#95 - Puppies bento

I don't do it often but sometimes I make an effort to make a cute bento :) The reason that I don't do this very often is because it took me over 1 hour to make this since I am just slow in the kitchen.

In the top tier is a vegetarian home made hamburger from kidney beans (recipe) which I had leftover from dinner. The puppies are white & pumpernickel bread sammies with cheese, cream cheese and paprika salami, but are also easy to make vegetarian of course :) I really wished I had those nori face cutters. I still need to buy them sometime. Then I would make things cute more often XD Snack cucumber and a laughing cow cheese as gap fillers :)

Tweet

#78 - Penguin bento

This idea was waiting for weeks on the shelf and today I finally had time for it. I wanted to try to make a charaben inspired by the Hawaii's bento box cookbook from Susan Yuen. I loved the little penguins featured in there and all though most bento have a spring theme already, I thought I can just squeeze this by ;)

This is a snack bento for two. Zeronic and I start on a course tomorrow and after those 2 hours I know we will be hungry. Besides, I grab any chance I get now to make a bento ;) This is an adaptation from the penguin spam musubi recipe (page 69). My penguins are filled with rice & furikake since I don't eat meat. And we couldn't get kamaboko here, so I used crab sticks, which was a bit more challenging since they are shaped differently. It was a bit of a challenge all together but I am pretty satisfied. Zeronic helped by pressing the rice and cutting and wrapping the nori while I did all the small details.

Too bad though that our supplies were very low so I couldn't add much of fresh veggies. Next to the penguins there are some cherry tomatoes, cucumber, soy sauce and laughing cow cheese. It would have made for a nicer bento if I had some more fresh veggies, but I am sure our snack will be good all the same :)

Tweet

#72 - Stick Figure Bento

Since I was at school till late yesterday and the BF was supposed to have an early shift today, I asked him if he could make his own bento. He did make his own bento and was feeling creative too ;) Too bad that he has the flu now and that he has to eat his bento at home. He said that he felt too bad that he couldn't have made this for me.

 In one tier he made a salad from clementine and cucumber with a stick figure on top. The head is one of the risotto balls, the body is made out of cheese and the limbs are made from tiny sausages. He dressed her with a lettuce dress and the facial details are cheese eyes and a chives mouth.

The main dish is leftover lasagna (that he can heat up in the microwave at work, but today at home) and cheese hearts. I do think it is kind of awesome that he makes his own bento and gets so creative with it.

Tweet

#61 - Lamb bento for Imbolc

On the 1st or 2nd of February some pagan beliefs celebrate Imbolc. This is originally an Irish festival but it is also a part of the eight sabbats that form the wheel of the year. Since I celebrate the sabbats myself, I wanted to give it some attention in my bento as well. But since I only go to school every other Wednesday, I am early with this bento. One of the symbols of Imbolc is a lamb, so I tried to make a mozzarella lamb. It took me about 2 hours to make this bento but this includes preparing fresh fake meatballs.

In the bento is some pasta with broccoli, mushrooms & cheese sauce that my boyfriend had in his bento earlier this week. I placed the broccoli around the lamb this time to function as trees. I used a flower shaped cutter to make a body & head for the lamb. And a bit of food coloring on a toothpick to draw a face on the mozzarella. I see a lot of people make pink facial features with ham, however this isn't an option for me and I really don't like the imitation ham slices, so that is why I choose to do it this way instead. The eyes & nose are from black sesame seeds. In the other tier there are walnuts in the cup, cherry tomatoes & Italian seasoned vegetarian "meat" balls (recipe below).I included a cute duck pick :)

Before I stopped eating meat, I loved to make all kind of meatballs with different kind of spices for variation. I do sometimes buy veggie "meat" balls but they mostly taste the same so I really missed being able to decide how I wanted them to taste. The soy based minced "meat" is great for in pasta dishes or oven dishes but you can't make decent balls from them because it simply won't stick. But today I succeeded to make my own fake meatballs with a soy product as a base. I used soy based hamburgers for this experiment because they have a different texture and are a lot more moist. I have chosen for Italian seasoned ones today because they would fit with the pasta.

For 12 mini meatless balls you need:
1 pack of soy based hamburgers (I used these)
1 glove of garlic
1 egg, beaten
fresh basil leaves
1/3 of a courgette
olive oil

First put the courgette in the kitchen machine. Lay the pieces on a kitchen towel and drain all the moist from it. Then put the garlic, basil leaves and hamburgers in the kitchen machine and mix everything till it is a mixture of crumbles. Put everything including the courgette in a bowl and mix. Lastly add the egg as well to mix it through. You now should have the exact texture of real minced meat. (this was the point where I knew I got it right) You can now roll little balls from the mixture. This shouldn't be hard since the mixture should stick to each other and not to your hands. Make sure the balls are nice and firm. Bake the little balls in some olive oil till they are nicely browned.

I will be adding this recipe to the foodie challenge: Whip Up something new! It is a challenge about trying a new recipe each month and blog about it. It seems a fun way to connect with others and to find more delicious recipes to try! So if you have a food blog, make sure to join this great challenge!

 

Tweet

#50 - Snowman Onigiri bento

Sometimes I forget why I don't do cute and make an attempt at it. Today I tried my hand at making snowman shaped onigiri. I have a snowman muffin tin, some rice and nori, sounded easy enough. Since I work slow, I spend like 2 hours in the kitchen making these. Not the best idea when you have chronic fatigue >.<
Anyway here is today's bento:

Bento contains lettuce (my BF bought pre cut lettuce since they were all out on crops, say what?!), grapes, mandarin, and tucked underneath under the lettuce are some wieners. And of course snowman onigiri. I only dressed the front one since I was so tired by then. I have 7 onigiri left though which I put in the freezer for later use. Maybe next time I won't forget the nose ;) These are just plain onigiri mixed with some furikake. I made them in the same way as my heart shaped onigiri but wrapped the hat with nori.

Tweet

Bento #13 - Torchic Bento

Since it was "cook a sweet potato day" I decided to use it for something special. I spend 1.5 hours on this off and on, so I am not planning to do stuff like this every day. The boyfriend is totally into Pokemon games so I transformed the orange potato into a Torchic.

 

The bento contains curry with yellow rice, the curry is underneath the rice. It has broccoli and sugar-snaps in there. On top of the rice is the sweet potato & cheddar cheese Torchic. In the other tier there are meatballs in tomato sauce, red grapes, edamame and more sweet potato. Flowers on top, cutouts are tucked underneath.

 

And a close up from the Torchic :) I am not very good at this sort of thing that is why it looks kinda messed up at points. The Torchic I printed twice and cutout the orange and yellow bits. Next time I must make sure I cut out the whole chick as a base because cheddar cheese needs support XD I put the paper shapes on the food and traced it with a toothpick. It was actually pretty easy. I used nori for the eyes, but I don't have a cutter so I just used my paper cutter instead XD I totally want nori face cutters though!!

Tweet