Sweet Kitten

I love how this bento turned out!  So kawaii that I can't stand it.  One thing that I want everyone to know - practice is the key to cuteness.  After years of making onigiri kitties, I think I might have hit on the penultimate cute one.  Or ... maybe I'm biased.  Either way, the more you make bentos the more awesome they will get, I promise.  My girl's birthday is coming up soon and I'm already beginning to dread the day when she grows up so much that she doesn't want cute things in her lunches.  What will I do?  I'll have to start making them for me.

In the bento: Two onigiri with a bed of rice and black sesame seeds underneath, blackberries, steamed broccoli, cherry tomato, checkered apple, teriyaki tofu, lemon slice and carrot hearts.

The kitty's eyes and nose were uncooked black soy beans and his tail and other details were made with provolone cheese.  His whiskers were cut from nori.

Tonkatsu kitties

How do I describe tonkatsu?  Crispy deep fried bundles of joy.  Tonkatsu is wonderful by itself but pair it up with the gastronomic delight that is tonkatsu sauce and you have one of my ultimate top comfort foods.  Normally tonkatsu would be pork cutlets breaded with panko crumbs and deep fried.  My vegetarian version of this is extra firm tofu that has been frozen, thawed and breaded in panko before being deep fried to a crunchy golden brown.  The process of freezing the tofu gives it a much different texture that is perfect for this kind of dish.

This tonkatsu bento is also an example of my stunningly brilliant freezer stash plan.  Over the weekend we had tonkatsu for dinner and the leftovers promptly went back into the freezer for easy reheating bento-style.  I popped them straight from the freezer into the oven for about 12 minutes before cutting into slices for the bento.   Reheating in the oven thaws out the tofu and dries it a little bit (freezing tofu always creates extra water that needs to be either squeezed or baked out) and makes the panko nice and crisp at the same time.  

The only problem with our love of tonkatsu is that A-chan is now old enough to eat way more of my tonkatsu sauce than I would like.  But that's okay because I taught her how to make it this morning.  She can now make more whenever she runs out.  Or I run out, whichever...

In the bento: Basmati rice, tofu tonkatsu, pomegranate seeds, baby corn, checkered cucumber slices, black pluot chunks and a carrot flower.

The little kitties were made from provolone cheese and yellow egg sheet.  Their faces were punched out of nori and glued on with a tiny bit of mayo.

Not shown: the huge container of tonkatsu sauce that A-chan took with her this morning.

Playtime?

I've been playing around with filled onigiri lately.  What I have been told about rice balls is that if they are plain they are technically called musubi and if they have flavorings or fillings they are onigiri.  (If this is not correct, please let me know!)  I tend to use onigiri to describe rice balls all the time.  Filling rice balls is fun!  It can sometimes be a messy game, but practice is your friend.  So is cling wrap.  When A-chan was much smaller I rarely used fillings in onigiri because it was harder for her to eat and she abhorred getting messy at school.  Now that she is older it happens much more often which makes me very happy.

In the bento:  Kitty onigiri with teriyaki tofu filling, lemon slice, sesame carrots in a toasted bread bowl, steamed broccoli, blackberries and a checkered apple slice.

The kitty is composed of two large onigiri for head and body and two small onigiri for the paws.  The smaller rice balls are plain and have black sesame seeds for claws.  The larger onigiri both have filling.  Her face is decorated with black sesame seeds, nori, white egg sheet and pink egg sheet.

Lovely Little Mushrooms

We all get stuck in a rut sometimes and feel like we don't have any creativity to pull out of our hats, right?  When that happens I ask A-chan what she would like in her bento for the next day.  Rarely has this backfired but in this case...yeah.  She asked for mushrooms, one boy and one girl.  What the heck?!  That was really no help, but thanks.  So now I needed to come up with an idea for 'shrooms and I had nothing.  Really.  Zip.  Ah, but I have books.   Inspiration found, I thought, and pulled out all of my charaben books.  They are all in Japanese which I can't read to save my life but hey, I can still look at the pictures and get ideas!  But...no mushrooms.  Gah.  In desperation I turned to Pinterest.  And there a beam of light came down from on high to illuminate one of AkinoIchigo's bentos with some cute mushrooms.  I loved it and had a great time coming up with this bento which is totally inspired by hers. Crisis averted.

In the bento:  Rice with homemade furikake, blackberries, carrot leaves, tofu and broccoli stirfry, feta chunks and an apple bunny.

