Arrgh!!!

Pirates be lots of fun and an easy bento for the male persuasion. My husband and several of our friends play a game called 'Pirates' which is a card game where you punch out pieces of ships, build the 3-D models of ships and then play a game with them. It's way cool. One of them gave me a duplicate ship and this is what I decided to do with it. An awesome bento accessory, it's even washable with a sponge.

Top tier: Fried rice, half a cherry tomato, steamed broccoli, veggie sausage rolls, pirate ship.

Bottom tier: Fried rice onigiri pirate with nori details, steamed broccoli, french fries, veggie gyoza (store bought), carrot flower, eggless omelette rolled-up.

The pirate was really easy to do. I took dried nori sheets (bought from Walmart, can you believe that?) and cut the bandana, eye patch, eyebrow, pupil and mouth out with scissors. The white of the eye was done with swiss cheese - I just punched a drinking straw into the cheese and got a perfect small circle! That is a tip from one of my favorite bento books, written by the author of E-Obento.com.

I glued the cheese onto the rice ball with some honey, them did the same for the eyebrow and mouth. The larger pieces of nori didn't need any help as they adhered to the rice very well on their own. The eyepatch first and then the bandana covering its end.


From left to right: Veggie sausage rolls, french fries, veggie gyoza, carrot flower, steamed broccoli, eggless omelette roll-up, tomato half, fried rice.

Veggie sausage rolls, veggie gyoza, eggless omelette roll-up, steamed broccoli, fried rice, carrot flower, tomato wedge. My bento includes two gold coins from the pirates game which ended up in my possession through possibly nefarious means.

My veggie sausage rolls are made with the biscuit crust from my scottish flatpie recipe and morningstar farm's sausage links. The key to keeping the sausage links from getting to dried out is to boil them in vegetable stock straight out of the freezer. Then immediately encase them in the crust once they are cooked through. That way they don't mummify when baked in the oven!