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

A Star is Born!

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

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...