Cute Little Chick

We just got back from a fantastic weekend of awesome dancing, music and friends. I am completely exhausted and sore, desperate for more sleep but extremely happy. The thing that really made my morning was A-chan recognizing the chick in her bento! The last time I'd tried to make little chick onigiris, she didn't recognize them at all and refused to believe me when I told her what they were, lol. Ah, the lovely progression of artistry through tons of practice - whether with dance, music or bentos, practice makes us better at anything! A-chan did not want to go to school this morning so I'm hoping that the happy bright-eyed chick will help her be happy.

In the bento: Morningstar Farms chik nuggets, carrot butterfly, chick onigiri, steamed broccoli, black olives and strawberries.

The chick onirigi has nori feet and eyes, a carrot beak and provolone wings. In the background is a container of ketchup for the chik nuggets.

Daffodil Pancakes

The daffodils are blooming, the daffodils are blooming!! Spring has unofficially arrived and I love it. The splashes of bright yellow brighten up even the most dreary day. A-chan and I are doing our bi-annual flower impersonations too. She has two inches of bright pink hair and I have 6 inches of dark purple. (There will be pictures later in the week, I promise) Everyone loves A-chan with her bit of pink, they gush over it all the time :D

In the bento: Miniature pancakes sporting leafy picks with provolone petals and a candy center, vegetarian bacon hearts, lots of strawberries, some Clementine wedges and a fried potato in the shape of a Hello Kitty face.

The candy centers for the flowers are 'Make 'n Mold candy wafers' that I found at Hobby Lobby. They come in all kinds of colors and can be melted down to make candy, or used plain to make beautiful flowers :-)

The HK face was made using a special cutter on a slice of potato, then I shallow fried it in olive oil on both sides for a few minutes.

In the background is the little monkey face container that holds strawberry icing for A-chan to spread onto her pancakes.

Inarizushi Bears

I am feeling so much better today! So much better that I decided to give myself a little challenge and try to make some cute inarizushi :) A-chan really liked them in our picnic bento last week and I still had enough left over to play around with them some. The bears came out pretty cute, I think. They are both a little different from one another and they are definitely not perfect but I had a lot of fun making them.

In the bento: The bottom tier holds a lot of rice with furikake and a huge carrot star. The top tier has two inarizushi bears, lots of frozen blueberries, a carrot star, a baby tomato and some simmered kabocha.

Once again I simmered the kabocha and the inari in the same mixture: water, soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar. It's only been about two months since I first tried kabocha and I'm really enjoying experimenting with it! I am planning to put some into our Japanese curry for dinner this evening, too :)

The bears' faces are made from provolone and nori with ketchup cheeks. (I would have used sriracha, but the ketchup was already sitting on the counter so I decided to give it a try) Their ears were the hard part. They were cut from other pieces of inari with a circular cutter. But they didn't want to stand up! After the circles were cut out I had a lot of pieces of inari that couldn't be stuffed with rice and were all kinds of weird shapes. So I shredded them and mixed them with sushi rice and sriracha for my bento.

Hurt ankle bento

Today's bento relies entirely upon accessories for cuteness. My bento making skills were defeated by the ankle that I twisted at Pump It Up over the weekend. I took one trip to the fridge and grabbed as much food as I could and used only those things to create the bento without having to walk anymore. The bento making station is the kitchen counter right beside where I have all my accessories stored. Again I just grabbed those few accessories that were quickest and used them before hobbling to sit down. I kind of like how it ended up, though. It's a little bit different from my normal type of bento and I used three accessories, like the ring pick, that I don't normally use.

In the bento: Two onigiri with scrambled tofu, several carrot flowers, a baby tomato, a container of chickpeas, some purple grapes and steamed broccoli.

A-chan said that she didn't think it was too boring and that using the ring pick for the grapes would be a lot of fun. She did a lot of things to help me out this morning so that I didn't have to walk much. I'm chagrined that I thought my ankle was all better yesterday but by the time I drove home from Alabama and started to walk in the house it was all achy and making an ominous clicking noise. It has to get better fast, though - I have a dance convention this weekend and I'm performing!

Road Trip

We embarked on an adventure today. A trip that would normally take us 4 hours took 6 today. It was an interesting day of leisurely stop and go traffic. I had planned to have a picnic bento at a park about halfway through the trip but because of the incredibly horrific traffic we never got to do that. We ended up eating the bento in the car instead. It really, really was not designed for eating without a table. We made it work though - finger food for the win! And I only spilled a little bit of soy sauce :)

In the bento: 6 inari zushi with homemade furikake mixed in with the rice, and two apple bunnies in the first compartment. The second compartment has grapes, 3 scrambled tofu onigiri, and an ice mochi. Another one held 5 veggie gyoza, carrot hearts, veggie meatballs, two wedges of dragonfruit and the last compartment is totally full of kabocha with a couple of baby tomatoes.

It's been a long time since we've had Inari zushi, and I'm not sure that A-chan has ever had any before today. I am pleased to say that she loved them. And they will soon be included in her lunch bentos!! When simmering the kabocha I added brown sugar which made it very sweet and yum :)

Fruit Full Bento

A bento full of fruit. Fruitful! A-chan was entranced with the idea of food that isn't fruit...looking like fruit. It was a fun morning :) Of course, there is a lot of real fruit in there too. I put some huge slices of dragonfruit in today. I am delighted that I seem to not be allergic to it! This bento would have been a great for an adult bento without the cute faces. I wish that I'd taken a picture before the faces went on so that I could show it both ways, but I thought of it too late.

In the bento: One small onigiri 'orange', a large bunch of purple grapes, two slices of dragonfruit, some chickpeas on picks with a wedge of lemon between, steamed broccoli that can barely be seen, a 'peachy' sweet potato bun. Hidden underneath the grapes and onigiri are lots of carrot hearts for a nice surprise.

The face of the peach is nori, glued on with strawberry jam. There are sesame seeds on the eyes and more jam for the cheeks. The stem and leaf are cut out of a snow pea. The orange's eyes are the inside peas from the snow pea with sesame seeds on top. His mouth is made from nori.

Bunny Faces

Yesterday was an incredibly beautiful spring day. It was so warm and lovely that I took A-chan to the Botanical Gardens after school. We had a great time walking around and seeing all the potential that was waiting patiently for spring to get going. There was actually one flowering bush already - a chinese camellia. While we were walking A-chan casually said, "I wonder what will be in my bento tomorrow. Maybe a rabbit?" So of course I had to do a rabbit. But I wanted to use my tiny little bunny face cutter which was really small - two seemed to fill the space much better :) The bunny faces actually look more like bear faces to me, oh well.

This was also our first time trying dragonfruit! I wasn't sure how to cut it or prepare it so I had to spend some time googling it this morning, lol. It's yummy! I love it. Here's hoping A-chan will too.

In the bento: The left side has garlic couscous with bunny faces, carrot and apple peel flowers which had snow pea leaves. On the other side has morrocan style tofu and chickpeas, a baby tomato, carrot, some steamed broccoli and a container filled with dragonfruit and blueberries.

The bunny faces were cut out of provolone and soy ham. They have nori eyes, black sesame seed noses and sriracha cheeks.

I love the dark green of the kale leaf in the back! It makes a nice contrasting green with the broccoli. It would be wonderful to plant some but I'm not sure if the deer would eat it or not. They have come up on our front porch to eat our flowers before so that makes me wary.