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

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.

Owl always love you...

I couldn't resist the punny title! This is Eliana's bento from today. Nothing too fancy, super easy to put together. But I think it's so cute! Perhaps because I have a wee obsession with cute little owls... The silicone cups hold pasta and spaghetti sauce, topped with Tofutti and olives to make the owl eyes. The bottom is full of baby carrots and a few more olives, and the beak is a heart shaped pumpkin muffin.

There you have it. Easy peasy and cute to boot!