Snowman Sammies

What do you do with leftover Japanese curry when you've run out of rice?  Make curry sammies!  One of the most intriguing food items that I've seen in Anime is 'curry bread' or 'curry pan'.  Now, I have no idea if this is anything like real curry bread, but I decided to make my own version.  I spooned some curry sauce onto a slice of bread,  making sure that at least one piece of each type of veggie was included.  After placing a second slice on top, I used a plastic cup to cut out the sammie and seal the edges at the same time.  All the leftover bread pieces got saved into an airtight container to be used in the fake greek meatballs I'm making for dinner tonight.  I love it when things work out that way!

It was extremely difficult to get the smaller snowman to look jolly instead of sinister.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe because he is peeking over the tomato?  He still has a crazed look about him, but I think the pink cheeks helped.

In the bento: Two curry sammies, a huge cherry tomato, carrot sticks, steamed broccoli, blackberries and pomegranate seeds.

The snowmen faces were made from nori and provolone cheese.   I cut small slits into the bread  to stick in the cute carrot triangles noses.  The psychopath snowman has pink cheeks cut from leftover pink egg sheet. All of the facial features were 'glued' onto the bread by small amounts of mayo.

I love their hats!  They were cut from large pieces of zucchini, with thin slices of zucchini flesh for the dapper bands.  To make them more festive I added tiny pieces of steamed broccoli and a pomegranate seed to each.  I used a dried spaghetti noodle stuck through the bottom to attach them by then sticking the other end of the noodle into the sandwich.

A small confession - I got into trouble with this bento.  The hats were huge!  There was absolutely no way that the lid could fit onto the box.  I had to take the hats off and stick them inside the bento in another location.  A-chan was very understanding and said that she was fine sticking them back onto the snowmen herself at lunchtime.  Whew!

Mittens

Oh baby it's cold outside! Our glove box is in full working mode with the frigid temperatures that have come to our area.  Since mittens are weighing heavily in A-chan's mind these days I thought I'd include an edible pair in a bento.

  I was feeling a bit better this morning so it seemed like a great time to try to perfect the art of corn cutting.  Perhaps I have been intimidated by my failures in the past, but the thought of trying to cut corn on the cob into smaller sizes to fit in a bento seems an impossible task.  Today there was a revelation.  I forgot to cook the corn the night before and ended up in a tight spot this morning.  Instead of giving up I tried microwaving.  Ta Dah!  It was so easy to cut right through. It didn't squish, deform or break the knife.   Wow, I wish I'd tried that a long time ago!

In the bento: Couscous with mittens, tofu and zucchini stirfry on top of a bread container, microwaved corn on the cob slice (yahoo!), cherry tomato and blackberries.

The mittens were cut from a pink egg sheet and provolone cheese with nori hearts and ties.  I cut them free form with scissors which explains why they are a little bit different from one another.

Here is A-chan working on the batch of snowman cookies that we made last night.  She is getting the hang of the piping bag!

Snow Lady

Rush here, rush there, rush everywhere!  It seems like there isn't enough time to get everything done today.  We have three sick cats so I'm spending a good bit of today at the Vet's office.  Luckily this bento was really fast and easy to make, not requiring much brain power.  Which was good because I forgot to turn on the coffee maker this morning.  A snowman is always a must for winter bentos.  I realized after I had gotten the body into the box that there wasn't enough room for a hat.  So it became a snowlady instead.

In the bento: Three onigiri for the snowlady, veggie hotdogs, mango chunks, carrot flowers, steamed broccoli and a strawberry.

The Snowlady's buttons are pomegranate seeds.  Her eyes and mouth are nori but her nose is carrot and her cheeks were cut from veggie hotdog.  She has a bit of nori hair and a carrot bow.  The scarf was cut from spring onion which made a wonderfully frayed end when cut lengthwise with kitchen scissors.

A few tiny snowflakes were punched from a mamenori sheet.  I didn't have any natural color mamenori left so I had to use the orange.

Here is A-chan holding her kitten and a sneak peek of the Christmas tree.  The kitten is already getting big. I love this pic with her tongue sticking out!  We're still working on Holiday decorating.  I don't think we'll have any time for it today but hopefully tomorrow will see all the boxes emptied and Christmas cheer spread around the house.

Snowman!

A-chan has been picky about eating rice lately (she normally loves it and used to eat tons of it!) so I needed a way to get her excited about having rice for lunch.

She provided inspiration herself by asking me to read her snowman book and I went Aha! A snowman would be easy to make, right? It was, believe it or not. And she loved the pickle scarf very much.

Snowman: 1/2 cup rice & 1/4 cup rice, veg pepperoni hat & mouth, carrot nose (woot!) and buttons, pickle eyes, scarf and buttons. Nori arms.

Tic tac toe board: Nori strips with marinated tofu squares and flowers.

Sides: apple bunnies and squares, green peas.

The fact that she did eat most of it (no peas got eaten, she tried the nori but spat it out) was almost as good as the fun I had making it. Do you remember being told not to play with your food as a child? Now I do it all the time. I guess I'll have to stop telling A-chan not to play with her food...