Birthday Bento!

A-chan turns 6 today! She woke up surprised that she still fit into her nightgown. Apparently she was expecting to have grown a whole bunch overnight, lol. Though she is still coughing occasionally I judged her well enough to go to school today which made her sooooo happy. She didn't want to miss the birthday traditions at school.

They have a special ceremony where the birthday child carries the earth around the sun, one time round for each year since they were born. A-chan decided that for her birthday treat to share with friends at school she wanted mochi. So last night we stopped on the way home from taking her daddy to the airport and bought a huge amount of mochi. This morning I piled it all into one of my shokado boxes to take to school. I was surprised how many children already knew what they were and even more surprised how many children ate them. A-chan did not seem to be fazed at all by those who were not willing to eat mochi, luckily. The balloons that I brought were another well-loved tradition :)

I wanted to do a special bento for her birthday. This year is the first one where her birthday lunch is actually at school! But I have to say that I don't think I did a good job on this one. I tried, I really did. My bento imagination just wouldn't fit into the box! It was pretty amazing that all the letters for birthday fit, I was surprised. I hope that A-chan likes it more than I do.

In the box: Yellow rice with a mozzarella cheese hello kitty, mamenori and nori sheets with cheese letters on top, snap peas, fried tofu bite, cherry tomato quarter, carrot heart, cheese sandwich with blue fondant on top and mamenori wrapper, tiny little candy, a heart pick with two large blueberries.

Cute Jack

Another bento from last week with a Halloween theme to get ready for A-chan's birthday party which happened to be Halloween themed this year. The Jack'o'lantern matches the cute one that we drew for her party invitations (well, mostly matches... ). It's endlessly fascinating to me how A-chan chooses her party themes. Last year it was a Princess party, the year before that was a Pirate party. This year she decided that she didn't want to make people wear specific costumes, she wanted them to each wear the one they wanted - thus the Halloween theme. Now if only I could apply that to understanding how her mind works all the way from now til she's 18!

In the bento: An orange Jack'o'lantern onigiri made with the burger patty rice mold decorated with nori and a broccoli stem. A container of sesame carrots, pear slices and steamed broccoli, soy sauce tofu and corn on jewel picks, a cherry tomato.

This particular onigiri is huge! Even I have trouble picking it up to eat. I made sure to put a fork into her bento bag so that she could eat it easily as the large ones tend to fall apart for her.

Teddy bear pancakes

My girl is sick again, after a whirlwind weekend of manic activity. She participated in a Tae Kwon Do tournament all day Saturday (she won bronze in forms and gold in sparring, yay!). Then her birthday party was on Sunday with an amazing amount of people swarming the park and some crazy running around and games. There were 22 kids and associated adults, 4 games and 3 crafts, a huge table of snacks and some halloween ghosts. (It really was crazy, hopefully I've learned my lesson and will do a smaller party next year.) We all had a fantastic time but today she is sick and staying home from school which means no bento today - so I am putting up a bento from last week.

From the top and coming down: Frozen peaches, feta blocks and green bean spears, steamed broccoli, a container of corn, grape balloons, soy sausage links, more green bean spears, mini pancakes making a teddy bear with mozzarella for ear detail and chocolate frosting for the face, corn kernels and a tiny apple circle make up the bow.
The second picture includes the henna cone with chocolate frosting instead of henna, which I used to make the face. The cone is actually a triangle of floraphane taped into shape and then filled with the frosting. I roll the open back down and tape it closed, cut off a tiny bit of the point and then it's ready to decorate! It's just like icing holiday cookies, but I learned to do henna before I learned to decorate cookies so to me it's always a henna art :)

I fill up the monkey face container with more frosting for A-chan to take to school. There is a tiny spoon inside to spread the frosting on the pancakes.

Three more pancakes are hidden underneath the lettuce. She absolutely loves it when I do pancake lunches. It's a special treat since I don't like pancakes and we never eat them at home. These miniature ones are frozen and come out of a huge box kept in the freezer just for her bentos.

This teddy bear pancake bento was inspired by LoveBones on flickr, go check out her amazing bentos!

Hotel bentos

These three bentos were made for our Saturday lunches at AWA. I had taken some of my bento boxes and accessories with us but not a whole lot. They are kind of simple, but we enjoyed them greatly! It is usually pretty hard to find vegetarian food when we're at conventions and much better to bring our own instead.

The top bento was for A-chan: Two cute rice balls with nori faces and one with a carrot bow, steamed broccoli, soba noodles, a cherry tomato and an orange wedge.

