Hearts galore!

This was a fun bento box to arrange. The blue heart is much easier to see in person than it is in this picture. The sandwiches are bologna, white cheese, and Colby jack. I wonder if they were any good? There's a pancake and apple sandwich as well. I thought that was a really neat idea! I also added some cabbage and lettuce to fill in the gaps of the bento. There's also some furikake and hot dumpling sauce for Roope to choose from depending on what his stomach tells him to eat.

Classes this year are going to be a bitch. I'm a fairly good writer when I try, but my English class seems pretty fast-paced. Meh. I have to get back to a koi picture I've been working on lately, so I have to cut this post short! Bye for now fellow bento-ers!

Underwater bento fun!

This bento was fairly simple to make. The only thing that really gave me a problem was carving the crab out of the fake crab meat! I didn't get a close-up of the details, but he's got little legs hidden under the lettuce kelp. Pretty cute, huh?

The sandwich got a little squished before I could get a picture of it. I took this on Roope's floor, so by the time it made it to the house, the tips of the sandwich were flat. No worries! I'm finding that making sure everything fits properly in a bento is one of the most difficult parts of creating them. All the other tedious stuff is fine with me. Once it comes to putting everything into the compartments, I take forever.

School for me starts back up this week. I'm starting to wonder if I'll have enough time to at least continue making bentos. Not a whole lot has been going right, so I won't be surprised if I'm too stressed to write here! I hate Alltel with a burning passion. My old photography teacher is being completely negligent of me. Did I mention Alltel can go lick my butt? Anyway, happy bentoing!

Bento with a twist

Okay, so I really felt like making some sushi again. I used to make sushi about once every week or two, but now I'll just make some inari zushi and call it a day. I'm a little proud of this bento other than the fact that one of the carrot rolls has the swirl going the wrong way than the other two. Damn me and my constant perfectionist nature!

I gave Roope half of a kiwi and half of a strawberry that had been sitting with some cut pinapples. I'm sure that strawberry was delicious! I laid the cranberries and blueberries atop of the inari zushi simply for decoration, but Roope ended up eating them as they were for the sake of experimentation. Apparently it wasn't bad! I have to wonder, because he's like a human disposal despite his slim structure...

It's getting easier and easier to make bento boxes look nice even though I do something new and different almost every day. I'm about to start my classes again so I might not be making them as often. We'll just have to see what happens. In the meantime... I don't know. Keep enjoying the pictures I post!

Full of lazy and tasty.

Okay, so I got back from MAG Fest 6 on the 6th, but didn't fully recover until the 8th. I've still been making bento boxes, but I've been really tired. I don't have a lot of drive to hype this bento box. There's a lot of neat stuff in here, though!

I've got the regular stuff such as the apple bunny, tamago with crab meat, soy sauce, and furkikake in a bottle. I've also got a new heart-shaped sandwich, some lettuce and carrot on rice, walnuts, and strawberry. The cheese and carrot sun looked a lot more appetizing before it was put in such a humid room and got sweaty. I was told the sandwich was delicious! I only added swiss, sharp cheddar, and some meat to it. I feel great to be able to make a tasty sandwich without the aid of sauces.

You can't really see it, but there's a candy strawberry hidden near the heart sandwich. Adding that into the meal brought back old memories of those things. Does anyone else remember eating those as a kid?

I still haven't gotten a good enough technique down to cover all of the bottom of the bento yet. Adding small things such as walnuts, carrots, and lettuce seems to help. I'll have to work on that...

I'm still doing a lot of recovery from that con. I don't know if I'll want to go again. It's so expensive to stay at a hotel and it's stressful to figure out my ride situation. I can't exactly drive a Vespa on the Washington D.C. beltway, nor would I want to. Whatever.

Bye for now everyone!

New Year's bento box

First of all, let me start out by wishing you all a happy new year! *is aware she is just talking to herself at the moment* I've got to work on advertising this blog soon... It's been one hell of a year, wouldn't you agree? Yes. Yes I would agree to that.

