Ellie's Bento

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....

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!

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

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.

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.

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!

Not quite sure what to call this one....

I think in my scrapblog I called it "Radioactive Men" - not because they were intended to be radioactive men, but because those cute juice heart ice cubes I put in the applesauce look like the radioactive symbol to me! Oh well... you win some, you lose some.

Anyway, this bento consists of appleasuce (with fruit juice heart ice cubes), carrots, peas, and cornbread men.

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!

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth...

This is Eliana's bento from yesterday... I wanted something cute, but simple since I didn't have a whole lot of time to put it together. The base of the bento (which you can't see) is celery and peanut butter, which just bumps everything else up since I don't yet have "real" bento boxes, so mine are a little deep. Then I cut two dinosaurs from a slice of high fiber and flax bread (using a super-easy sandwich cutter) and slathered them with Simply Fruit spread. I used a yellow silicone cup filled with whole wheat pasta and "cheese" (tofutti) with a tofutti sun (cut from the slices before I melted them into the mac and cheese) for decoration. I filled in the open spaces with peas and lunch was done! Not the fanciest bento ever, but it was quick and easy, and she liked it! Here's the proof....

(The sun was the first thing to go...)

(Then the dinosaurs...)

Eventually, all that was left of this little bento was two of the four celery sticks and a few scattered peas. Yay for empty bentos!