Stripey Heart bento bag

It's been a while since I did a post with a bento craft. This one is a matching set with a bento bag and band. I was getting fed up with the bento bags that we had for while they were nice and easy to use, they were for adult sized bento boxes. They left enough room for my daughter's small toddler boxes to slip and slide instead of being carried securely. So we went to the fabric store and she picked out the fabric that she wanted which got transformed into the bag and band!

For the drawstring I took some extra cotton yarn that I had left over from her baby sweater (I finished the sweater a few months after she was born and I was so glad to finally have found a use for the yarn!) that is braided and then just knotted on the ends. The hearts are felt and hand sewn onto the bag and band. Inside the cute stripey band is strong elastic.

It was such a hit that she has already asked to purchase more fabric and requested a kitty face on the next one! The bag fits her smaller bentos very securely and I'm very pleased with how well it works.

Tae Kwon Do Bento

As I am sitting at the Dojang and watching my girl do her second Taekwondo class of the day (woohooo!) I am delighted to be putting up this bento that she had for school lunch recently. She is so enamored of TKD and wants to start entering tournaments. She recently got her third green stripe on her yellow belt and will soon be testing for green belt. I love watching her practice, it's funny sometimes and just plain awesome other times.

Left side: Sauteed tofu heart, cheddar cheese blocks, purple grapes, cherry tomato, sweet gherkins, baby corn and carrot letters.

Right side: Jasmine rice covered by sesame carrots, green peas and corn. Mozzarella cheese dobok (uniform) with cheddar cheese belt, parsley sprig green stripes.

I got the appellation of "good, good, good mommy" for this bento, lol. Warms my heart so, it does. I'm going to have to start thinking up extra excuses for making bentos this summer. I've gotten spoiled by schooldays!

MomoCon Bentos

It's that time again! Yes, Spring is here and we celebrated mightily by our annual attendance at MomoCon. We had a fabulous time with 6, 998 good buddies :) A-chan and I made our first origami turtles together in a workshop. I learned how to do kanzashi flowers in wonderful class. We both indulged our love of shopping for cute things. And I had a reason to put together some bentos, yay!!!Since A-chan was going to be wearing her Mokona backpack all day I was inspired to try a Mokona bento. My main problem was that I made Mokona waaaaay too large. I had originally intended to have Mokona take up only one half of a tier, haha :) There was no way that A-chan could eat the huge rice ball but she enjoyed the other smaller parts (ears and feet).

Top tier: Tofu heart sauteed with soy sauce, Lemon bowl with chickpeas, huge strawberry, curry rice, carrot flowers. Before putting in the curry I made a barrier with rice - building it up high on one side to keep the curry in place.

Bottom tier: 5 rice balls, one huge, 2 medium long ones, 2 smaller round ones. Huge lettuce leaf underneath, halved baby tomato for the forehead jewel, soy bologna inner ears and mouth, nori eyes and smile, pickled ginger cheeks and carrot flower.

My bento was a bit more sober and not as fun. It was yummy though! More fun with my letter cutters which I love soooo much.

Top tier: Curry rice with all the rice hidden under the curry. Carrot letters, yay!

Bottom tier: Tofu heart sauteed in soy sauce, slice of lemon, two huge strawberries, baby corn on picks, carrot flowers and heart, veggie gyoza.

The large carrot flowers in both bentos were cut from the humongous asian carrots from Super H Mart. The bits of tofu that were left over from cutting out the hearts were also sauteed and are hidden underneath the hearts. Not as lovely so they were hidden, but still tasty!

Peace and Peas Bento

This bento was all about the babybel cheese in the center. Yep, the cheese :) I wanted to do something striking with the round of cheese that A-chan wanted in her bento so I started thinking about round symbols. Then I narrowed it down to round symbols that I could make out of nori. And even further to round symbols that I could cut out of nori with my kitchen scissors...so it wasn't intended to be a meaningful bento, exactly. But then I wondered if the word peace would fit in the top of the box with the letter cutters that I have. It did! I was happy :)

The top portion contains: couscous with carrot letters and pea accents.
The bottom portion contains: One babybel cheese with peace symbol, one miniature corn croquette, one baby tomato cut in halves, one heart container filled with tiny peach squares, one tiny sweet gherkin, three picks with sauteed tofu and green peas.

The little heart container just refused to cooperate. It was determined to go all squished no matter what I did, so I finally admitted defeat and just let it be. A-chan mentioned that the peas got moved around while she was carrying the bento. Next time I will press them down into the couscous a bit more.

Funky Pasta Bento

Though the funky shaped pasta is not a large part of the bento, it was the item that fueled most discussion when A-chan returned home from school. She does not like funky looking pasta, that she does not. I, on the other hand, thought it was really cool! Plus, it only took three pieces of pasta to fill the spot in the bento where I needed something that wasn't rigid. I thought it was inspired and rather perfect. But the funky pasta has been relegated to my bentos and only mine now - she wishes never to see it darken a corner of her bento box again. Oh well, live and learn!

Top tier: Miniature pita, babybel cheese with flower cut outs, steamed broccoli, orange pieces and a hello kitty soy sauce bottle.

Bottom tier: Hello kitty onigiri, infamous funky pasta, morningstar farms chik nugget, hashrounds, cherry tomato, carrot flower.

I'd seen the cut outs on babybel cheeses on flickr a long while back from several different people (I think several - it has been a while) and thought it was a great idea. This is the first time I'd tried it for A-chan though. She seemed to get a great kick out of it and enjoyed using the cut outs to open the cheese rather than the normal way.

As I make the bentos, I am more and more amused at how my behaviour reflects the changes in the way I think about food. If I have a whole packet of cherry tomatoes and only one is going in the bento I search through the whole packet for the 'most appetizing looking' tomato. This is quite a change from how it used to be with me going for the one on the top for speed's sake. Now I usually end up choosing one with a nice looking stem still attached, and laughing at myself for scrutinizing them all.

New Pikachu Bento Walkthrough

A newly revised edition of the Pikachu walkthrough with music and notes! Otherwise it's much the same, but the music makes it much more awesome in my opinion :) (In other words I had tons of fun playing with the music editing software, lol) Let me know what you think - should I do more of these walkthroughs?

Froggies!

This froggie bento was heavily influenced by E-obento.com. I've been looking at her frogs in bentos for years and kept saying one day I'll do frogs...

So here they are, yay! Another school lunch bento for m'girl :) On the left were blueberries on picks, carrot ribbons in a mini muffin tin, baby corn all in a row and one miniature corn croquette, with a cucumber frog hugging a big red tomato, baby spinach is in the background. To the right was yummy veggie fried rice with a singing cucumber froggie. The musical notes and frog faces were made with mozzarella cheese.

Somehow I never thought of frogs as being cute until I started looking at E-obento.com, now they are definately on my list of cute, cute, cute things. Cats are still pretty much at the top of the list still, banthas are very high (it's the lips, lol) as are pandas and onigiri, but it's always cats and kittens that are most likely to catch my attention in a heartbeat. What goes at the top of your cuteness list?