The middle bento was for my husband: Two larger rice balls with nori faces, an orange wedge, dango!, steamed broccoli and a carrot heart. The other tier contained soba noodles with a cherry tomato.
The last is my bento: I was going for more of an elegant adult feel with mine :) Two rice balls, an orange wedge, soba noodles with cherry tomato flower, steamed broccoli and dango!
I don't think I've mentioned my growing love for dango on this blog yet. My entire state probably knows, certainly everyone at AWA knows. I LOVE dango. Finding dango at SuperH was a fantastic treat. And the sauce even tastes yummy on rice balls, broccoli and soba noodles!

Dango are the (usually) 3 little balls on a stick with a brown sauce that are in a lot of anime and manga. They are sometimes colored and each ball will be a different color, they are made from rice flour and are somewhat chewy. The ones that I am in love with are the ones with the sweet soy sauce glaze. Yum! My daughter won't eat them but that just means more for me!

Four Friends

Another older school bento. I'm getting closer to being caught up though!

Top tier: Four fried tofu bites, black olives, carrot flowers, frozen peaches, red soy sauce piggie.

Bottom tier: Container of mac'n'cheese spirals with a black olive on top, four dice shaped onigiri with funny nori faces and frozen grapes in between.

This is one of the very few bentos where the soy sauce bottle is actually inside the bento. And it makes me realize that the two bento accessories that I use the most are usually never photographed with the bentos. Of all the cute and pretty accessories, which I love dearly, the ones that I find most useful are the ever-practical soy sauce bottle and ketchup container. They accompany almost every bento that I make, but they are always an afterthought and never part of the bento designing.

After the bento is made I look at it and decide what kind of sauce needs to go with it. Then I fill up the container (or grab an already full one out of the fridge), seal it in a ziploc bag and put it in the bento bag along with the napkin. The ziploc bag is usually the same one for a loooong time since it never gets any food on it. I'm just paranoid that one day the ketchup container will open up by itself and smear ketchup on everything. So far it's never happened, but I still put it in the bag.

Bellydance Show lag

I am seriously lagging behind as I arrived home after midnight last night, infused with inspiration but desperately needing sleep. My friend and I had driven to the big city to see the Bellydance Superstars show which was amazing and so much fun to watch! (A-chan spent the night with her grandmother which means no bento today.) But since I didn't get home til very late I haven't had time to get the picture of A-chan's bento from yesterday off my camera. So instead I am putting up more of the bentos from the early part of school!

Above is a Scottish flat pie with cucumber smile and eyes with a carrot star nose. Next to it are some tater tots, a pick of black olives, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, a baby tomato, frozen blueberries and a few scattered carrot stars.

Below is a bento with couscous on the left that has green peas and carrot heart on top. On the right is a babybel cheese round, veggie hot dog, frozen grapes on a pick, a gherkin pickle, and a tin of Chocolate bunnies with a couple of carrot hearts to liven things up.

These were both very simple bentos that were quick to make, but not very decorative.

Picture day

Yesterday was picture day at a-chan's school. So to help lessen the stress of the day on both of us and try to make it more fun I made a picture day bento. The cute little girl in her best dress on one side with the flash from the camera on the other.

I don't like school picture day. No, that's too tame. I loathe school picture day. It's so stressful for both me and A-chan. Getting her dressed perfectly (which didn't happen because there was black ink mysteriously on her pink tights so we had a last minute frantic search for tights that matched her dress but ended up having to go with purple ones), fixing her hair perfectly (which takes way too much time on my part and patience on hers), remembering to fill out the form and make sure that she takes it with her (filled out at the last minute in the school parking lot and I still don't know if she gave it to the right person or not), and all the other finicky details just get us into an old fashioned tizzy!

A-chan got all worried because she was supposed to have playtime in the playground before the pictures were to be taken and what if she forgot and played in the sandbox with her pretty dress on? We ended up with a solution of just say no to sand for that day. It seemed to work, she wasn't smeared with sand of red clay dirt when I picked her up in the afternoon. I wish that the parents were allowed to be with the kids while the pictures are taken. Then we could keep them calm, clean and collected. And afterward we could change them into good old play clothes and take the fancy stuff back with us. I can probably think of twenty reasons why that wouldn't really work, but it's a nice thought to end my tirade :)

In the bento:

Left side: 2 Morningstar farms chik nuggets, black olives, 1 spear of baby corn, fresh parsley and Apollo choco candies. The girl has a dress out of veggie pepperoni with a belt of cucumber peel, an arm and face from soy bologna, hair of white cheddar. The dress matches what A-chan wore and she had one ponytail on the side.

Right side: Couscous with soy bologna, white cheddar and veggie pepperoni stars, plus carrot letters.

We got a kick out of saying that she had eaten 'cheese' for lunch because she ate all the carrot letters but refused to eat the cheese star!