The mushrooms were made from provolone cheese and a pink egg sheet that I distressed a bit with a toothpick to look more 'shroomish.  They have nori faces, more pink egg sheet for cheeks and the girly mushroom has a bow cut from carrot.  I think they came out really well.  More importantly A-chan loved them!

We are having a blast at the NanoWriMo challenge.  A-chan has around 450 words out of the 900 word goal that she set for herself.  I can't believe she's already half way there!  My word count is around 17,000 out of a total 50,000 to meet the challenge.  The biggest surprise so far has been the fact that my grammar and punctuation skills are not as good as I'd thought they were!

Tofu Totoro Musubi

A few weeks ago I ran across this fabulous YouTube video on how to make Spam Musubi Totoros.  It inspired me to try making them with slabs of extra firm tofu instead and this was the result!  Except...I didn't have enough nori left to make the bands of the musubi.  But I loved how the Totoros turned out.  I made four of them and since only two would fit into A-chan's bento I got to eat the leftovers for lunch.  Yummy!

In the bento:  Tofu totoros, rectangular onigiri (hidden under the totoros completely), raspberries, steamed broccoli, pineapple, carrot acorns and some frozen blueberries.

To make the totoro shapes I traced the bento box on a piece of paper, then divided it into two rectangles.  I drew a rough totoro shape in each rectangle.  With a piece of saran wrap between the drained slices of tofu and the paper template I used my handy dandy exacto knife to cut out the totoros. They were then cooked in a skillet with a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and mirin as I tried to get a spam-ish color from them.  The white parts were all white egg sheet, the black details were nori (of course) and the whiskers were uncooked soba noodles.  Getting the soba noodles to stick up at the correct angles was actually the most difficult part.  Tiny egg sheet flowers were stuck to the steamed broccoli with more uncooked soba.

Dango? Why yes, thanks!

Do you have a favorite food that  you don't get to eat often?  Mine is dango!  It is definitely a special treat and only happens about twice a year.  Whenever I'm in San Francisco I stop by the Japanese Tea Gardens and grab some tea and dango.  I suppose that I could learn to make it at home, but I love having dango as a rare thing.  That way it's something to look forward to for a month or so before a trip.

This dango bento just tickles me.  One of my favorites paired with one of A-chan's.  She adores soba.  I like soba noodles, too.  Just not as much as she does.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun to make and a lot of fun for her to eat!

In the bento:  Rice ball dango, soba noodles, carrot stars, steamed broccoli, crisp fried tofu and plum slices.

The dango rice balls were made by cooking three pots of rice - one plain, one with red food coloring and another with green.  You might think making three colored batches of rice is crazy, but it actually is a greatly efficient way of filling up my freezer.  It usually happens over a weekend and when each batch is done they are immediately made into onigiri and frozen to make morning bentos so much easier.  But back to the bento deets...the faces were made from nori using two different punches, with sesame seeds added to the eyes and sriracha sauce for the cheeks.  A piece of fried soba noodle makes the stick of the dango.

Princess Merida

For the last bento before our trip A-chan requested Merida.  Though she loves all the Disney Princesses, Merida is currently her favorite.  She has been learning Scottish Highland Dance since January and mentioned yesterday that she wanted to do some dancing for Merida at Disney!  There is a new fruit in this bento - dinosaur egg pluot.  I couldn't pass up the chance to eat a fruit with a name like that.  And I love it!  It's a very nice pluot with a mostly sweet taste and luckily A-chan loves it.

With complicated character bentos I sketch out the designs the night before and often do most of the prep work then as well.  In this case, the sketches, multiple egg sheets and the little bear onigiri were made the night before.  I neglected to check the sizing of the bears, leaving them much too big to fit into the actual bento.  A-chan claimed that she didn't mind if one got squished a little.

In the bento: Merida figure on top of a lovely block of rice, checkered apple, three bear onigiri, steamed broccoli, a cherry tomato (completely hidden under/behind the bears), garlic and basil encrusted tofu, baby corn spears and slices of dinosaur egg pluot.

Merida was made from (can you guess?) many layer of egg sheet and provolone.  I'm sure that no one is surprised by that since those are my standard ingredients for charaben.  I was excited about making the arrow and bow string, though.  The arrow is an uncooked udon noodle and the bow string is the edging cut from a slice of soy turkey.

