Category Archives: Bento

As I mentioned yesterday, shy little kitten was requested, but without nori I didn’t think I could do it, so we just went  with cheese.  This is the tabby version of the shy little kitten I guess!

Pizza cut into star shapes under the cheese kitty.  Raspberries, blackberries, plum, broccoli and carrot flowers with little radish centers.

Not terribly happy with this one.  I didn’t get the kitten wrapped up very well.  The food coloring hadn’t dried and I was worried about smearing, so I wrapped it too loosely.  So some of the edges of the cheese dried a little, ick.  The butterfly dried up even worse, and didn’t make it to the box.  I was out of leafy lettuce to line the edges to disguise where you can see the bottom, and out of blueberries or black flame grapes, so I didn’t have any tiny fillers for the job either.  I wanted to put some tufts of chives in to make the grass he was frolicking in, but the kidlet said “gross, take those out mommy”.

On the plus side, aside from the drying out, I thought the kitty came out well.  The colors are nice, and Kidlet thought the lunch was awesome.

Time taken: 15 minutes on carrot flowers, kitten and (unused) butterfly last night, 8 minutes assembly this morning.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

I still can’t unpload and resize pictures with wordpress.  I’m using an external ftp program to get the photo uploaded, which sucks because it doesn’t get put into the media library for management.  And then I have to resize by eye, so I’m not sure I’m keeping proper proportions.  Very annoying!

Easy bento today.  Tomorrow, perhaps not so much.  When I was figuring out what “little” bento to do, I considering a classic golden book that the kidlet really loves, “The Shy Little Kitten”.  I sketched it all out, experimented with painting food colors and discarded the idea because its all white, gray and black – and the Kidlet doesn’t like anything I do that is black.  He won’t eat nori.  Overpainted / colored food turns him off (even though I’ve got “no taste” colors by Wilton).  I just don’t see any way to make the shy kitten work.  This morning, though, the Kidlet spied my sketch and asked for the shy little kitten for tomorrows lunch.  I told him that I didn’t think I could do it because he doesn’t like any black foods and he said “You can make a rainbow shy kitten, mommy.”  Oh boy.  Hopefully I will be able to get away with a generic kitten.

Beef smoked sausage under cheese flowers (pomegranate seed centers), held in place with mozzarella balls. Raspberries, blackberries, yellow cauliflower, celery and radish flowers.  I am not thrilled with the amount of processed sausages and lunch meats that the Kidlet eats.  Unfortunately, he is going through a phase where he doesn’t like any solid meats at all.  I’ve been buying from trader joe’s, getting organic when I can (I actually don’t feel strongly in organic foods, but in theory I’m getting foods with fewer chemicals and nitrates and all that stuff in it), and hoping that this solid meat boycott is temporary.  I even tried the teriyaki baked tofu that Wendolonia’s wee one likes so much, but he rejected that big time.  He *will* eat shrimp and fish, and I’m going to try and plan ahead to start including those things.

Anyway, he had the sausages for dinner yesterday, so I had cooked extra for today.  This morning I just had to cut out the flowers, lightly steam the cauliflower and assemble, 10 minutes, tops.

Today’s box is “Sucre Pink”.  Which I really love.  It’s a good size. It’s a single tier, which we prefer.  It has 3 divider inserts so if I want to pack something saucy, that is easily done without external cups.  It’s got the lock down lid that is the only way to go here (no way kidlet is messing with belts right now). 

Basically, its just like “Leaflet Tight“, except its a 430ml box, not 650ml — (and the 650ml is really too much food for kidlet, even if its my favorite box for character/cute theme because its bigger and has more room so I don’t have to make characters quite so small.  Smaller is harder!)  Unfortunately, its pink, and while the Kidlet isn’t rejecting ‘girl” colors yet, I expect that he will soon.  Other kids in his class aren’t as open minded about gender roles, colors, etc.  Originally this box was available in blue and orange, but by the time I started buying boxes, I could only find the pink.  I would really like to find another box or two just like this, except in boyish color or theme. 

