It's the season for Candycorn!

It is candycorn season once again, hurrah! This past Sunday A-chan and I made candycorn onigiri again. Shaping the brightly colored rice into the shape of my most beloved fall candy is becoming one of my favorite fall rituals. We made 3 cups of white rice, 3 cups of yellow rice and 2 cups of orange rice using gel food coloring. It was a LOT of rice!! It took us about an hour to make all of it into onigiri. A-chan even did some of the candycorn onigiri all on her own. She was so cute!

The rice ball candycorns are so much healthier than gorging on my fav candy of the season!!! Until last year my autumnal season was incomplete because all the candycorn I could find had gelatin in it and I could not eat it. I really missed having it. Candycorn was my childhood memory of Halloween and crunchy leaves underfoot. I had almost given up being able to share it with my girl. But last year I found that the Kroger brand candycorn was vegetarian, haha! I eagerly anticipated it this year and when that lovely day arrived I bought 2 bags. That was a pretty modest amount, I felt. Then we ate it all within a three day period. And then I bought more. I have one bag in the car for emergencies, one open bag in the house and three unopened bags.
In the bento: One large fuji apple bunny, veggie hot dogs, one floret each of cauliflower and broccoli, 2 large carrot maple leaves, 1 miniature blueberry muffin, 1 pick of corn, 1 large candycorn onigiri.

A-chan got the first of the onigiri, one of the ones that she made all by herself. Normally I don't do the ice-water treatment on the bunny ears to get them to stand up, but this was a special occasion so I went ahead.

Pink

This bento is all about pink. And that's quite an abnormality for me as the color pink and I normally do not get along. In fact, I try to avoid pink as much as is possible for someone with a 5 year old daughter. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice enough color. But when I was younger pink was perhaps a good bit overdone. In our old house my husband and I lived for many years with an office that was pepto bismol pink. I think I'd just had enough. When my girl was born I declared that I wanted no pink baby clothes, no pink baby toys and absolutely no pink room. That worked about as well as one might think. Just try shopping for girls' baby clothes that don't have pink on them. It's not easy. The older that my daughter gets the more I'm finding pink creeping back into my life.

Today's bento, however, is different. It's about Breast Cancer awareness. It's about being a responsible woman, mother, wife. I actually had no idea that October was associated with this cause. Usually October for me is all about my daughter's birthday, halloween and adjusting to the new cold weather that seems to get worse every year (or just me getting older). So I haven't paid much attention to anything else. But yesterday I came across this post at Bento Blog. It made me start to think. Not only about how to make a bento to participate, which of course happened immediately, but also about the issue.

I have friends who talk about these types of campaigns and wonder if they actually do any good in the long run. Well, I think that the Pink Ribbon Bento Panorama has made a difference. At least it has caught my attention and made me start thinking about something that I normally put in a box labeled 'Don't open, not ready to think about'. And it has made me realize that it's time for me to start paying attention.

About the bento: The pink ribbon (which is really more of a red than pink, but it's tough to find pink things when you're vegetarian!) is cut out from a fuji apple. Next to it is a pink mochi, corn croquette, block of feta, soy turkey rolls with green beans and carrots, vegetarian Japanese glazed meatballs on a bamboo pick, a small bit of gari (more pink, yay!). The pink icing was done using a henna technique and a traditional-style henna design on top of a white cheddar sheet. Underneath the cheese is vegetable fried rice. There are a few tiny carrot flowers scattered around.

My camera is just not good enough to catch both the color of the icing and the details of the darker ingredients so I apologize for the darkness of the photo! I really wanted to do something with the henna technique. I couldn't get it out of my head as being perfect for this message.

An Octopus with eyebrows?!

Even more bentos from about 6 weeks ago. A-chan is home sick from school today. She has a little bit of asthma and anytime she has a cold it turns into Bronchitis, bam! This morning she was coughing so much that it caused her to throw up - the second time in her whole life that she's vomited. Doctor visit time! We now have cough syrup, an antibiotic and saltines. A-chan will be just fine he says :) I love our Pediatrician, he's the best!

So after a night filled with coughing and no sleep for any of us, it's time for a restful relaxing day of bento posts. And some book reading and some Little Big Planet for the sick one. I hope to catch up on some of my older bentos so that I can start posting current ones!

The bento above has a layer of jasmine rice covered with sesame carrots, scrambled tofu and green peas. A container of frozen blueberries, two soy hotdog octopi, a flower pick with tiny black olives, cucumber slices and a babybel cheese round.

I'm still not getting anywhere with the soy hotdog octopus thing...and at this point I'm not sure if it's the veggie hot dog or if it's me! These little guys have mozzarella and nori features, the best part of course being the eyebrows. A-chan loves to draw eyebrows on things so I added some just for her :)

I just love the little mouse in this bento! He was made from two nuggets of fried tofu, veggie hot dog slices and nori with just a little mozzarella for the tail. My second favorite thing is the purple mashed potatoes. Hapa bento always has these amazingly delightful and colorful bentos and I'd seen purple potatoes in them lots of times. I always wondered where one could find purple potatoes because I'd never seen any except in her bentos - I'd certainly never expected to find any in my little town. But then I went to the store and there they were, a small bag of maybe 8 of them. I swear a light from above shown down and made them sparkle!!

