Four Friends

Another older school bento. I'm getting closer to being caught up though!

Top tier: Four fried tofu bites, black olives, carrot flowers, frozen peaches, red soy sauce piggie.

Bottom tier: Container of mac'n'cheese spirals with a black olive on top, four dice shaped onigiri with funny nori faces and frozen grapes in between.

This is one of the very few bentos where the soy sauce bottle is actually inside the bento. And it makes me realize that the two bento accessories that I use the most are usually never photographed with the bentos. Of all the cute and pretty accessories, which I love dearly, the ones that I find most useful are the ever-practical soy sauce bottle and ketchup container. They accompany almost every bento that I make, but they are always an afterthought and never part of the bento designing.

After the bento is made I look at it and decide what kind of sauce needs to go with it. Then I fill up the container (or grab an already full one out of the fridge), seal it in a ziploc bag and put it in the bento bag along with the napkin. The ziploc bag is usually the same one for a loooong time since it never gets any food on it. I'm just paranoid that one day the ketchup container will open up by itself and smear ketchup on everything. So far it's never happened, but I still put it in the bag.

Bellydance Show lag

I am seriously lagging behind as I arrived home after midnight last night, infused with inspiration but desperately needing sleep. My friend and I had driven to the big city to see the Bellydance Superstars show which was amazing and so much fun to watch! (A-chan spent the night with her grandmother which means no bento today.) But since I didn't get home til very late I haven't had time to get the picture of A-chan's bento from yesterday off my camera. So instead I am putting up more of the bentos from the early part of school!

Above is a Scottish flat pie with cucumber smile and eyes with a carrot star nose. Next to it are some tater tots, a pick of black olives, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, a baby tomato, frozen blueberries and a few scattered carrot stars.

Below is a bento with couscous on the left that has green peas and carrot heart on top. On the right is a babybel cheese round, veggie hot dog, frozen grapes on a pick, a gherkin pickle, and a tin of Chocolate bunnies with a couple of carrot hearts to liven things up.

These were both very simple bentos that were quick to make, but not very decorative.

Picture day

Yesterday was picture day at a-chan's school. So to help lessen the stress of the day on both of us and try to make it more fun I made a picture day bento. The cute little girl in her best dress on one side with the flash from the camera on the other.

I don't like school picture day. No, that's too tame. I loathe school picture day. It's so stressful for both me and A-chan. Getting her dressed perfectly (which didn't happen because there was black ink mysteriously on her pink tights so we had a last minute frantic search for tights that matched her dress but ended up having to go with purple ones), fixing her hair perfectly (which takes way too much time on my part and patience on hers), remembering to fill out the form and make sure that she takes it with her (filled out at the last minute in the school parking lot and I still don't know if she gave it to the right person or not), and all the other finicky details just get us into an old fashioned tizzy!

A-chan got all worried because she was supposed to have playtime in the playground before the pictures were to be taken and what if she forgot and played in the sandbox with her pretty dress on? We ended up with a solution of just say no to sand for that day. It seemed to work, she wasn't smeared with sand of red clay dirt when I picked her up in the afternoon. I wish that the parents were allowed to be with the kids while the pictures are taken. Then we could keep them calm, clean and collected. And afterward we could change them into good old play clothes and take the fancy stuff back with us. I can probably think of twenty reasons why that wouldn't really work, but it's a nice thought to end my tirade :)

In the bento:

Left side: 2 Morningstar farms chik nuggets, black olives, 1 spear of baby corn, fresh parsley and Apollo choco candies. The girl has a dress out of veggie pepperoni with a belt of cucumber peel, an arm and face from soy bologna, hair of white cheddar. The dress matches what A-chan wore and she had one ponytail on the side.

Right side: Couscous with soy bologna, white cheddar and veggie pepperoni stars, plus carrot letters.

We got a kick out of saying that she had eaten 'cheese' for lunch because she ate all the carrot letters but refused to eat the cheese star!

It's the season for Candycorn!

It is candycorn season once again, hurrah! This past Sunday A-chan and I made candycorn onigiri again. Shaping the brightly colored rice into the shape of my most beloved fall candy is becoming one of my favorite fall rituals. We made 3 cups of white rice, 3 cups of yellow rice and 2 cups of orange rice using gel food coloring. It was a LOT of rice!! It took us about an hour to make all of it into onigiri. A-chan even did some of the candycorn onigiri all on her own. She was so cute!

The rice ball candycorns are so much healthier than gorging on my fav candy of the season!!! Until last year my autumnal season was incomplete because all the candycorn I could find had gelatin in it and I could not eat it. I really missed having it. Candycorn was my childhood memory of Halloween and crunchy leaves underfoot. I had almost given up being able to share it with my girl. But last year I found that the Kroger brand candycorn was vegetarian, haha! I eagerly anticipated it this year and when that lovely day arrived I bought 2 bags. That was a pretty modest amount, I felt. Then we ate it all within a three day period. And then I bought more. I have one bag in the car for emergencies, one open bag in the house and three unopened bags.
In the bento: One large fuji apple bunny, veggie hot dogs, one floret each of cauliflower and broccoli, 2 large carrot maple leaves, 1 miniature blueberry muffin, 1 pick of corn, 1 large candycorn onigiri.

