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.

Because it's time for Fall

There is a definite chill in the air which means that it's time for Pumpkin flavored everything, warm socks and the 'poing' sound of acorns pelting the car roof.  After so many years of making bento lunches some trends have shown up.  Fall = Totoro.  It has now become an official household tradition that the first fall bento includes Totoro.

In the bento: Totoro onigiri with black sesame seeds, black olives, strawberries, corn on the cob, clementine slices, a huge carrot leaf, steamed edamame and vegetarian hotdogs.

Totoro has black sesame seeds mixed in with the rice for a grayish color.  His belly and eyes are of provolone cheese and nori, but his nose was cut from a black olive.  The ears were made separately and are affixed to his head with uncooked udon noodles.  A-chan said that she though he looked more like a bunny than Totoro, but he was still cute so it's okay.

There was a lot of hidden food in this bento.  To get the corn perfect looking I cut off a ragged end but put it underneath Totoro to angle him up a little.  Another strawberry and clementine slice were underneath the fruit and more steamed edamame were crammed around under the black olive soot sprites.

Sad Soba Puppy

Sometimes sad can be cute.   This puppy certainly qualifies according to A-chan.  She liked it and enjoyed eating it but to me this bento is not colorful enough!  That happens sometimes, especially when one is getting ready to go to the grocery store and is running out of ingredients and leftovers.   In fact, I was out of eggs to make egg sheets and I had no provolone cheese.  His eyes and muzzle were cut from slices of uncooked zucchini which was the only thing I had that was white.

In the bento: Soba noodles, Morningstar farms chik'n patties, zucchini, carrot butterflies, steamed green beans, a strawberry and some nectarine slices.

Puppy's ears were cut from a chik'n patty, his eyes and nose are carrot and some tiny nori circles were stuck on with some mayo for decoration.

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.

Monster High Bento

A-chan's 9th birthday was this past weekend.  I can't believe she's 9!  How did she suddenly become so grown up?  Her birthday party theme was Monster High which she loves.  She's also dressing up as a Monster High character for Halloween.  So we went all out with Monster High everything, including a bento.  My girl even made her own birthday cake this year (with a little help from a great friend) which was, of course, a Monster High cake.  I am so proud of her.

In the bento: Rice, veggie hotdogs, steamed broccoli, baby corn, grapes and a strawberry.

The Skullette was cut from nori, provolone cheese and pink egg sheet.  The letters were cut from American cheese.  I wanted to do a more complicated birthday bento, but kept it simple so that I could also work on making her school birthday treat.

For her school party this year she decided on a healthier approach to treats instead of cupcakes.  I absolutely loved doing the rainbow fruit skewers!  Not only was it fun but man was it easier than making 32 cupcakes.

She did a great job with her cake!

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.

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.

Sweet Teddy Bear

We are in full swing getting ready for JapanFest tomorrow!  It is going to be so much fun and I am so excited.  And I even managed to fit the table in the car all by myself.  Go me!  To celebrate the upcoming fun  I made this cute onigiri teddy bear.  Nothing says happy like a smiling teddy bear, right?
Both of us are hoping to purchase some of our favorite Japanese sweets tomorrow: Mochi for A-chan and Dango for me.  I'm particularly looking forward to the Archery demonstrations as well.

In the bento: Lots of onigiri, carrot flowers, steamed broccoli, chickpeas, nectarine slices, frozen blueberries, strawberries and baby corn.

To make the body of the teddy I mixed scrambled tofu into the rice before making the onigiri.  Then I added two whole cloves for the buttons, making sure that A-chan knew to remove them before eating the onigiri.  The head and paws are just plain rice.  The facial features were cut from soy turkey slices, provolone cheese and nori with a few black sesame seeds for cute eyelashes.  Her cheeks were painted on with strawberry jam.  The jam might be a little weird but it seemed like a good idea at 6 am, as though jam is somehow cuter than sriracha!

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!

Fruit Friday

It is that time of year again.  The school pizza rant is here!  Today is the first day of school pizza on Friday for A-chan and it made me grumble and grump all morning.  I despise it.  I loathe it.  Why am I so upset by it?  That's a good question and one that I have tried to solve for myself today.  Partly because it undermines everything that I am attempting to teach my child about good nutrition.  Another factor is that I hate having to scrounge around to find exact change to put in the envelope in a society where cash is fast becoming obsolete. There is a part of me that is acting like a 5 year old who's toy just got taken away because it's a morning where I don't get to make a proper bento.

But it goes deeper than that.  It's almost as if this one thing usurps every ideal that I am trying to instill in our family  - not just good nutrition but also less waste (they are served on paper plates) and the evils of peer pressure.  I know that the reason for Friday pizza is a good one - they are raising money for the class.  And I absolutely love everything about my daughter's school except for this one thing.  It seems extremely petty to be so upset about it, honestly.  But at the same time it seems as if the school is trampling on all the hard work that parents do.  I know that I am overreacting.  By the end of autumn I will be excited about making fruit-only bentos again.  Today, however, I am going to revel in my grumpiness.