Today I added a lot of little treats to this bento box, despite the fact that it isn't the normal box I'm used to. It's slightly smaller, but I can work around that! I haven't really explained to you what the little fish things with caps are yet, so maybe I should do that quickly.

Another very important part to bentos - and almost any kind of small meal where large sauce bottles aren't readily available - are sauce dispensers. Usually all that is contained in these fish are soy sauce, but I also use them for hot and dumpling sauces. You can find these in all shapes these days. They're reusable and cheap! again, jlist is a good place to find this product.

Star fruit (or Carambola) is delicious, colorful, and small enough to fit in a bento box. Although they aren't exactly cheap, I recommend them if you're looking for a way to add a simple twist to a bento box. Just make sure to dry off excess juice after slicing the fruit so the rest of the bento doesn't get soggy!

Konpeitou is a Japanese candy used for special occasions. I've read about it being handed out during weddings and other ceremonies, so I thought it was practical to add some to this bento. Konpeitou consist of crystallized sugar and a roasted grain of rice in the center. You can find them in many different colors. My Japanese teacher picked these ones up for me last time she went to Japan!

I decided to try something different today by making a flower out of some ham. It was very tricky when I needed to add something to support its structure. I'd love to make a tutorial for that later on.

As for now, I've got to get myself prepared for a video game convention. I'll be gone for a little over half a week, but I'll be back with more bento madness. Hopefully this con will give me a nice break from my town, yeah?

I <3 this bento!

I spent quite a lot of time working on this particular bento box, as you can see. I tried a few new things and was very happy to see how well things ended! It was pleasing to see the heart-shaped rice bed come out on my first try. I wasn't sure if it was going to work or not to be quite honest. I think I've developed a good technique, and hopefully I'll make a tutorial on it shortly!

The crab tamago rolls were a little tricky to make, but working on a low heat was vastly helpful. I only used one egg for this treat, and it turned out to be just the right size for the pan. After the egg had been cooked evenly, I placed a piece of fake crab onto the end of the tamago and began rolling it up. If you're having trouble keeping it together, applying a little bit of pressure can coax the roll to stay put.

I used one of the mini-cookie cutters I talked about in my first bento box post to cut out ham, cheese, and lettuce. I lined them all up and stuck a toothpick through them for an easy-to-eat bento shish kabob!

I found some very small paper cups somewhere in my kitchen that work the same way as partition grass. I was pleased to find such a good use for them, seeing as the package had been unopened! I little bit of blueberries looks good with the pink and green, and compliments all the warmer colors in this lunch.

Some cherry tomatoes and a kiwi gummy candy wraps this bento box up!

Elegance in a hurry!

Today's bento is... exceptionally blurry! This was a little bit of a rushed bento. That's never a good thing, is it? Nevertheless I stayed with a yellow, orange, and red theme with this little lunch. I wasn't able to bring the bento box back to my kitchen to prepare it, so I was very uneasy about making it. With the right amount of carrots, things worked out well despite the lack of partition grass.

Partition grass is a very important part to bento boxes. If you ever have two or more types of food that you don't want to mingle, a simple piece of plastic can add a little bit of cuteness and help keep things in order. The only place I've ever seen this for sale is jlist, but you can see them in any kind of take-out sushi bar.

I used the spare tamago from yesterday's lunch in this bento as well as some more apple rabbits. My onigiri (rice balls) came out alright, but were a little over-sized. It's a little difficult to tell how big they might become while you're shaping them. I learned my lesson the hard way!

I made a wrap by using swiss cheese and cracked pepper ham in a mini-flour tortilla. This worked exceptionally well and adds a nice mixture of textures. It's also easy to hold for those not used to chopsticks! I shall take this experiment further in the future... mwahahahaaa!

The carrots I used in this bento box were wonderful. I cheated with this one and stole some refrigerated steamed ginger carrots from Christmas. Small or cut vegetables and fruit work very well as "fillers" in bento boxes. If you ever have extra space in a lunch box, make sure to put some of these little morsels in - the recipient will be very pleased!

That's all I have to report tonight. I have a bunch of free time tomorrow, so perhaps I'll whip up a tutorial or some kind of crazy obento. Until next time... keep bentoing!