Stamped Sammie Rolls

Hello Wednesday!  I'm glad to finally have time to post this week.  How does school become so utterly time-consuming?  Yesterday I was a volunteer model for the ultrasound students at my college.  They told me that I had a beautiful Aorta, how cool is that!

In the bento:  Two peanut butter roll sammies, Morningstar Farms sausage links, baby corn, steamed broccoli, a cherry, strawberry halves, three baby carrot flowers, some edamame pods and lemon wedges.

The sandwich rolls are fairly dense.  I took slices of bread and cut off the crusts before flattening them with a rolling pen.  Then added the peanut butter and sugar sprinkles before rolling them.  Each one has two slices of bread rolled up in order to make them substantial enough for the Hello Kitty stamp.  They were then wrapped in saran wrap and tied at the ends with large ribbons.  Getting the ribbon ends to fit into the bento enough to get the lid closed was quite the challenge!

I hope that everyone is having a great week!

Fruit Friday

It is that time of year again.  The school pizza rant is here!  Today is the first day of school pizza on Friday for A-chan and it made me grumble and grump all morning.  I despise it.  I loathe it.  Why am I so upset by it?  That's a good question and one that I have tried to solve for myself today.  Partly because it undermines everything that I am attempting to teach my child about good nutrition.  Another factor is that I hate having to scrounge around to find exact change to put in the envelope in a society where cash is fast becoming obsolete. There is a part of me that is acting like a 5 year old who's toy just got taken away because it's a morning where I don't get to make a proper bento.

But it goes deeper than that.  It's almost as if this one thing usurps every ideal that I am trying to instill in our family  - not just good nutrition but also less waste (they are served on paper plates) and the evils of peer pressure.  I know that the reason for Friday pizza is a good one - they are raising money for the class.  And I absolutely love everything about my daughter's school except for this one thing.  It seems extremely petty to be so upset about it, honestly.  But at the same time it seems as if the school is trampling on all the hard work that parents do.  I know that I am overreacting.  By the end of autumn I will be excited about making fruit-only bentos again.  Today, however, I am going to revel in my grumpiness.

In the bento: Strawberries, peach slices and a huge bunch of tiny champagne grapes.

A-chan was happy about having Fruit Friday bentos to go with her pizza again.  When we went to the store to purchase fruit for the week she desperately wanted to try these itty bitty grapes for Friday.  I love it when she wants to try new foods!

Hot Dog Lions

I remember when A-chan was about three years old and I was delighted with the use of hot dogs that could be cut up in clever ways for bentos.  They looked so appetizing and fun that I couldn't wait until she was old enough that it was safe to give her hot dogs that weren't cut into minuscule pieces.  This style of hot dog use was one of my favorites to look at.  I was in a big hurry so my cuts are very messy and not nearly as pretty as I would have liked, but I'm still happy with the hot dog love!

In the bento: Two tiny peanut butter circle lion sammies surrounded by hot dog manes.  Boiled edamame, baby carrots, baby corn, grapes and a large cherry tomato cut in half.

The lion faces were punched from nori and secured to the bread with a tiny dab of peanut butter on the back which was applied with the tip of a toothpick.  The hot dogs were cooked then sliced almost all the way through, then secured in a circle with small pieces of uncooked soba noodle.  In the background is the container that I filled with ketchup for dipping hot dogs in.

After DragonCon Bento

It was the morning after DragonCon and few groceries were in the house.  The worst bento transgression was about to occur for we had no fruit!  It pained me greatly but still I labored to put one together, swearing to shop just as soon as I could.   Instead of lettuce to line and to cushion I cut apart muffin cups and used them where needed.  What a wonderful time we had at that pinnacle of Conventions, meeting lots of great people hither and yon.  Much thanks to all those who attended my classes, I had a fantastic time and I hope that you did as well!

In the bento:  Peanut butter and sugar sprinkle sandwiches, steamed broccoli, baby tomatoes on Kappa picks, baby carrots, cheddar cheese chunks and the tiny chick container of frozen blueberries which was all the fruit I could find.

It was a fantastic convention and we loved every minute and we can't wait for next year!  We dressed up in several different costumes.  Here are a couple of pics of our matching Victorian outfits.

 It's always a difficult transition to come home after an amazing event and I made the mistake of forgetting to stop for groceries.  Luckily we had enough food on hand to make a bento but I was a little nervous for a while this morning.  In the background is A-chan's snack container filled with the last few Cheetos that we had left over from our junk food stash in the hotel room.

Little Kittens

Today's bento is in honor of the three little kittens that are currently running our household.  They will be five weeks old tomorrow and have started learning how to cause mayhem and chaos this week.  Of course, they are the cutest things EVER!  Somehow it has been impossible for me to get a good picture of them, so here they are in inari zushi form.

In the bento: Three inari kittens, baby corn, carrot star, lemon slice, steamed broccoli (hidden behind the carrot star), a cherry, a checkered apple, half of a cherry tomato and a few green beans.

The kitten faces are made with white egg sheet and nori.  The whites of the eyes were 'glued' onto the inari skins with a tiny bit of mayo which was applied with a toothpick.  I squeezed the corners of the rectangular inari skins to make them resemble kitty ears.

Here is a picture of the kittens nursing on a very frazzled mama cat, lol.  A-chan and I have a difference of opinion in names.  She had already given them names five minutes after they were born.  The one on the left is Stripey according to the 7 year old, while I prefer Jewel.  The middle kitten is Cloudy or Quartz.  The black one is either called Brownie by A-chan or Onyx by me.

Quick Noodle Bento

This bento represents a victory for edamame consumption!  A-chan will eat edamame as long as I leave them in the pods so that she can pull them out herself.  If I remove them from the pods or, heaven forbid, purchase them already shelled she will turn up her nose in scorn.  I have finally realized this and voila - she's eating them like candy.

Using dividers and containers add cuteness to a bento with lightning fast timing.  This is a wonderful thing on those crazy busy mornings when everything needs to happen at once and kittens are scrambling underfoot to add some adventure.  I love the pig container, it's just so cute!  You can close it for holding things that are a little juicy but I prefer to have it open so it's possible to see what's inside.

In the bento:  Plain macaroni noodles, a parsley leaf, baby carrots, boiled edamame, baby corn in the piggy container, strawberries and a slice of lemon.  On the side is a container of grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle over the noodles.

The container for the parmesan is a re-purposed sugar sprinkle container.  They come in packs of 6 at the grocery store with different colored sugar inside for making cookies and topping cupcakes.  Once they are empty I wash them and fill them with salt or parmesan or furikake for use with bentos.  The parmesan container is topped off regularly and stored in the fridge so that it is ready at a moment's notice.

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!