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!

New Bento Supplies!!

I got some new bento supplies last week from IchibanKan. I'm very excited to use them in my bento making and especially excited at how cute (and inexpensive) the stuff I got is. Wanna see??

I got some new bento boxes for Eliana:


(just the bear box)


... and a new bento box for myself:


And some bento box straps:

(I love the little heart on this one!)


... and some utensils (that I know will fit in the lids of all of the bento boxes):



Some ADORABLE food picks:





Some cute sauce containers (and a little monkey spice shaker!):




Some rice molds...



some hard boiled egg molds:


... and some food dividers!


Lots of fun stuff!! New stuff makes for fun future bentos! (Actually, I've already played with some of it, so you can look forward to pictures of new bentos coming soon!)