.  There are hotdog slices for his cute cheeks and a huge piece of bell pepper for his hat with some lemon peel and nori for the bells. I am delighted to have found some liquid food coloring recently.  It gives a much more even color to eggsheets than the gel food coloring.  The pink turned out very nicely!  I wish now that I there was more definition between Santa's hat and his hair.

The amazing Karaimame of Acquiring Taste inspired me to start doing creative advent calendars a couple of years ago.  (Hers are incredible!)  This year I decided on a cupcake theme.  There just happened to be a mini cupcake stand in my cabinet that had never been used.   I wanted to do something with it.  Getting tiny gifts that would fit inside the miniature cupcakes was an extra challenge.  Making it was so much fun and it's very cute sitting on our kitchen counter.  The cats thought it was a great game to knock the cupcakes off the stand so in the end I taped them all on.

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

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.

Bear with a Bow Tie

Today's bento has several of my favorite Southern staple foods, though not all can make an appearance in a bento.  Gravy, in particular, is not suited for bento lunches.  A-chan's first words upon seeing the bento this morning were, "The bear and the raspberry are going to get squished."  Yes, she has definitely started catching onto my bento packing problems!  Luckily I was able to rearrange things a bit so that neither the bear or the berry got 'squished' when I put the lid on.  It was a near thing, though.

In the bento: A raspberry, a roll, two Morningstar Farms chik nuggets, grapes on a pick, corn on the cob, steamed broccoli, orange slices, a container of black eyed peas and pan-fried potato stars and bear.

Mr. Bear was cut from a slice of raw potato, as were the stars.  They were then pan fried with a tiny bit of olive oil.  Once they cooled I was able to put the nori and cheese facial details, ketchup cheeks and dapper cucumber bow tie on Mr. Bear.  In the background is a container of ketchup to go with the chik nuggets.  Not shown was another container with a little bit of spreadable butter to go on the roll.

Lunchtime Friends

The tiny onigiri cube army is coming!  Run for your lives.  Call the Dr.  Get out the soy sauce!  This morning would have been so much easier if I had remembered to make the onigiri last night.  Alas, I made them this morning instead which made the bento take longer to pack.  And when I had decided on today's menu I hadn't taken into account that it took 12 cubes to fill in the box.  I was thinking 6.  Oh well, what's a Tuesday for if not adventure?

In the bento: 12 cube onigiri minis, corn on the cob, a date, raspberries, orange slices, grapes, veggie and tofu stirfry and cheese flowers.

The stifry has broccoli, carrots, tofu, green peas and baby spinach.  There are two onigiri bears, two doggies and two kitties.  They were formed with the help of an onigiri mould which makes 3 at a time.  Their faces were punched or cut from nori and applied with the help of tweezers.  My favorites are the kitties, of course!

Tic Tac Toe

Whoa!  A bento post on a Saturday?  Yep.  I'm feeling guilty that I haven't had time to post the last two days so I decided to post today.  What have I been doing that I've been too busy to make the all-important bento post?  There is a huge bellydance event coming up next weekend where I'm performing with an awesome group of women.  So rehearsals are in full swing, plus I'm a staff member helping to pull off this incredible weekend of dance and a tiny bit of panic has started to set in.  Then there's the math test next week.  If I'm on the computer right now it's almost guaranteed that I'm practicing math.  Wheee!

In the bento: Rice with a nori, pea and carrot tic tac toe board, one Morningstar Farms chik nugget cut in half, a half slice of corn on the cob, raspberries, steamed broccoli and two grapes on a pick.

I set up the nori game grid before A-chan came to see her bento that morning.  Then gave her the carrot x's and we played.  It was a fun way to start the morning and it didn't take very long!  She was thrilled that she got to play a part in decorating her bento.

Have a wonderful weekend!

4 Star Inarizushi

A-chan is staying home sick today.  She woke up with bright red cheeks and a fever.  I suspected something was amiss last night when she didn't feel like finishing her Valentine's Day pancake at dinner.  That has never happened before!  Her bento had already been made so she gets to eat it at home.

In the bento: Carrot ribbons, a piggy containing feta cheese, steamed broccoli, a bunch of grapes, a container of raspberries and four inarizushi with carrot stars.

Carrot ribbons are one of the fastest, easiest ways to pack carrots in a bento.  They fit into whatever space is needed and they just look cool.  I love looking at the fabric reflected on the contours of this box!