Koala pancake!

Looky, looky!! Santa put new nori punches from Jlist in my stocking!! I've been itching to use them. The first one out of the package was the koala. That's it in the background. Isn't it shiny?? Squeeeee!!!

When I picked A-chan up from school today I asked her if she liked her bento. She replied, "Yes, I ate the cute koala all up! And I know how hard you worked on it, mommy, so I ate as much as I possibly could."

In the bento: Half of a clementine, red grapes, mini tater tots, mini pancakes, steamed broccoli, veggie sausage links and several carrot hearts with nori hearts on top.

There are a couple more pancakes underneath the koala. I cut the ears out of more pancakes and then cut the inner ear fur out of provolone cheese. The face is all nori glued on with a tiny bit of honey. (I was surprised that the tiny eyebrow bits punched out just fine!)

If you want to see the nori punch set, go here. They are so cute and I love them!!! Thank you, Santa!!

Tiptoeing into the New Year

What a tired morning for the first bento of the New Year! I think I did an okay job making a bento in 10 minutes flat after only 3 hours of sleep and a 5 am drive to take my husband to meet the airport shuttle. It's extremely simple and the only thing that got cooked was the broccoli, but I still think it's pretty :) I had envisioned making a beautiful, perfect bento for the first bento of the year. The scramble to get my husband all packed and to his plane on time made me throw that plan out the window, however. Oh well :D So instead of starting the year out with a running leap, it's more of a quiet tiptoe.

In the bento: Two circle sandwiches of peanut butter and strawberry jelly (very, very little jelly!), a piece of steamed broccoli, one baby tomato, small carrot sticks and a huge bunch of grapes.

The flowers are provolone cheese with candy stars in the center. The large flowers are held onto the sandwiches with honey as a glue and then the stars are also held on with honey. The flowers were cut out with my new daisy fondant cutters that were on sale at Hobby Lobby last week! (The largest one is pictured beside the box.)

Our holidays were extremely chaotic this year. It was the first time in 128 years that our area got snow on Christmas! Not only snow but a good deal of snow - around 6 inches which is almost unheard of here. The snow was so beautiful. Until we got out and played in it, that is! We enjoyed being able to track the forest animals in the snow - rabbits, deer and wild turkeys. A-chan built a snowdog with her daddy and a snowboy with me.

On Christmas eve our well died (impeccable timing, lol) and we were without water for 5 days. Cooking and cleaning with bottled water was just like being back in India and was more of an adventure than anything. Until the last day when we ran out of clean socks. Having my husband home to help out with the disaster was very nice! The poor guy had to leave again this morning and lost his wallet during his trip back to California.

Here are some pictures of the holiday treats that I made this year. They are in Pancha Ganapati color order: Yellow, blue, red, green , orange. A-chan sorted M&Ms to color-coordinate for each day.

Yellow day - Coconut Butter mochi and the ingredients for apple pulao.
Blue day - Divinity and a smattering of pecans and a bowl of blueberries with coconut topping.
Red day - Chocolate dipped coconut macaroons, bing cherries and some chocolate dipped cherries.
Green day - Badam burfi (a type of Indian almond fudge) and green apples for apple strudel.
Orange day - Broken biscuit cake, lots of nuts and clementines which were later chocolate dipped!

Bentos for a busy day

These were bentos from Yesterday. The crazy, wild, incredibly busy day that we had included no time to stop for lunch so I packed us all bentos and away we went! It's been a while since I packed bentos for three and it took me a bit longer than usual so I never got the chance to photograph the one for my husband.

We were crazy enough to try family Christmas shopping which required much messaging back and forth making sure that we didn't cross paths in the mall. And later we made it more challenging by shopping in the smaller space of a bookstore with many more chances to run into each other, lol. Whew!

In the top bento: A tiny layer of rice under a layer of curry rice with potato, onion, carrot and sultanas. A barrier of cucumbers, a couple of veggie gyoza, a baby carrot, steamed broccoli, a container of corn, an apple stocking with mamenori snowflake and provolone top, two tiny snow bunnies with a yummy baby carrot.

The snow bunnies' ears are cucumber peel. The smaller one's face is black sesame seeds and nori. The larger one's face was made by using a nori punch on a baby spinach leaf!!! The carrot's stem is actually stems from baby spinach leaves.

This is my bento, much less cute but still looking tasty! I have the additions of tiny cheese balls rolled in sesame seeds, and some sriracha sauce to decorate the curry.

