Making the Big Bento Box Time!

Cool Bento Beans!

I am featured in a section of the Denver Times weekly special print edition! Ignore the bad picture of me. It's... well... me! Look, instead, at the cute food! Not nearly as cute and savory as the people I link to blogwise, but it's so much fun! I'm even on a little bit of the cover!

The editor emailed me and asked if I had bigger pictures of bento. I sent them to him and found out they were publishing the bit I'd written about being addicted to bento!

Thank you, editor!

I will make you some onigiri shaped like Hello Kitty.

New Bento Toys

I didn't pack bento today.

It's easy when we all have the flu. I am busy holding hair back and running around with Lysol, so I wanted to show you the new items I just bought!
From Left to right:

The cute little fruit containers are actually for spreadable things like cream cheese or peanut butter or hummus (or jam-- you name it--anything that won't spoil). The containers snap shut. I wouldn't put soup in there, but it does fine with semi-solids.

The little containers to the top left are for spices like furikake, salt, or pepper. They are made of a semi-softer plastic, so the tops come off for filling, but stay on well. Then you just twist the top to release flava!

To the top right, those are flip-top bottles for things like sauces. They're like little shampoo bottles! So cute! I don't know if I want to put catsup in there. I'm afraid of tomato products in plastic containers because they tend to stain. I'll bet you could put a sugar-free jelly in them, mustard, dressing. Again, anything that won't spoil.

Oh, and below these items is the new Sailor Moon washcloth I bought!
It can be used and spread out on the table below the bento as a little placemat. My little one adores it. When she saw it she hugged it immediately.

She has such good taste!

If Edward Munch did bento...

That's right. I don't even know what I was thinking. I claim 5 am, and lack of sleep. I had nori and a pair of scissors and I wasn't a-feared to use either.

I ended up with what look like a cross between preternatural beings and an armless glee club.

Still, it was a hit. Why? I don't know.

Ask the kid.

Friday: Teddy Bear Picnic

Today's bento was something I had to do quickly. My oldest son told me that high school has been so crowded the first week, he hasn't been able to get his lunch in time. He asked me to start packing his lunches, too! Of course, he doesn't want Hello Kitty sandwiches... sigh.


Today I made peanut butter sandwiches. If you flatten the bread slightly, you can get 4 onigiri bears or Hello Kitty faces. I used nori (seaweed sold at Super Wal-Mart) for the face shapes. I dampen the nori post-cutting to get it to stay.

I cheated and used grass both to fill in and to give it a jungle/picnic feel. The little guy in the top left is objecting to being smooshed by Ritz Bitz! The grass is actually plastic, so I wash them and use them over again, even though they are disposable.

In the bottom bento I placed carrots, and sliced apples. To keep apples from going brown, I dip them in lemon juice. It works! They each got a fortune cookie, too!

One way to transport bento

A friend asked me how I transport bento once it is in the containers.

The general idea behind bento is that you pack the containers tightly enough that they won't spill or slosh around. If you have kids, though, and knowing how kids are (especially if they walk to school or tend to throw their backpacks about), you might want to consider a lunch sack like the one pictured above.

I bought it some time ago from Wal-Mart, but I'm sure they're other places, too. It is a square, insulated case and makes transportation of bento very easy.

The bottom is rigid and wide enough to accomodate the bento boxes we're using. So the bento box sits flat. This leaves room for a water bottle, chopsticks, a washcloth, hand sanitizer, or anything you might want to tuck in there.

I've incidentally found that the Target water bottles fit the best in these sacks! They are skinny and tall. It also makes for easy handling by little hands. :)

Thursday: Bento Tortellini with Toast Blossoms

Today, I made tortellini with green beans, toast cut into flowers, carrots, dressing (in the kitty), and vanilla pudding with a banana flower on top (I dipped the banana in lemon juice to keep it from browning). She packed chopsticks and a spoon (in case she gives up on chopsticks, and also because you can't eat pudding with chopsticks, unless you have a very, very long lunch. I packed the usual chocolate in the top of the bento compartment.

I was really excited yesterday! My youngest daughter came home and told me that a teacher in her lunchroom thought her lunch was cute. She had other adults come over and look at her lunch! This made her proud, and it makes me happy that she loves cute lunches.

To me, making bento is therapeutic. I wake up at 5:30 am every morning and lavish over what to make. It is calming and relaxing, like art, only edible.

Fun with Bento: molded eggs

Egg molds are a lot of fun, and are fantastic, not only for bento lunches, where flair is fun, but also for other things, like salads, barbecues, or times when you want to surprise someone with a little something special.

To use these I buy extra large eggs.