The three bears are onigiri made from fried rice with lots of extra soy sauce to get them a deep brown color.  Soy turkey and nori were used for their faces.  I should have made their faces a little differently, but I was too concerned with trying to make them all fit into the box!

The target that proclaims our count down to vacation was cut from provolone cheese, cucumber peel and carrot.

Sketch of the Merida bento.

Ladybug Bento

Gah, where did the summer go?  It went by in a blur of travel, classes and craziness.  Neither of us are ready for summer to be over and I'm enjoying looking through the summer camp bentos to help hold onto summer as long as possible.

This ladybug bento was another of those summer camp lunches.  I don't use the bright yellow Pikachu box much these days since A-chan is not as interested in Pokemon, but I do love how it makes the red of the food pop out.

In the bento: Chilled zaru soba noodles, cherry tomato ladybug, carrot flowers with pear peel leaves in the large tier.  The smaller tier holds pear slices, a strawberry, blueberries, half an apricot, steamed broccoli and Shoyu tofu on picks.  Not shown: a container of sauce for the noodles.

The ladybug has a blueberry head which is attached to the cherry tomato half with a fried spaghetti noodle.  Her eyes are cut from pear with nori details and her antennae are uncooked soba noodles.  I adore how the center of the blueberry looked like a nose!  Nori was applied to the tomato with a bit of water to help the pieces stick.

Sweet Lamb

It's been a while since I've done any blogging and I was a little worried that I wouldn't remember how!  I'm  grateful to have a new computer so that the internet and I can be playmates again.  It is doubtful that I can catch up on all the bentos that I've missed seeing during the last few months, but I'm going to try, darn it.

This lamb bento was made for one of A-chan's summer camp days.  As always, summer camp lunches need to be simple because they get tossed into a huge plastic container and carried around the camp.  Anything with complex characters tends to be a huge mess by lunchtime.

In the bento:  Rice lamb with egg sheet face, ears and feet.  His eyes and mouth are nori and his cheeks are tiny buds from a raspberry.  He has carrot letters, a side of soy sauce tofu hearts with nori centers, steamed edamame, raspberries and blueberries.

The strange tofu shapes that were left over from cutting out the hearts were also cooked and are hidden underneath the hearts.

Yakisoba is Yummy!

Once again I deceived myself into believing that I would have a smidgen of free time during the Thanksgiving break.  Wrong!  On the plus side it was a fabulously fun week.  These bentos were eaten at Zoo Atlanta while we sat and watched the Gorillas have a snack.  I kept them plain and without characters since I would be carrying them through the zoo for a few hours before lunchtime.  This turned out to be a great plan since I got very excited about the Red Panda who was incredibly adorable.  There apparently was some jumping and squeeeing that could potentially have destroyed any characters.

After lunch I was excited to talk about bentos to the Japan Society of Georgia Perimeter College, woot! I really, really love to talk about bentos.  This was the second time that I had trouble remembering the name of a Japanese recipe, though.  It was Tsukune!  Next time I'm going to have it tattooed on my hand, I swear.  Thank you guys so much, I loved it and enjoyed meeting you all!

In the bentos:  Yaki soba noodles with sauteed tofu, cauliflower, broccoli and carrots was the main part for both of us.  A-chan had an apple bunny, baby corn and some black olives on picks.  I had the apple pieces that were cut off to make the bunny and some cucumber slices.

Beware the Vampires

Beware, beware the vampire pair

who are dread and dire.

For both be filled

with the desire

to feed on necks so fair.

Spelling homework can stick in a parent's head, that's for sure.  Especially when the spelling words rhyme so nicely.  These vampire onigiri were a tribute to the Dacula High School Anime Club.  Thank you so much for inviting me to do a demo!  I had a great time and enjoyed meeting all of you.  

In the bento: Two vampire onigiri, steamed edamame in their pods, a carrot jack o'lantern, blackberries, a baby tomato, fried tofu and simmered kabocha.

The small ends of baby tomatoes were cut off to make the Vampire's eyes and were stuck onto the rice balls with tiny pieces of uncooked somen noodle.  I used scissors to cut the nori into shape and used leftover bits of carrot from the jack o'lantern for the Vampire noses.  White egg sheet made the background for my lovely bat which was cut from nori.  A couple of bone shaped picks liven up the veggies.

On Nov. 3rd I will be vending at the Athens Montessori Fall Festival!  A-chan might possibly be more excited than I am, but it's got to be a close tie.  