Catching snowflakes

I'm not sure where she got the idea from exactly, but whenever A-chan hears that it might snow she immediately starts asking if she can catch snowflakes on her tongue. Today's bento was in honor of this annual wintertime quest. After a looooong night last night - we went to my dance class and then picked up my husband from the airport at 11 pm, finally getting home around 1 am - I was completely pooped this morning. I had cooked some corn planning to put it in the bento and then totally forgot about it. It was still sitting on the counter cooling off when we got back from taking A-chan to school. Some mornings require more coffee than others, lol.

In the bento: Two onigiri, two veggie gyoza, steamed broccoli, carrot flowers, apple with heart cut-out and mamenori snowflakes. On the side is a holiday chocolate as a special dessert for the last day of school this year.

The boy onigiri has american cheese for hair, the girl onigiri is sporting the 'odango' hairstyle (I read about that on Wednesday on wikipedia!!) with apple peel bows and nori bangs. They both have nori faces with soy ham tongues all stretched out and ready to catch snowflakes.

The snowflakes were cut using a snowflake punch. I love using mamenori for things like this, the snowflakes look so delicate!

Smiling Candycanes

Let there be cries of joy and resounding rock music throughout the house for A-chan is at school today! Woohooo! It's amazing how quickly we've lost our morning routine. We were so very late today and getting her ready to go was nothing like the mornings from last week. I was really happy to get to make a bento today. It was a little surprising how much I missed it yesterday. Apparently one missed day is okay but two is stretching things, lol.

In the bento: A container of corn, some black olives, two tiny rice squares with carrot ribbons, a clump of grapes, a veggie hot dog, two baby tomatoes and a carrot star. The other tier has three cheese sandwiches with candycanes and provolone letters, separated by rolls of baby spinach. Looking at the picture now I wish that I had used more spinach leaves around the outside edges of the sandwiches too.

The candycanes were cut out of provolone cheese with a Wilton's holiday themed cutter. The red stripes are apple peel. They have black sesame seed eyes and nori mouths, and for the first time ever I'm using sriracha for the cheeks.

The middle sandwich was made from the heel in order to get the different color. Luckily A-chan doesn't mind eating heels and crusts of bread!

For the two rice square gifts, the only way that I could get the carrot ribbons to stay put was to skewer them with picks. It's not quite the way I wanted it but I still like how it looks :)

A-chan loves eating candycanes. Unfortunately she and I are both allergic to mint so we have to be very careful about finding candycanes that aren't flavored with real peppermint. When she accidentally ate a bit of mint last spring she had a pretty bad reaction and I'm kind of torn about letting her eat any candycanes at all this year.

Let's talk about Dango.

Since A-chan still cannot go to school today there is no bento :( But I am smothering my frustration with one of my most loved foods, Dango. Super H mart is where I found them to try a couple of years ago and I was ecstatic! I'd been wanting to try them forever. Then last year while I was out in California I had some at the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park. They were oh my gosh delicious! When I rhapsodized (is that even a word?) over dango in the bento panel at AWA everyone was aware of how much I love this sweet...

But as I was savoring the yumminess I realized that I knew next to nothing about dango. So I decided to have a bit of a research morning.

These are the things that I knew about dango: They are unfilled dumplings of rice flour that are boiled, skewered and smothered in a yummy sauce. They are a traditional Japanese sweet that are often seen in anime and manga (this is where I first ran across them and wondered what they heck?). They are chewy and yummy and delicious!

I was disappointed when I couldn't find much more than that. Wikipedia has a large article listing the different types of dango, which are extensive! But not much information on where/when/how they originiated.

Just Bento has a great informative article and even a recipe for dango: http://www.justhungry.com/mitarashi-dango-rice-dough-dumplings-sweet-salty-sauce

But the only link I saw for the history of dango was this: http://www.narumi-mochi.jp/kaisetsu-e/kibi.html

I would love to know more, but am not even sure how to research any further. Anyone out there who has dango knowledge please share it!!

And the burning question that is left unresolved: Which is the best way to eat Mitarashi dango, straight off the end of the stick or biting on the side? Is one way more traditional than the other?

Dan-go-ah-oh! It's really fun to sing, give it a try!

Pancakes again?

Yep, pancakes again. Not that it was said in a complaining tone, quite the contrary it was more of a rejoicing tone :) The heart made from a baby spinach leaf seemed to throw her for a loop, though! She was reassured that it was stuck on with honey which would be tasty.

Somehow I feel like it has already been a full week instead of just two days in, and I'm ready for the week to be over! The pink eye is starting to get better and we're both hoping that she can go to school tomorrow. We spent yesterday baking treats to give to my students and today making origami to give to her classmates. Tomorrow I plan on making holiday chocolates.

In the bento: Mini pancakes, baby spinach, frozen peaches, steamed broccoli, Veggie link sausages, and a baby tomato with a flower pick. In the monkey container was a little bit of strawberry icing for the pancakes.