Unfortunately A-chan views them with a deep and abiding suspicion and refuses to eat them. Now, keep in mind that she will eat regular mashed potatoes made funky colors with food coloring. But naturally strange colored foods are apparently evil. I will endeavor to change her mind gradually because I think they are awesome. She did have some trouble with the huge flower onigiri in this bento as it is really really big. She would have like to have a fork to eat it with, she said.

On the left: Huge flower onigiri with veggie hot dog center, frozen grapes on a pick, a small tin of feta.

On the right: Fried tofu mouse, purple mashed potatoes, lemon slice.

Pasta Salad Bento

Another bento from the beginning of school...

This one was a bust. A-chan ate everything in the lower tier but only picked at the items in the upper tier. One of the interesting things that I am learning with the whole school bento thing is what she won't eat when I'm not there. Some of the things that I have put in bentos for her for years now she suddenly won't eat in school bentos. It's a great learning process and it's funny to me how much of a sense of achievement I get when she comes home with a totally empty bento!

Top tier: Bowtie pasta with halved baby tomatoes, black olives and feta, heart container full of peas. (She picked out all the feta and black olives and didn't touch the rest.)

Bottom tier: 2 miniature bridies - one with a smiley face and one with hearts, tater tots - one with a seal pick, container with frozen peaches.

Fastest bento ever!

Yes, I was amazed to find that after making this bento I had free time that morning. Naturally I used my unexpected free time to do nothing useful, but I enjoyed reading "Mistress of the Art of Death" for a while. Most everything in this bento was already prepared and frozen. I just had to microwave it a bit or as in the case of the grapes, plop them in straight from the freezer.

The hello kitty onigiri (freezer item) has nori and carrot details. The marinated tofu needed just a few minutes to sautee. The broccoli (freezer item) needed a moment's worth of steaming. Had to fry the corn croquette (frozen item) but the grapes could go in still frozen. Last came the baby tomato which needed no preparation, yay!

Simple Sammie Bento

Another school bento, six weeks ago...

This was one of those mornings that needed a simple bento. Mainly because we were coming up on my crunch time - 2 conventions, 3 festivals, a farmer's market and my dance students' recital in a period of 6 weeks. I was panicking so much about everything else that I absolutely had no time to be very creative.

I enjoy it immensely when circumstances force me to come up with new solutions and offer challenges. In this case A-chan attends a Montessori school and they request that very little sweet or sugary items be included in lunches. Most of the time I absolutely agree, she usually only get sugar of any type on holidays...but I wanted to do quick and easy PBJ sammies! Cause they are quick. And easy, see? Ahh, so what to do?

Taking some empty cones that I would normally fill with henna paste, instead I filled one with strawberry jam and the other with blue sugar sprinkles. I assembled the sandwiches with only PB on the inside and the hearts already cut out. Then using the cones applied jam or sprinkles inside the heart shapes. Much less sugar than if I had spread it on the whole sandwich, yay!

There were also 2 Morningstar Farms Chik nuggets, 2 picks full of green peas, 1 carrot butterfly, a baby tomato, 2 pieces of frozen mango.

Seven weeks ago

It was exactly seven weeks ago today that A-chan started back to school. August and September are my busiest months of the year and thus I am incredibly late putting up school bento pics. But before I talk about the bentos, let me discuss the week before school started. The planning week.

Thinking about making a bento every day was a bit daunting. Sure, every day here at home was no problem...but this new schedule was going to be like camping in the mountains or deep sea diving. I was going to have to make sure that she had absolutely everything she could possibly need with her in an easily portable form. Napkins, utensils, soy sauce, salt, etc!! If I forgot something it would not only be a failure on my part, it could possibly be a disaster of epic 5 year old proportions!

The only way to conquer it all was to become ultra organized. I spent the week before school started making lists and reorganizing my kitchen for ultimate efficiency. I made a shopping run for all the bento essentials to make sure that I had them on hand. Then I spent the weekend cooking bento-friendly foods and freezing them. A-chan helped me cook and together we made miniature Forfar Bridies, Fried Tofu, Corn Croquettes and Bento-sized Scottish Flatpies. I am just now running out of these frozen staples after seven weeks and they were incredibly helpful, especially on mornings after staying up way too late to rehearse!

These photos are a sampling from that first week. The top bento was for the very first day of school. It contained pink rice and two soy-bologna bunnies with carrot letters and an apple heart. The other side had fried tofu bites, baby tomatoes, frozen grapes on a pick, steamed broccoli, carrot flowers, steamed cauliflower and a heart full of feta crumbles.

The bento below has smiling miniature bridies, tater tots, a Babybel cheese round, steamed broccoli, frozen mango cubes and frozen blueberries. (Forfar Bridies are a type of Scottish meat pie made with ground beef, mushroom broth, onion, parlsey and ground mustard wrapped in pastry. To make mine vegetarian I replaced the beef with Morningstar Farms crumbles.)

The next bento was also from my freezer of frozen goodness. The main part was a Scottish flatpie (potato and onion filling on a biscuit crust with cheese melted over). I baked it straight out of the freezer, let it cool off a little and plopped it in the box. There are more frozen blueberries and grapes, some morningstar farms chik nuggets, an apple flower, cucumber palm fronds and carrot stars. The lion's ears were soy bologna, the face was made with mozzarella cheese and nori.

Unfortunately while I thought he looked like a lion - A-chan thought he was a bunny!