Fall Colors

We noticed our first bit of Autumn color in the yard today.  Hurray for Fall!  This bento doesn't have anything to do with Fall.  In fact, it was made about two weeks ago.  However, it does have very happy onigiri in it.  And it has plenty of our new favorite food - edamame. It keeps ending up in all kinds of new recipes.  One might say that I have a crush on edamame, in fact.

In the bento: Two plain onigiri with happy faces and edamame decoration, baby tomatoes, nectarine slices, steamed broccoli and a container of stirfry that includes tofu, baby corn, carrots and edamame.

The onigiri eyes were punched out of nori but the smiles were hand cut with scissors.  Their cheeks were strawberry jam applied with a toothpick.  Tiny pieces of uncooked somen noodles help to attach the edamame to the onigiri.

Double Bentos!

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween is coming!  We got all of our Halloween decorations up over the last two days so I decided it was time to start Halloween bentos too.  I'm very late with them this year, but that's okay, right?  These were Tuesday's lunches.  Yes, I got to take a bento to school and I was very happy :)  The current Sonography students need volunteers to practice their skills on so I signed up.  It's incredibly cool and I've gotten some very interesting compliments.  Apparently I have a beautiful Aorta and Spleen.  My left kidney, however, is extremely uncooperative.

In the bento:   Sauteed tofu with garlic sauce, pear chunks, baby tomato, steamed broccoli, soba noodles and carrots.  Both bentos have pretty much the same ingredients.  The only differences are the apple in mine and that A-chan wanted her Soba noodles plain instead of with sauce.   The apple wouldn't fit in A-chan's bento so she ate it with breakfast.

The Jack O'lantern was cut out of carrot with a Wilton's miniature cookie cutter.  The face was cut out using my beloved exacto knife.  His stem was cut from part of A-chan's broccoli.

My soba noodle sauce was 1 TB soy sauce, 1 tsp. Mirin, 1/2 tsp. sugar and 1/4 tsp sesame oil.  They were all whisked together and heated in a sauce pan for 1 minute before adding the cooked and drained noodles.  I continued cooking for a few minutes until the sauce had reduced and was coating all of the soba.  

I had forgotten how much A-chan likes Soba noodles.  She came home from school saying I hadn't given her enough and could she have more soba for snack, please?  Love it!

JapanFest DayTwo

I can hardly believe how quickly this week has gone by.  On Monday my face was sore from smiling so much over the weekend!  Tuesday was entirely taken up with tests at school.  Today there were more tests but they were outweighed by the beautiful blue skies and clear weather.  Now that my exams are over I am able to finish up my posts about the wonderfulness of JapanFest!  Everyone loved seeing A-chan's lunch so much on Saturday that I decided to make a bento just for display on Sunday. People's reactions to seeing the bentos in person were so sweet and it made me very happy.

In the bento: Two plain onigiri, an apple bunny, blackberries, edamame on a pick, tofu karaage, carrot stars and almost invisible in the back were steamed broccoli and tiny tomato halves.

The onigiri were very quickly formed with the use of a triangular rice mold.  Their eyes were punched out of nori with a face shaped puncher, but the mouths were cut with scissors.  I used the end of a toothpick to apply sriracha sauce to make the cheeks.

In addition to the display bento we each had lunch bentos.  On Sunday A-chan's asthma was under control so she got to come along, yay!  Her bento had the same contents as the display with the addition of some kiwi slices.  Mine had Japanese curry instead of onigiri.

We had a fantastic time.  One of her favorite things was seeing all the Koi.  She also loved the games in the ginza.

A-chan in her new Yukata and me in my Aunt Takiko's Michiyuki. Her Yukata and face paint matched!

Playing games.  This one was the ring-toss.

The consolation prize for the ring toss was cotton candy. She loves cotton candy!

Froggy Faces

One of my absolute favorite things about bento tools is how a single basic shape can be transformed into so many different things.  Take the frog onigiri above, for example.  They were made with a teddy bear onigiri mold.  I've used the same mold to make bears, pandas, racoons, frogs and a few other things.  The tools certainly aren't necessary for bento making, but they can be so much fun and open up new realms of creative thinking!

In the bento: Two frog onigiri, cherries, fried tofu, carrot flowers, a huge cherry tomato and steamed broccoli.