Boil the eggs as you usually do to make them hard-boiled. Remove eggs you'll use from their shells as quickly as you can (I keep dipping my fingers in hot water to keep them from burning too badly). Then you place the shelled egg into the mold, close the mold, and then immerse the egg molds into ice-water for 10 minutes.

When you remove the egg, it will assume the shape of the mold you've used! This morning, I made a bear, a bunny rabbit, a heart and a star. The star is in the picture above. I cut it in half, and placed half in my daughter's bento box. The other half I placed in a salad. (The star actually looks like a flower, so you could use it for one!)

I've found that it's important just to use freshly-hot eggs. When I tried to make a second set of molds from the original batch of eggs, the eggs had cooled too much after 10 minutes and didn't want to conform to the mold.

Wednesday Bunny Bento

This bento I wanted to try something a little different. I'm still working with the flach. It's just not working with me! :O)

The top picture is the flourish I usually throw in the top of the container where the silverware can be stored. It's always a singly-wrapped chocolate. This one is a Ghirardelli 60% cacao dark chocolate with caramel. If you're in a low glycemic load lifestyle, these are extremely 'inexpensive' carbwise, at only 7 carbs per very satisfying square.

In the middle picture, the peanut butter rolls can also be very low glycemic-load. Made with FlatOut Wraps, rolled tightly and cut into individual finger bites, these are very satisfying. Kids don't even realize they're not eating tortilla shells, and because they're so small and cute, that's what they see. Not the ingredients! Of course the Ritz Bitz crackers are not low glycemic load, but it is something fun they like right now.

In the bottom picture, I tried one of my new fun bento toys and hard-boiled some eggs. Unfortunately, because of the flash, you can't see that it's a teddy bear! (The next post will show how these are made and the utensil for this). I tucked some spinach greens around him for a collar, or maybe he's really lurking in the trees... shhhhhh... I also used carrots for color and crunch, and inside the cute little puppy condiment container I have Ken's Steakhous ranch dressing, which is only 1 carb per Tbsp.

The girls saw their lunches today and were very excited! I have so much fun doing these things for them. I don't know who enjoys it more! (I think it's me, but they'll say it's them).

Bunny Bento

This is the bunny bento I got for my daughter for her birthday. It came with a lot of fun things, including this two-tiered bento box with top compartment, chopsticks, silverware, a fruit cup, some grass dividers, a few cinch bags to keep everything, and some other accessories.

I really like the elastic band on this bento box, because it's really easy to use at 6am in the morning when my brain isn't functioning yet. You can buy bands separately, too, if you want to accessorize your bento. As with the piggy, I hand wash these (they are really easy to clean) and I don't put them in the microwave.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

This is the second Bento day (I couldn't find my camera the first day!)

I used onigiri molds in the shape of Hello Kitty to cut peanut butter sandwiches into little shapes.

Then I used some cake decorating gel (sold in a tube at thelocal grocery store in the baking aisle) to draw on the Hello Kitty faces.

I know Hello Kitty looks like she sustained a head wound. I'm working on the artistic factor.

Surprisingly, there is little waste with the onigiri molds as cookie cutters. Of course, you can also use cookie cutters, or just cut cute shapes into the bread.

The Ghirardelli chocolates are single serve packets and are perfect for bento. They are small and relatively low-carb and low glycemic load. For only 9 net carbs per candy, a little goes a long way, especially after a great meal!

The right side (I'm still working on the format-- sorry!) :o) I've used a small cupcake liner to keep the Ritz cracker snacks from mixing with the carrots and the grapes. In bento, it is important to keep things from mixing together, especially since you want not only a cute presentation, but you don't want your food getting soggy and smooshy. My thighs are smooshy and in this heat my armpits are soggy. You don't want to do that to your food!

By the way, the grapes aren't dusty-- that's condensation. A lesson in science and my being a very bad photographer! :^O

My First Bento Box

Greetings!

Little piggie bento box says "Hello!" and "Oh! My stomach is growly! Won't you feed me?"

Bento boxes are a fun way to carry a lunch wherever you are going. I found out about these from watching my favorite cartoon, Sailor Moon! My daughters are now Sailor Moon fans (they have good taste, just like their mother) and were bored with conventional lunch sacks filled with plastic baggies and ketchup packets.

So, my husband, while rolling his beautiful hazel eyes, reluctantly winced when he saw all of the fun things I had to buy in order to play in the kitchen! (I will take pictures of these, too).

I just love this little bento box. I purchase a lot of my bento supplies from Ebay so far. You can shop for buy-it- now items and for auction items. Little piggie here was a buy-it-now, and she is really cute! My little girl just fell in love with her.

The top holds a fork and a spoon, and the handles snap on to hold the three tiers together.

I do not microwave in it, and I wash these by hand. I'm not sure how they would do in the dishwasher yet.