Mushroom Bento

IMG_0355, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

Another from a while back. Quick and easy, apples, canadian bacon, and peas!

Safari

DSC_7045, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

This is from a while ago, but I don't think I ever posted it. It's kind of a safari theme, I guess, with the trees and animals. The bear is mac&cheese, the giraffe is olive, the stars are carrot, the lion is cheese, and there are also pears, peas, and broccoli trees.

A Mommy Bento

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Originally uploaded by elizabethwickland

Ellie's bentos are cute, but this is what mine typically look like... Kind of boring if you ask me! But they do the job. =D Apples sprinkled with cinnamon, peas, pepperoni, and pretzel sticks with cheese! Fruit, veggie, protein, grain, and dairy, all in one little box!

Happy Fall, Ya'll!!

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Originally uploaded by elizabethwickland

Today was a BENTO day!! First bentos I've made in a while. Woohoo! I had one and Ellie had one - and hers was Fall themed! It included:

- Apples (cut into apple shapes =D)
- Cinnamon Sugar (in the little apple container)
- Peas
- Pepperoni (on leaf picks)
- Cheese (aka Tofutti, the fake cheese we must feed Eliana)

It was a hit! She devoured the peas first, and they were gone in seconds.

I *heart* birds

Bento
Originally uploaded by elizabethwickland

I don't remember exactly when I made this bento, but I discovered it among our pictures recently, and thought I'd share. I'm not sure what happened to all the bento making lately, except that we are home most of the time and I don't need to send a lunch with Eliana, except for Wednesdays, when we go to town, but we have to be in town by 9 and I am not usually on top of things enough to make the bento the night before or the morning of. So... I'll see what other bento pictures never got posted and work on updating this blog. Then I'll make an effort to bento more frequently!!

Bento...

There have been very few bentos lately, and most of the ones I've done I haven't gotten pictures of because I was running out the door. Here's the most recent...

Hearts and Flowers

Ellie's most recent bento. We haven't been eating lunch away from home lately, so there's been no bento since this one. Hopefully that will change soon, though. =D

Back to Bentos!

I made Ellie a bento last night to eat for lunch today. It's really good to get back to cute food! Of course, it isn't the cutest bento ever, but it will work for lunch and should make Eliana happy. =D I took pictures, but they're still on the camera and I'm too lazy to take them off right now, so you'll just have to wait.

Elizabeth's Lunch Bento

from a day I went to all-day training.

Ellie's Bento

Mix It Up!

An Asian Salad bento for me!



Everything separated nicely until I mix it all together and eat it. Yum!

A Star is Born!

Ellie's lunch bento one day. Lots of tofutti cheese stars. Lots of spaghetti noodles. =D

Creepiest Bento Ever

Ellie told me it was a monster bento and she thought it was funny. It turned out drastically different than I expected it to! I like to call it the bearded lady....

Going Buggy!

The ladybug snack inspired this bento:



It was for my lunch, and very tasty, despite the subject matter. ;) The bugs are grapes split in two and sliced almost into quarters with raisins for heads. They are on a bed of chicken salad and spinach. Like I said, very tasty!

Lady Bug Snacks!

I asked Ellie if she wanted bananas for breakfast. She said NO.

I asked Ellie if she wanted apples for breakfast. She said NO.

I asked Ellie if she wanted ladybugs for breakfast. She said YES!

Here's what she got:



She loved it! (And ate it!)

Long time, no BENTO!

I have actually made several bento in the last month and a half, I just haven't been blogging! Life gets crazy in the summer, and June seemed to disappear as soon as it started. Ack! So... Let's get caught up on some bentoage, shall we?

This bento gets the cheesy title of... "Love You Beary Much" =D



This is the front view. It has a brownie cupcake, pepperoni, and strawberry hearts. It was Ellie's snack bento one day, and I think it went over pretty well. =D Here's the view from the side:



Stay tuned for more long lost bento pictures!

Another Giveaway!

This must be the time of year for bento giveaways! Kitchen Cow is giving away a great prize package:





















All she asks is that you answer one simple question: what would you put in this bento package if you won it??

I am pretty sure that my answer would have to be cute food! After all, isn't that what goes in every bento? Hmmm... specifically, I would have to make a different mini-bento in each of the four containers, sort of an Old MacDonald theme, with a different animal in each box. I think that would be fun!

