Crazy Quick Bento

Today's bento was made in 10 minutes. It had to be crazy quick because we had to rush out of the house to pick up my car from the repair shop and return the rental car, all in time to get A-chan to school. That meant lots of rushing!! These are the mornings for which I have the freezer stash. The bento wasn't very cute, but she didn't seem to mind.

In the bento: a huge onigiri, some slivered carrots, two black olives on a pokemon pick, steamed broccoli, 2 Morningstar Farms chik nuggets, a little slice of lemon, a cherry tomato and some grapes.

The onigiri was frozen and just took 1 minute to heat up in the microwave. The nuggets took the longest, but since there was no cheese in this bento I plopped them in straight from the oven instead of letting them cool off first. The broccoli was actually done in the Ohitashi style - dropped in boiling water for 3 minutes and then removed and dunked in cold water for a second before going into the bento. The carrot slivers I had purchased for salads for my lunches this week, but they've been great for A-chan's bentos too! They fit practically anywhere and she loves them. They will probably be showing up a lot in the future.

The tiny heart on the rice ball was punched out of nori. (I had to have a little bit of cuteness, even in my busy, busy morning!)

Not pictured were the soy sauce bottle and the ketchup container which were just put into the bento bag since the box was already full.

Cute Hairstyles Bento

It has been forever since I made a bento. 11 days to be exact. I was expecting it to be difficult and painful to get up early this morning after the long enforced week at home with snow and ice keeping us trapped. It pleasantly surprised me to be awake early and feeling excited rather than dreading the return to our regular schedule. I had an idea for today's bento and I couldn't wait to try it out. The idea was inspired by the Cute Food For Kids blog and the incredibly cute Babybel hairstyles that I saw there recently. What I really wanted to try was making hair out of pancakes!

Using my "food only" scissors I cut the mini pancakes to resemble the Babybel styles. It worked pretty well! Underneath the hair are circles of provolone and under those are more mini pancakes. The faces are nori and the cheeks are tiny dots of sriracha. For the cheeks I dipped a toothpick in the sauce and then lightly tapped it to the cheese.

In the bento: Mini pancakes faces with carrot and soy ham hair ornaments, cherry tomato, carrot slivers, veggie sausage links, babybel cheese, carrot stars and a small bunch of grapes.

We enjoyed the snow and all the craziness that ensued because of it, but I have to say that I am soooo entirely delighted to be back to bentoing!!

Panda in Snow

This morning was a tough one, again. A-chan woke up grumpy and sleepy and out of sorts and downright irritable. But once I finally got her to drag to the table for breakfast, it all got better. I showed her today's bento and a transformation occurred. She smiled. Not just a plain old smile, but a megajigawatt smile and all was right with the world. That is why I make cute bentos, because it makes her smile. (And incidentally because they are fun to make, lol) Ahhh, I love that moment!

Today's bento was another quick and simple one. But the panda is just sooooo cute!! I'm tempted to make me one too :D

In the bento: Jasmine rice with nori panda face, sauteed tofu cubes, sesame carrots, a huge piece of steamed broccoli and several purple grapes. A flowery baran separates the carrots and tofu so that the flavors don't mix, and there is an orange heart pick to eat the tofu with.

I cooked the tofu and carrots in the same pan so the cleaning up was quick as well :) And the panda face was made with another of the nori punches that Santa gave me. I've managed to use all 3 of them this week, heeya!

I surrender!

A cute little snowman putting his arms up to surrender after a wild and dangerous snowball fight with his buddies. Watch out, though - he still has 3 snowballs in his arsenal...

In the bento: The top tier has a huge elephant container of ketchup, veggie hotdogs, steamed broccoli, a container of peaches and blueberries, plus three picks with pickle slices on them.

The bottom tier has a layer of rice completely hidden underneath the Japanese curry, and a very sneaky provolone snowman.

The snowman's arms were cut from baby spinach leaves using my kitchen scissors. His scarf is a bit of apple peel. The face and buttons are nori while the hat was cut from the end of a veggie hotdog and has a tiny bit of apple peel flourish.

I absolutely am loving the way that the hotdogs turned out. In my eternal search for a way to make veggie dogs look lovely in a bento, this is a definite win! Nothing special here, though - just a diagonal slice through the middle of a dog and then small v-cuts on the centerlines in both directions.

I'm trying a few different things in the curry now and again. This time I added sultanas and honey. It's pretty sweet, almost too sweet for my taste (I'm a hot and spicy loving girl) but A-chan is head over heels for it!

Rocket Star Bento

I couldn't think of a name for this bento so I asked A-chan to name it for me. Another really quick bento this morning. We've been experiencing a problem where A-chan's bentos are getting knocked off the shelf at school. The lunch boxes are on a shelf directly underneath the coat rack and when the kids go to get their coats for playtime the lunch boxes all get knocked around. So far the boxes aren't harmed but the food takes a tumble and ends up all scattered in the box. I'm hoping that we can find a solution since she gets really disappointed when it happens. Anybody have any suggestions that we can try?

In the bento: 2 Morningstar farms chik nuggets, red grapes, green peas on picks, little candies, garlic and basil couscous with space decorations of soy ham, provolone, nori and carrots.

In the background is the beautiful Saturn cloth napkin that A-chan colored for herself with fabric markers.

I'm designating this bento as an honorary 'Get Better Soon' bento for OhayoBento! The space cutter set was from her store, without which I would definitely have been much unhappier this morning.

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!