Koala Cuteness

This new bento box's original intended function was to be a toddler plate for restaurants to stock, making parents and young children happy to eat at their establishment. I saw it online and had to have it cause it's so unique (to me, anyway!). It definately got a fantastic "Oooohhhhh!" reaction from my daughter who proceeded to eat every scrap of food and it made me very happy indeed.

Left to right: Sesame carrots, jasmine rice, grapes with 1 baby tomato, green peas, corn croquette ears.

The bear face tray can be lifted out for use seperately or to let the box underneath be used alone.

Mei Bento!

My daughter absolutely LOVED her new Mei Bento box! (I have to admit that I like it quite a lot...) She giggled all through her lunch, it was so cute :)

Rice with peas, carrots & black sesame seeds for face and necklace, udon noodles for hair with a pink heart sticker hairbow. More peas, baby tomatoes, udon noodles with carrot ribbon and black sesame seeds.

Beautiful day for a picnic

My daughter's godparents came to town for the day and it was a grand excuse for all of us to go have a picnic at the botanical gardens. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. Here is my part of the menu, packed into bento boxes for transport.

Background: 2 boxes of crackers, 1 box of fish shaped cookies.

In the pink bento: three cheeses - gouda, babybel & white cheddar, grapes and mango with a green smiley face pick.

In the green bento: Parmesan Not-Chicken Strips (morningstar farms chik strips with parmesan coating)

In the blue bento: Cachumber! The bestest thing ever for a picnic on a hot day. The one on the right is without onions.

Our friends brought spinach packets, blue corn chips, fruit chips and perfect blondies. It was an awesome picnic!

Recipes for the Cachumber and Parmesan Not-Chicken will follow soon.

LCE #43

Not very cute for a Lunch Cuteness Experiment, but I tried to make it attractive at least. The green lion tray we purchased at Target for $1 along with 3 other designs and they make great stay-at-home lunch plates!

Left to right: Two triangle FakeBLT sandwiches, black olive, extra Fakebacon pieces (Morningstar Farms Bacon), 5 pickles, grapes, tomato wedges and half a babybel cheese, garlic mashed potatoes.

Buns of Steel!

A character from Ranma 1/2, Martial Mayhem, Buns of Steel video. I just couldn't stop myself. It had to be done. To get the blue for his tunic I took a little bit of blue gell food coloring and smeared it all over a raw gyoza wrapper. It's not quite the right color, but it is definately blue!
Eyes, mustache and belt were nori. Sleeves were cucumber slices, mouth was a bit of tomato. I don't think he came out all that well, but it was so much fun to try!

We all had the same thing: Vegetable fried rice with tofu egg-substitute mixed in which was sooo yummy, cabbage buns, corn croquettes, teriyaki tofu & onions, black olive skewers, baby tomatoes, japanese wheat cookies.

The red and blue flowers in mine and my daughter's bentos were done with the food color gel on gyoza wrappers, the yellow 'clouds' were tofu egg-substitute omelette cut-outs. It was wonderful to try out somewhat more traditional decoration with our two bentos. The mix of flowers and clouds was nowhere near as elegant as the art that inspired me to try this, but it was definately worth the trying!

LCE #42

Mashed potatoes with black olives, grapes, cheesy love with grilled cheese hearts and fairy bread hearts.

I wanted to make something cute but not very difficult or needing much thought. This is the result. It went over very well, in fact!

Bouquet Bento

A 'cheer-up' bento for my daughter. The main decoration is on a background of soy turkey & cheese sandwich which was cut specifically to fit this bento. The large flower was cut from a cheese slice and then sugar dots were pushed in on their sides so that they stick up a little. The orange flowers are carrots which were cut out with my tiniest flower cutter. The last flower was done with corn and a pea for the center. Blue sugar dots provide a bit more color. The stems and leaves are cut from cucumber peel, the large flower's stem has the peel side down to give a different color.

The rest of the bento included pretzels, skewers of corn and peas, baby tomatoes, mozzarella coins and a side bowl of tomato soup. The soup bowl is one of the toddler bowls that you can get as a rainbow stack at Walmart or Target. They are very economical, travel well because the lid is usually pretty tight and best of all they are microwaveable!