Toddler Involvement

Ellie loves, I mean, LOVES, to make bentos. She asks to make them. But what do you do with a busy toddler who wants to be involved when you're creating food art?

Some people let their kids make the bentos. Right now Ellie is better at eating the pieces of the bento I've already cut than she is actually helping. But I want her to be a part of it, so.... this is what *I* usually do. =D



I give her a cutter or two or three and a slice of cheese. We usually make bentos right after breakfast, so I just count that slice of cheese as part of her breakfast.



She loves creating! She feels like she's a part of it! And I get to make cute bentos without too many of the pieces getting eaten before I can place them. =D

Tweet Salad

I am on the South Beach Diet right now, so I thought I'd try a grain free bento for a change. Here is my bento from the other day:



I used my rice molds to mold chicken salad into little bird shapes. It didn't turn out as crisp as rice does, but I like it! I also have lettuce in the bottom, peas, a few olives, and half a tomato in each half. To eat this bento I cut up the tomato, broke apart the chicken salad, and ate the whole thing as a salad. It was really yummy!

A chance at greatness

Wendy over at Wendolonia has a great giveaway going on right now. And if you don't already subscribe to her blog, I love her bentos for her preschool son. They are easy and cute and practical! She has given me tons of inspiration, so check her out!

Tutorial: Cheese Fish

Step 1: Cut a rectangle from cheese about the size you want your fish.



Step 2: Use moon cutter to cut the first crescent.



It should turn out like this:



Step 3: Use the moon cutter to cut another crescent to form the fish body.



So that it looks like this:



Step 4: Use moon cutter to cut a crescent tail.



Here's what it should look like now:



Step 5: Use heart cutter to cut a notch in the crescent tail.



And here's your finished fish!

Under the Sea

This is Ellie's bento from last week and I think it's my favorite so far! I have wanted to do this one, but had a hard time figuring out how to do blue water. Then I remembered my blue silicone cups and this idea was born!

It's a really simple bento, but simple is good, right? I put 3 blue silicone cups into the bento first, then filled them partway with frozen peas. Then I placed the spaghetti dog squids, who are swimming freely and having a grand time, and cut little cheese fish to swim with them. =D

Ellie doesn't like the taste of nori (seaweed), but it does make nice facial features and I had some on hand, so I gave them all faces of nori. Nori is like paper, so you can punch it using paper punches, even if you don't have nori punches. I do not have any nori punches yet, so I used this:



for all of their faces! Oh, except for the fish eyes, which are poppy seeds. I'm a big fan of just using what you have if you don't have all the "proper" tools! It's one of the reasons I love bento!

Tomorrow I will give you a tutorial on how to cut the fish without having a fish cutter, since I don't have a fish cutter. =D

Rapunzel... the Robot?

I saw this idea somewhere last week and I had to give it a try. I don't remember what the originator called it, but I call these "Spaghetti Dogs." =D Here's how it works...

First, you stick dry spaghetti noodles into a hot dog, however you'd like:





Then, you boil the spaghetti-speared hot dog pieces:



They sort of "swim" around the pot of boiling water, which is especially fun for the ones that look like little squids. =D

Once you pull them out of the boiling pot, the spaghetti is soft and has swollen to fill the hole it is in, so it doesn't fall out. It's pretty cool!

I really wanted to use this technique to make a head with hair, so that's what I did for this one. She ended up with really long hair, so I thought it would be fun to make a Rapunzel bento, but it didn't really turn out that way. Really, she ended up looking like an evil robot, I think. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.



Still, it was fun to make the Spaghetti Dogs. We'll have to do that again. And I think it would be fun for kids to make their own designs with the spaghetti.

Beary Yummy!

I finally made a bento in this bear bento box. I wasn't sure how it would work, but I put the bento in the bottom section and filled the top with snacks. It worked pretty well! Here's what the bottom section looked like:

Monkeyin' Around!

I was going for a rain forest theme here. =D This is my bento from the day I first tried rice balls. I flavored mine with a little sweet and sour sauce, though I found it caused them not to stick together as well. They have sesame seed centers. I have canadian bacon tree trunks with cute little animal food picks "climbing" up them. Spinach leaves line the bento boxes, and frozen peas provide filler and temperature control. =D The three little apple containers are filled with sauces - soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. I broke apart my rice balls and mixed them in with the peas and spinach and then poured the sauces over top. It was super yummy that way!!

A bird in hand...

Really, the bird was supposed to be sitting on a branch. But the canadian bacon looks like fingers if you ask me!