A-chan got the first of the onigiri, one of the ones that she made all by herself. Normally I don't do the ice-water treatment on the bunny ears to get them to stand up, but this was a special occasion so I went ahead.

Pink

This bento is all about pink. And that's quite an abnormality for me as the color pink and I normally do not get along. In fact, I try to avoid pink as much as is possible for someone with a 5 year old daughter. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice enough color. But when I was younger pink was perhaps a good bit overdone. In our old house my husband and I lived for many years with an office that was pepto bismol pink. I think I'd just had enough. When my girl was born I declared that I wanted no pink baby clothes, no pink baby toys and absolutely no pink room. That worked about as well as one might think. Just try shopping for girls' baby clothes that don't have pink on them. It's not easy. The older that my daughter gets the more I'm finding pink creeping back into my life.

Today's bento, however, is different. It's about Breast Cancer awareness. It's about being a responsible woman, mother, wife. I actually had no idea that October was associated with this cause. Usually October for me is all about my daughter's birthday, halloween and adjusting to the new cold weather that seems to get worse every year (or just me getting older). So I haven't paid much attention to anything else. But yesterday I came across this post at Bento Blog. It made me start to think. Not only about how to make a bento to participate, which of course happened immediately, but also about the issue.

I have friends who talk about these types of campaigns and wonder if they actually do any good in the long run. Well, I think that the Pink Ribbon Bento Panorama has made a difference. At least it has caught my attention and made me start thinking about something that I normally put in a box labeled 'Don't open, not ready to think about'. And it has made me realize that it's time for me to start paying attention.

About the bento: The pink ribbon (which is really more of a red than pink, but it's tough to find pink things when you're vegetarian!) is cut out from a fuji apple. Next to it is a pink mochi, corn croquette, block of feta, soy turkey rolls with green beans and carrots, vegetarian Japanese glazed meatballs on a bamboo pick, a small bit of gari (more pink, yay!). The pink icing was done using a henna technique and a traditional-style henna design on top of a white cheddar sheet. Underneath the cheese is vegetable fried rice. There are a few tiny carrot flowers scattered around.

My camera is just not good enough to catch both the color of the icing and the details of the darker ingredients so I apologize for the darkness of the photo! I really wanted to do something with the henna technique. I couldn't get it out of my head as being perfect for this message.

An Octopus with eyebrows?!

Even more bentos from about 6 weeks ago. A-chan is home sick from school today. She has a little bit of asthma and anytime she has a cold it turns into Bronchitis, bam! This morning she was coughing so much that it caused her to throw up - the second time in her whole life that she's vomited. Doctor visit time! We now have cough syrup, an antibiotic and saltines. A-chan will be just fine he says :) I love our Pediatrician, he's the best!

So after a night filled with coughing and no sleep for any of us, it's time for a restful relaxing day of bento posts. And some book reading and some Little Big Planet for the sick one. I hope to catch up on some of my older bentos so that I can start posting current ones!

The bento above has a layer of jasmine rice covered with sesame carrots, scrambled tofu and green peas. A container of frozen blueberries, two soy hotdog octopi, a flower pick with tiny black olives, cucumber slices and a babybel cheese round.

I'm still not getting anywhere with the soy hotdog octopus thing...and at this point I'm not sure if it's the veggie hot dog or if it's me! These little guys have mozzarella and nori features, the best part of course being the eyebrows. A-chan loves to draw eyebrows on things so I added some just for her :)

I just love the little mouse in this bento! He was made from two nuggets of fried tofu, veggie hot dog slices and nori with just a little mozzarella for the tail. My second favorite thing is the purple mashed potatoes. Hapa bento always has these amazingly delightful and colorful bentos and I'd seen purple potatoes in them lots of times. I always wondered where one could find purple potatoes because I'd never seen any except in her bentos - I'd certainly never expected to find any in my little town. But then I went to the store and there they were, a small bag of maybe 8 of them. I swear a light from above shown down and made them sparkle!!

Unfortunately A-chan views them with a deep and abiding suspicion and refuses to eat them. Now, keep in mind that she will eat regular mashed potatoes made funky colors with food coloring. But naturally strange colored foods are apparently evil. I will endeavor to change her mind gradually because I think they are awesome. She did have some trouble with the huge flower onigiri in this bento as it is really really big. She would have like to have a fork to eat it with, she said.

On the left: Huge flower onigiri with veggie hot dog center, frozen grapes on a pick, a small tin of feta.

On the right: Fried tofu mouse, purple mashed potatoes, lemon slice.

Pasta Salad Bento

Another bento from the beginning of school...

This one was a bust. A-chan ate everything in the lower tier but only picked at the items in the upper tier. One of the interesting things that I am learning with the whole school bento thing is what she won't eat when I'm not there. Some of the things that I have put in bentos for her for years now she suddenly won't eat in school bentos. It's a great learning process and it's funny to me how much of a sense of achievement I get when she comes home with a totally empty bento!

Top tier: Bowtie pasta with halved baby tomatoes, black olives and feta, heart container full of peas. (She picked out all the feta and black olives and didn't touch the rest.)

Bottom tier: 2 miniature bridies - one with a smiley face and one with hearts, tater tots - one with a seal pick, container with frozen peaches.