Emergency Hello Kitty

Ugh, I'm so sick!  Luckily A-chan is nice and healthy and has not caught this plague from me.  Bento making seemed almost impossible this morning, but Hello Kitty came through for me again!  It is nice to have a fallback for those times when my brain is fogged by nasty germy things.  Oops.  I just now realized that I forgot to put in the soy sauce bottle.  Yikes, I'm going to hear about that later.

In the bento: Peanut butter and sugar sprinkle sandwich, cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, provolone cheese flowers, black plum slices, steamed broccoli and a half orange slice.

Hello Kitty was made from provolone cheese, nori and carrot, using an HK onigiri mold to cut the cheese and a special HK nori punch for the face. The HK onigiri decorating set came with a cutter for the bow and the flowers.  I keep it all together in a box for just such emergency occasions so that I don't have to search for any tools.  Her backdrop was cut from a slice of soy bologna with a large cookie cutter.

Here is a link to the deco set that I used :)

Pirates Say Arrrr!

The new kitten certainly helped A-chan to wake up bright and early this morning!  And because she was up before I started decorating her bento she got to choose the theme.  I was all set to make cute little girls with flowery hats out of these onigiri and inari, but she decided on pirates instead.

In the bento:  Two adventurous pirate onigiri with inari hats, steamed broccoli, a lemon slice, a huge carrot flower, chunks of black plum, tomato slices and simmered orange cauliflower.

A-chan tried the orange cauliflower the other day but wasn't impressed.  Today I simmered some along with the inari in water, soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar.  We will see what she thinks!  Behind the huge carrot are more carrot slices nicely hidden because I didn't have time to make them pretty.

The pirate faces are made with provolone cheese, nori and tomato skin for the mouths.  They bear an X on their hats - I wasn't prepared to make skulls this morning with no warning!  Large golden earrings show off their previous plunder.

Our new kitten is installed in our bathroom for the nonce while we work on getting it acclimated to humans.  It is still a bit feral though we did get to pet it once this morning.  We are still not sure if it is a girl or boy.  Discovering that all important fact is my task for today.  Luckily no one lost any blood during the capture of the little one who at the time was intent on stalking a possum in our front yard.  Yikes!

Pancakes, stars and a kitten

You might be wondering why there is a kitten in the title but not in the bento.  That would be because my daughter can do magic.  It's a special kind of magic where she creates kittens out of thin air.  Like the one that she wanted for her birthday.  The one that we didn't get for her but showed up on our front porch the day after her birthday party.  Yep.  The four legged, long haired, black and white prince of cuteness that currently bears the name 'Meow'.  I'm campaigning for Meow Meow McFargus.  Hubs thinks Meow Meowkins McFargus.

In the bento:  Two miniature pancakes with provolone stars, three crinkle cut french fries, soy sausage links, edamame on a pick, korean red grapes, orange wedges and a sweet panda that contains shredded cheese.

This bento took two dishes to cook: Pancakes and fries went in the oven together, edamame and sausage links went in the same pan to simmer.  The longest part of this was waiting for the oven to heat up!  The panda container was filled with shredded cheese last night and put in the fridge to await the morning bento.

On a side note - did you notice the Tare Panda chopsticks?  Kawaii!!  We arrived early for a movie this past Saturday and I found these while we wandered the mall to kill time.  Love them!!

Fruit in a Bear

Isn't it cute?  The box, I mean.  Pizza day was the best excuse to pop out my new bento box and give it a whirl.  It's the Kuma White Donburi from Bento and Co.  Dude, it's a deep bento box!  Those aren't orange wedges they are half slices.  Half a black plum fit alongside the oranges.  Some might call the lemon wedges citrus overload with all the orange slices, but I wanted something to fit perfectly in that tight curve.  The side container holds a ton of blueberries and pomegranate seeds.

In the bento:  (Hmmm, I think I've already told you everything, but oh well!) Lemon wedges, half orange slices, black plum chunks, blueberries and pomegranate seeds.  There are a few provolone cheese stars and a strawberry divider because it went with the fruit theme and made things cuter.

You may have noticed that the blueberry/pomegranate seeds combination has been going on all week.  That is usually part of how I plan my bentos - A-chan chooses two fruits and then I combine them in different ways all week.  Only...there aren't a lot of ways to combine blueberries and pomegranate seeds.  They do look pretty jumbled together in a container, though!