This is my first attempt at making rice balls. Ellie LOVED them! Actually, so did I and so did Leif, so they are winners! Hooray! I put a little sweet and sour sauce in the center of the flower, and used a frozen pea as the bird's eye for this one. I also lined the bento with spinach leaves, which Ellie didn't eat. This was her bento and aside from the spinach, she ate and loved all of it! Then she proceeded to eat most of mine, too...

Super Bento!!!

This is a bento from last week. Ellie seemed to need a super hero that day. Leif decided it wasn't a super hero unless its underpants were over its pants, so he is to blame for that. =D I used my (relatively) new cutters on this one. The cutters are really for fondant, made by Wilton, but they work pretty well for making hot dog and cheese people, too. =D

Backed by a sea of green peas, Super Bento, with his cape of fruit leather and ketchup underpants, conquers the evil pepperoni villains once and for all.

The Grass is Always Greener...

... on the other side of the fence. =D



This is my first attempt at a hot dog fence. Not sure it really worked, but it pleased the toddler. She helped me make it, and forced me to use a second hot dog to finish the fence when she ate half of the first fence. =D

Frozen Bento

This little bento is a backup bento. It's like a frozen meal or tv dinner, only cute! I put it in a glass container so that I can pull it out of the freezer and microwave it. Of course, I will remove the strawberry butterfly and the sauce container before microwaving! I thought it was sort of a novel idea, though, and figured I'd give it a try. So... green bean grass, carrot flowers, and chicken nugget clouds. And, of course, a frozen strawberry butterfly and a marinara-filled sauce cup sunshine!

I'll let you know how it goes when I actually get around to microwaving and eating it. If it works, this might not be a bad thing to make up and keep on hand!

Spring Tweet

This is Eliana's lunch / afternoon snack bento from Saturday, the last day of February. Despite all the snow on the ground (and the snow hike we took to a frozen waterfall that day), I was getting ready for spring! So Ellie got a spring bento, and she liked it!



I used a new double decker bento for this one, which gave me two sections to work with. I like that! The bottom section is primarily vegetables, while the top held mostly fruits. Lots of green beans for grass, some carrot flowers, a couple fruit leather flowers (with my new picks!) and a container of ranch dip for her veggies. Of course, I'm pretty sure she just licked the ranch dip out and ater her veggies plain, but at least she ate them, or most of them anyway. The top portion had strawberries, as sort of a red flowery hedge, more carrot flowers to transition from the bottom to the top, and apple clouds/sky. Then I added a green bean branch and a little tofutti "cheese" bird (I used paprika and turmeric for the coloring) with a pine nut eye. All wrapped up it looked like this:



I have to admit that one of the things I like about the double decker bentos is being able to pack twice as much food, but only give her half of it at a time. That's what we did with this one. We gave her the veggie half to munch on in the car on the way home from hiking, and the fruit half once we got back home. It worked well! And it was a very nutritious lunch and snack for her!

A breakfast bento...

On Saturday I had an early (to me) morning aerial dance class to attend at 9am in Bozeman. Because I never eat breakfast if I have to get out the door in the morning (I don't purpose not to eat breakfast, I just usually forget about it until I'm in the car), I decided to plan ahead and make myself a little breakfast bento last Friday night. My bento supplies had just arrived, so I took the opportunity to play a little bit. I used my own new bento box, and borrowed Eliana's heart strap to go with the theme inside my bento...



That's the outside, and here's what I put in it...



Didn't it turn out cute?? It's very pink, and very heart-y. It would have made a great Valentine's bento. The bottom section held baked pancake hearts sprinkled with sugar (because I accidentally forgot to put the sugar in the batter - oops!) and fruit leather hearts. The top section had 3 silicone cups (pink, of course) filled with yummy stuff to complement the pancakes. The first, and lightest colored, was whipped cream. I remembered that we had heavy whipping cream in the fridge, so I couldn't resist making some up as a splurge. =D Guess this wasn't a "diet" bento... The second cup held strawberry yogurt. The third cup held pureed strawberries to dip my pancake hearts into. Of course, they were topped with a pink food divider (which also helped keep the cups from spilling) and fruit leather hearts.

As much as I liked how visually appealing this bento was, I have to say that it tasted even better. And it was fun to make something cute for myself instead of Eliana for once! I will definitely have to make myself bentos more often, especially if they are pretty, indulgent bentos like this one!