Lovely Little Mushrooms

We all get stuck in a rut sometimes and feel like we don't have any creativity to pull out of our hats, right?  When that happens I ask A-chan what she would like in her bento for the next day.  Rarely has this backfired but in this case...yeah.  She asked for mushrooms, one boy and one girl.  What the heck?!  That was really no help, but thanks.  So now I needed to come up with an idea for 'shrooms and I had nothing.  Really.  Zip.  Ah, but I have books.   Inspiration found, I thought, and pulled out all of my charaben books.  They are all in Japanese which I can't read to save my life but hey, I can still look at the pictures and get ideas!  But...no mushrooms.  Gah.  In desperation I turned to Pinterest.  And there a beam of light came down from on high to illuminate one of AkinoIchigo's bentos with some cute mushrooms.  I loved it and had a great time coming up with this bento which is totally inspired by hers. Crisis averted.

In the bento:  Rice with homemade furikake, blackberries, carrot leaves, tofu and broccoli stirfry, feta chunks and an apple bunny.

The mushrooms were made from provolone cheese and a pink egg sheet that I distressed a bit with a toothpick to look more 'shroomish.  They have nori faces, more pink egg sheet for cheeks and the girly mushroom has a bow cut from carrot.  I think they came out really well.  More importantly A-chan loved them!

We are having a blast at the NanoWriMo challenge.  A-chan has around 450 words out of the 900 word goal that she set for herself.  I can't believe she's already half way there!  My word count is around 17,000 out of a total 50,000 to meet the challenge.  The biggest surprise so far has been the fact that my grammar and punctuation skills are not as good as I'd thought they were!

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.

Two Apples

This was a fun bento!  I loved making the tiny pink onigiri.  These cuties still don't look like apple halves to me, but A-chan thought they did so it's all okay.  My brilliant brainy thought of the morning was using parchment paper bits as the bento divider.  The pieces were left over from our cookie baking over the weekend.  Recycling is awesome.

In the bento:  Two pink onigiri, checkered cucumber slices, cherry tomato halves, carrot flowers, blackberries and a broccoli, carrot heart and tofu teriyaki stirfry.

Cheese would have worked better for the white apple bits, I think.  We didn't have any cheese though, so I quickly made a white egg sheet.  You can see where it curled at the top instead of laying flat.  I used black sesame seeds, nori, ketchup, steamed edamame and fried spaghetti noodles for the rest of the apple decorations.  The stirfry was also fun with the carrots cut into little heart shapes.  I was running out of time and cut the carrot flowers without boiling them first so they ended up all messy looking instead of clean cut.  Oh well.

Fall Colors

We noticed our first bit of Autumn color in the yard today.  Hurray for Fall!  This bento doesn't have anything to do with Fall.  In fact, it was made about two weeks ago.  However, it does have very happy onigiri in it.  And it has plenty of our new favorite food - edamame. It keeps ending up in all kinds of new recipes.  One might say that I have a crush on edamame, in fact.

In the bento: Two plain onigiri with happy faces and edamame decoration, baby tomatoes, nectarine slices, steamed broccoli and a container of stirfry that includes tofu, baby corn, carrots and edamame.

The onigiri eyes were punched out of nori but the smiles were hand cut with scissors.  Their cheeks were strawberry jam applied with a toothpick.  Tiny pieces of uncooked somen noodles help to attach the edamame to the onigiri.

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!

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!

Panda Sammie Cuteness

Today is going to be a blast from the past!  I'm going to resurrect some ancient primitive technology skills to demo for A-chan's class. We're talking way back. Only a few of the artifacts that were created in our days of primitive skills glory will get to shine today.  The ones I'm most proud of were the bone needle, awl and pins that I carved with flint tools that I knapped myself - it was so cool.  The part that A-chan is looking forward to the most is the atlatl demonstration.  That's the one I'm nervous about.  While my husband is a spear throwing genius, my skills in that area generally lead to embarrassment.  But the kids will still enjoy it and get to learn about ancient techniques to go along with their early human class arc.  What does this have to do with a panda sandwich in a bento?  Um...nothing...I'm just totally excited!

In the bento: Panda sandwich filled with cheese and mayo, nectarine slices, steamed broccoli, baby tomatoes with musical picks, lemon slices, a flowery container of tofu, baby corn and carrot stirfry, cheese stars.

The panda's features were cut with a nori punch and glued to the bread with tiny amounts of mayo that I applied with a toothpick.  The same technique was used to place the sesame seeds for the eyes.  The veggies and tofu were quick stir fried with with ginger, garlic and soy sauce.