Happy Friday everyone!

Noodles and Some Cauliflower

When I saw orange cauliflower for sale at the grocery store this week I had an irresistible urge to buy some. I didn't spend any time thinking about it, just grabbed a beautiful head of it and ran.  But at home I began to wonder about it.  What makes it orange?  Does it taste any different?  I had no clue.

According to this engaging article by Saveur, the orange cauliflower originated in Canada.  Another article from Cornell University tells us that this type of cauliflower is higher in beta-carotene and therefore more nutritious than its paler version.  The flavor is similar to normal cauliflower with a little extra sweetness but the texture is smoother.  My taste buds said 'woohoo'!  I'm hoping that A-chan will have the same reaction, though she normally does not like cauliflower so I am not expecting too much from it.  The bright color definitely perked up her interest.

In the bento: Spaghetti noodles, a carrot flower and snap pea leaves are in the bottom tier.  The top tier contains steamed broccoli and orange cauliflower, blueberries and pomegranate seeds, and Morningstar Farms chik nuggets with carrot flowers separating each.  A container of ketchup is in the background.  Not shown are a container of grated parmesan cheese for sprinkling on the noodles and a soy sauce piggy.

The spaghetti noodles were cut into shorter pieces to make eating them easier.  The bento doesn't look as pretty when they are cut up, but it's better to be able to eat them without mishap.  The carrot flowers were cut with a flower shaped cutter.  To make the leaves I cooked a snap pea then opened it and removed the insides before cutting it into leaf shapes with scissors.  To contain the fruit I used a miniature muffin cup.

Panda Luv

Whoa.  It was 35 degrees out there when we went to school this morning.  Thirty-five.  Degrees.  35!  Good thing the glove box is installed in the foyer since we certainly needed warm fingers as we ran out the door.

For today's bento I wanted to play around with my letter cutters.  My only complaint about them is that they don't have the centers cut out.  So far I've been unhappy with my efforts to cut them out by hand and wanted to try something different.  I used the inside bow area of the Hello Kitty bow cutter to create the P's space.  The D's space was cut using the teddy bear mouth cutter.  The spaces for the two A's were made with a triangle that I cut down to proper size using scissors.  I'm happy with the results!

In the bento: Grape halves, pomegranate seeds, steamed broccoli, blueberries on panda picks, a miniature corn croquette and two tiny slices of Scottish Flat Pie, provolone cheese and soy bologna letters and hearts.

The Flat Pie is our traditional Halloween meal.  It never fails to provide comfort and stamina for the long stints of candy-hunting.  Potato and onion slices lightly fried with olive oil, butter and garlic, wrapped in a biscuit crust and smothered with cheese.  Yum!

Cutie pies?

The day after Halloween dawned bright and way too early for my liking!  And even worse, without any bento ideas in my head.  Things were basically thrown into the bento box at random with some lettuce for padding and crossed fingers for luck.

In the bento: Lemon wedges, pomegranate wedge, blueberries, grapes, carrot flowers, green peas, cheddar cheese cubes, soy sausage links, heart shaped onigiri cutie pies.

I'm calling the onigiri 'cutie pies' because I don't know what else to call them.  They aren't anything in particular - just something cute that I could make out of frozen onigiri.  Their faces were made from nori with pomegranate juice for the cheeks.  The tiny flowers were cut from provolone cheese and I used leftover nori punched pieces for their centers.  There are random pomegranate seeds and carrot flowers all over the place for no good reason, lol.

Did you all have a wonderful Halloween?  I hope that you got tons of candy!  There were a few hiccups to our Halloween evening but overall we had a great time. One of the cats stole my dinner while I wasn't looking.  Snatched it right off my plate and under the couch.   A-chan and I had fun Trick or Treating until the poor girl fell on two different staircases, after which she decided not to continue with a hurt leg.  Luckily it was just bruised and felt much better this morning.  She looked very cute in her Garden Fairy costume.

It was designed by her and sewn together by me.  The wings were purchased at the Ren Faire several years ago and we added some flowers and sparkly beaded strings.  My roman outfit was not quite suitable for the freezing temperatures, but I was crazy enough to wear it anyway - any excuse to dress up in costume!