In the bento: Strawberries, peach slices and a huge bunch of tiny champagne grapes.

A-chan was happy about having Fruit Friday bentos to go with her pizza again.  When we went to the store to purchase fruit for the week she desperately wanted to try these itty bitty grapes for Friday.  I love it when she wants to try new foods!

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.

Lyin' Around

The school year is off to a fantastic start!  A-chan loves her school and teachers.  She came home full of energy and eagerness,  though she was sad about a friend who had moved away.  I can't wait to find out what she learns today.  It is tempting to throw responsibility out the window and enjoy these first carefree days of the house being empty with movie watching, book reading and doughnuts.  I'm resisting it so far...

This cheery lion was from my freezer stash which made the early morning prep very easy!  He was popped into the oven to cook for 15 minutes while I cut out the facial details and arranged the rest of the bento.  Before putting the eyes, etc. on the flatpie I let it cool down because unintentionally melted cheese is just embarrassing.

In the bento: Potato and onion flatpie, strawberries, carrot sticks, blackberries and sauteed zucchini with black sesame seeds.

Provolone cheese was cut out with shape cutters for the white parts of the face and ears.  Cheddar cheese hearts were 'glued' on with a tiny bit of mayo.  My lion face nori punch was perfect for the size of this cute guy and I added a few dots using a tiny dot punch.

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!

Lions and Mango and Berries, oh my!

Another Friday, another pizza day.  A-chan and I have a bargain.  She gets pizza on pizza Friday twice a month.  Originally I wanted to not let her have any at all.  The idea of the school giving pizza for lunches made me wince.  But I'm glad that we compromised.  She enjoys the 1 slice of pizza twice a month and since we never have pizza at home, it remains a special treat.  It's not that I have anything against pizza, exactly, although I don't consider it a healthy lunch (unless it's home made and has veggies on it).  I just really, really, really do not like pizza.  The only time that I've had pizza as an adult and actually liked it was at a Pizza Hut in India.  Capsicum as a pizza topping?  Oh yeah, gimme more!

In the bento:  Lots of yummy strawberries, mango, and mulberries with two apple hearts.

I still get coupons for Pizza Hut India by email.  It's like a joyful torture.  Surely they can deliver to Georgia, right?

Earth Day

Over the years the idea of Earth Day has gotten slightly muddled in my head.  Recycling and being environmentally conscious are things that are completely ingrained in daily life.  And of course, one of the best ways (in my opinion, lol) of being Green is to pack waste-free bento lunches! So what does Earth Day mean to me now?  Hmm.  My wish for Earth Day is peace.  War harms the planet and all the creatures that live on it, big and small.  I will honor everything that lives on Earth this Sunday: plant, animal and human.  I will think about peace and wonder what it would be like if the nations of the world concentrated on preserving life on Earth.

In the bento: Scrambled tofu, green peas and sesame carrots on top of a bed of rice, a black olive on a bamboo pick, strawberry halves, mango chunks, mulberries and a peaceful Babybel cheese.

Happy Spring Flower

Once again I'm mixing it up for healthier lunches.  You might think that the little green specks you see in the couscous are basil.  In fact, that's what A-chan thought because that's what I normally put in couscous.  This time it is half basil and half baby spinach, dun, dun, dun!  There wasn't a cry of surprise of a whimper as we ate it last night so I am happy to pack it again for lunch.

In the bento:  Extra special healthy couscous with garlic, basil and spinach is on one side.  The other side has chickpeas, steamed broccoli, mulberries, a strawberry, carrot flowers and soy sauce tofu.

The flower is made from purple potato, carrot and cucumber peel.  The cute little face was punched from nori, of course :) I doubt that A-chan will eat the purple potato - she looked at it very suspiciously this morning.  But that's okay because there's spinach in the couscous!  You can't tell that I'm lovin' the sneaky spinach, can you?  The chickpeas are plain and straight from the fridge.

Fancy Penguins

Are you ready for the ball?  I haven't received my invitation yet, but these guys are all dressed and ready to dance.   This morning I was feeling lucky that I had some leftovers in the fridge to give me a jump start with today's bento.  A small Chinese restaurant nearby has some very tasty vegetarian options, including my favorite Mongolian Suegai.  A-chan doesn't like the green onions as much as I, but I've left a few in her lunch just in case she decides to try one.  It's a long shot, though.

In the bento:  Rice, steamed broccoli, strawberries, black olives, cheese flowers, carrot sticks and a container of Mongolian suegai.

The cute penguin faces were cut from provolone cheese using a circular cutter.  The nori for their foreheads was cut with scissors.  Their beaks are tiny carrot ovals and their cheeks are sugar dots.  I cut their handsome bowties from black olive halves.  For some reason my camera just wouldn't focus on their shiny heads.  It was very frustrating, but you can still see their innate cuteness.