Green food coloring was added to the water before I cooked the rice which gave a lovely light green hue.  The eyes were cut from white egg sheet and nori.  Their noses were black sesame seeds and the mouths cut from nori with scissors.  The carrot flowers are the best thing about this bento, in my opinion, because I just learned how to do it!  I love them!  Learning how to cut the flowers this way was part of what I did on my birthday.  A-chan gave a gratifying gasp of amazement when she saw them.

Have a Happy Monday, everyone!

Polar Bear

What does a Polar Bear do on Summer vacation?  I think he would go to Antarctica for vacation.  Until we got our air conditioner repaired yesterday I was starting to day dream about traveling there myself!  This is another tightly packed summer camp bento, but I wanted it to be a little cuter since it was for the last day of camp.

In the bento: Rice, sesame carrots, grapes, cherry tomato halves, steamed broccoli, soy sauce tofu and peach slices.

The Happy Bear's features were punched from nori.  His snout (or should that be muzzle) is an oval of provolone cheese with nori on top.  He also has tiny circles of gari for cheeks.

It's Monday

Today is another case of the Monday blahs.  Although I think it was because of the lack of groceries than the Monday.  Whatever the reason, I had no theme and no charaben in mind this morning.  It still has all the important ingredients, like food.  Food is important.  It has carbs and protein, veggies and fruit.  It also has my favorite homemade furikake sprinkled over the rice!  In fact, I'm very tempted to make a clone of this bento for my lunch today.

In the bento:  Rice with tarragon, salt and toasted sesame seed furikake, a silicone container of shredded cheese, halved cherry tomato, baby corn spears, grapes, tiny orange wedges, steamed broccoli and three pieces of soy sauce tofu.

Lunchtime Friends

The tiny onigiri cube army is coming!  Run for your lives.  Call the Dr.  Get out the soy sauce!  This morning would have been so much easier if I had remembered to make the onigiri last night.  Alas, I made them this morning instead which made the bento take longer to pack.  And when I had decided on today's menu I hadn't taken into account that it took 12 cubes to fill in the box.  I was thinking 6.  Oh well, what's a Tuesday for if not adventure?

In the bento: 12 cube onigiri minis, corn on the cob, a date, raspberries, orange slices, grapes, veggie and tofu stirfry and cheese flowers.

The stifry has broccoli, carrots, tofu, green peas and baby spinach.  There are two onigiri bears, two doggies and two kitties.  They were formed with the help of an onigiri mould which makes 3 at a time.  Their faces were punched or cut from nori and applied with the help of tweezers.  My favorites are the kitties, of course!

Cupcake Kitty

Remember the Cupcake kitten bento that I did a while back?  It was based on art that A-chan created, but I'm pretty sure her art was inspired by Samantha Whitten's incredibly cute art.  Her booth at Anime Weekend Atlanta is hands down A-chan's fav booth and it's one of mine, too.  We purchase things of cuteness there every year, but we love the Cupcake Kitties the most.   Not long ago A-chan asked me to make one of the Cupcake Kitty stickers for her bento.   The artist was very sweet and gave me permission (Thank you, Samantha!).

In the bento:  Cheese sandwich, purple mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, fried tofu and mango.

The kitty was created with egg sheets, nori, sugar sprinkles and somen noodles for whiskers.  I think that I still need more practice with the egg sheets!  The brown sheets were colored with soy sauce but for the tan and orange sheets I used food coloring. The purple mashed potatoes are from purple potatoes, no food coloring added.  They were a little sweeter than normal potatoes and A-chan has decided that she likes them just fine.

 This kitty was a fun challenge and you should go see the original art at the Sugar Bunny shop.  I can't wait to see what A-chan requests next!

Happy Spring Flower

Once again I'm mixing it up for healthier lunches.  You might think that the little green specks you see in the couscous are basil.  In fact, that's what A-chan thought because that's what I normally put in couscous.  This time it is half basil and half baby spinach, dun, dun, dun!  There wasn't a cry of surprise of a whimper as we ate it last night so I am happy to pack it again for lunch.

In the bento:  Extra special healthy couscous with garlic, basil and spinach is on one side.  The other side has chickpeas, steamed broccoli, mulberries, a strawberry, carrot flowers and soy sauce tofu.

The flower is made from purple potato, carrot and cucumber peel.  The cute little face was punched from nori, of course :) I doubt that A-chan will eat the purple potato - she looked at it very suspiciously this morning.  But that's okay because there's spinach in the couscous!  You can't tell that I'm lovin' the sneaky spinach, can you?  The chickpeas are plain and straight from the fridge.