Soul Eater Bento

My husband has been watching the Soul Eater anime for a while and I keep meaning to watch it too. But...it's not something I can watch with a five year old, so I've started picking up the Soul Eater manga instead. It's extremely wacky and bizarre and I really, really like it! Yesterday I absorbed the second volume, getting inspired to do a bento in the process.

It also is the first Halloween bento of the year. Normally I would wait until our traditional Halloween decorating day (Oct. 1st) before starting to make Halloween bentos. I have this thing about holidays - I don't like decorating or celebrating them too early. So Halloween (normally) doesn't start until Oct. 1st, Christmas and Pancha Ganapati don't start until Dec. 1st, etc. I'm breaking my own rule this year, though and bentoing before the start date! If you've ever seen the Soul Eater manga you'll instantly understand why - it's over the top Halloween style in a book.

For this bento the main thing I had to make was the Shinagami-sama onigiri. I just had to! We had pink rice already made in the fridge so I just warmed up a bit, made the rice ball and wrapped the nori around it. The mask is made from mozzarella cheese. There are two whole spears of baby corn, two soy bologna swirls, a pick with dill pickle stars, a large yummy strawberry, a steamed veggie bao, a small container of vegetarian Hamburger helper cheesy mac, a carrot Soul Eater icon with mozzarella details.

It was not only a blast to make, it was yummy!

A Rebel Bento

This one was for my husband. It was totally not me dying to do a Star Wars themed bento, no way. Really. I swear.

Top tier: Morningstar farms chik nuggets, steamed broccoli, waffle fry, black olives on an elegantly adult pick, orange slices, cherry tomato, snap peas, soy bologna rolls, chinese flower bread.

Bottom tier: Jasmine rice with one green pea and two tiny carrot hearts, Japanese curry vegetarian style, mozzarella cheese and nori rebel symbol.

My husband really hates nori and generally doesn't want to eat anything that nori has touched. The mozzarella backdrop for the rebel symbol made a big difference - it totally kept the nori off the curry. He was able to just lift off the whole thing and eat the curry underneath. Win-win for me!

Bunnies n' Balloons!

A bento from the summer that I just found in my huge picture file that was somehow mysteriously hidden on my computer.

The top tier holds a sweet potato bun, some sweet gherkins, mozzarella cheese hearts and skewered tofu cubes.

The bottom tier had a layer of jasmine rice with one section of sesame carrots on top and a section of corn. The bunnies are made from soy bologna, mozzarella and nori. The balloons are grapes with fresh parsley stems.

Get ready for an infusion of summertime bentos as I finally go through all these picture files that I thought I had lost! And once I get through all of those it will be time to go through the backlog of school bentos from this year. I can't believe how behind I am already.

Shokado Box Picnic bentos

I was recently asked how I use the huge Shokado bento box that I haul around with me to display when talking about bento history. So this post features two picnics using that box. It is a really large bento box and lots of fun to pack! I love the four squares though it can be a challenge to get food to fit perfectly.

From the information that I have been able to piece together this kind of box is traditionally filled with small dishes in each of the four compartments. The small dishes have elegant food placed in the center.

My favorite way to use this bento box is for family picnics. It is large enough to pack food for myself, my husband and my little girl. I also use it for taking snacks and munchies to parties.

The top bento is obviously a holiday theme :) One compartment has vegetarian sausage rolls, one was filled with veggie gyoza, a piece of decorated apple and tiny onigiri. A third compartment had a tin of cucumber dip with a cucumber xmas tree, some fresh veggies and bagel crisps. The last contained apple slices, cheese cubes, mixed nuts and three tiny sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles on top.

The second bento was for an evening at a friend's house. We ate it in the middle of the living room floor so in my book it still counts as a picnic bento. The top compartment had a fan shaped onigiri with black sesame seeds and pickled ginger with some rice crackers and carrots in the back. The left was filled with veggie gyoza and pork shumai (my friends were meatatarians). On the right was a large nest of yakiudon, some steamed broccoli, a couple of gyoza and lots of black olives. Last was the compartment of sweets with a tin of lychee, sweet rice crackers and 3 jellies.

Asparagus Bouquet Bento

This is a very simple bento that was a lot of fun to make. I don't like asparagus, but my husband does so this was all about an excuse to cook him some. The mamenori bow is the best part I think! Here is the video of the making of the bento, pretty much step by step. I skipped all the actual cooking parts because I'm never sure if people want to see those steps or just how things go into the box.

Fanime part 2

Here are pictures of me talking away at the panel and some of my little girl having a blast at the convention. The videos that I used at the presentation will be going up very soon!

While I was in town for Fanime I couldn't help myself and had to go shopping for bento boxes. It's an addiction, I swear! I didn't have a chance to shop very much, but I did find a few shops with boxes and accessories in Japantown, San Jose.

First we stopped at Nikkei Traditions (219 Jackson St.). We had a good time browsing and my daughter loved the dolls on display. I bought a one-tier flower shaped box, some fish soy sauce bottles and beautiful chopsticks.

Next A-chan practically dragged me into the Shuei-Do Manju Shop because I'd been promising her some mochi. She got mochi, I got mokona and we bought my husband a treat too!

Nichi Bei Bussan (140 Jackson St.) was a lot of fun to browse! They had tons of stuff from furniture to cosplay. They had larger, picnic sized bentos and lovely furoshiki.

Nijiya Market (240 Jackson St.) had some contemporary bento boxes and a few accessories like containers and such. More importantly, though, they had Japanese carrots and even better they had konpeito!! We bought two bags of konpeito and they were gone by the end of the weekend.

Hoping with all my might that we wouldn't get a parking ticket, I decided that we had to go into just one more store before going back to the car. Nikaku Japanese Arts (615 N. 6th st) is upstairs and jam packed with all kinds of things from pottery to anime and manga. They have a good deal on large square bento boxes with furoshiki and chopsticks as a set. Even though we spent a lot of time there we didn't get a ticket :D

Fanime was Fantastic!

Last week was a huge chaotic visit to California and Fanime, which was just plain awesome. My little girl travels like a trooper which is great since our layover flight was delayed by about 4 hours and we ended up landing in San Francisco around 1 am or so. The list of touristy things we did completely centers around Japan, lol. Japantown San Jose, Japantown San Francisco, Fanime, The Japanese Tea Garden at the Golden Gate Park, the carousel at GGP, etc.

Fanime was soooo much fun! The cosplay was incredible - especially the huge cosplay groups. Thank you to all the wonderful people who came to hear me ramble on about bentos!! I love sharing my obsession with others and I hope that it was somewhat informative :) Please give me any comments - I would really like to have some feedback about it so that I can do a better job in the future.

Soon I will have the information on the stores that I prowled in San Jose that have bento related items for sale with addresses and everything. I will probably get to that sunday. (One of our cats was discovered to be very ill when I got home from the trip and taking him back and forth to the vet, worrying, etc. is making me slower posting things than I had intended. ) I'll also start posting the other videos of bentos, yay!!