Does anyone out there know a mail order source for a box with these requirements?  

Single Tier

450ml – ish

Divider inserts that use the whole space

Tight locking clamp seal

“Boyish” color or theme

Posted by Kristen in Bento

We recently upgraded my wordpress to the newest version (I’d been out of date for months) and I’m having a lot of problems with it.  It adds line breaks where I don’t want them, and takes them away where I do.  I sometimes can’t upload photos, othertimes I get them uploaded, but they won’t resize like they used to (you select “70%” for example, it shows the photo at the 70%, but when you click “ok”, it shrinks it down to postage stamp size, instead the 70%). So my apologies for the mess right now.  I’m not sure what (if anything) I can do; I’ll keep trying to get the photos corrected so you can actually see everything.

Today’s lunch came about as I was making pancakes for breakfast this morning.  Kidlet wanted to have pancakes for lunch too.  So instead of “The Three Little Pigs” (following the words of the week theme again), we got an un-themed breakfast bento.  No pre-planning or sketching or anything, so its not as tight or cute as I might like.

He’s got a pancake, which I rolled around whipped cream cheese that I flavored with blackberry syrup.  The cakes were a little warm still though, and the cream cheese melted a bit instead of making a lovely pretty roll with defined layers.  Ah well, it will still taste good.  Lil’ Smokies (including a couple under the rolls so they would tilt up for presentation, an egg sheet flower, canteloupe and honeydew stars and a few tiny apple flowers, for color.

I already had the sausages in the fridge; I’d sauteed them in hoisin and honey yesterday for kidlet’s snack.  The egg sheet came from the freezer; thawed on the counter a few minutes and it was as good as new (maybe a little more rubbery in texture).  Melons were pre-cut. And I was already cooking pancakes.  It took me a few minutes to flavor the cream cheese and cut the apples.  Total time spent this morning: 10 minutes.

Update:  This one was a real hit.  He ate every single crumb.  After school he said “hey mommy. I didn’t get any vegetables today. Don’t forget them tomorrow, ok?”. I’m so lucky even if he won’t eat nori and fishcakes ;). My nephew eats only five different things – it could be much worse!

Posted by Kristen in Bento

The oddest thing happened while I was taking pictures of todays box.  Of course, I didn’t discover it until after the kidlet left with his lunch — but for some reason, even though I am SURE that I centered all my pictures, they are showing up as half a photo, sliced down the center.  I took 6 and only one of them shows the whole bento.   It’s not a great picture, and is also off center, but its what I have to work with today.  Strange.

The words to learn to read and write this week are “the” and “little” so I present “The Little Red Hen” except I forgot to put in “the” in the rush this morning ;)  Regardless, he can read and write both already, but I’m planning on doing the words of the week every week.  Eventually we’ll get to one he doesn’t know!

The hen is made from an egg sheet, which I colored with food coloring before cooking.  I am really not sure he will eat it (he has refused to eat a number of colored items, along with nori, kamaboko, seeds, okra, and star fruit – its getting harder to make cute theme bento as he eliminates colorful ingredients!), so I built her on a slice of cheese that he can just lift away.

The eggsheet and cheese accent hen is on an egg salad sandwich.  We also have a checkered apple, plum, blueberries and a few pomegranite seeds, broccoli, radish, multi-color heirloom baby tomatoes and corn in the faux eggshell cup.

Time taken: 45 mintues total between last night prep (cooking the egg, steaming broccoli, etc) and this mornings assembly.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

This bento was put together without a plan.  For my cute / character bentos, I usually have sketched it out and have a basic idea of what is going into it and roughly where (altho its never set in stone!).  I had planned to make mini pita pockets, but I’d frozen the bread, and it thawed out hard and solid and wouldn’t open nicely.  So, this is a “what do we have in the house right now that I can use instead” meal.  I think it came out ok though, plenty of color and tasty looking.

Puff pastry pepperoni pizza bites, lil’ smokies, 1/2 egg, checkered apple, black flame grapes, cheese and sweet potato hearts, tiny fresh mozzarella balls (Ciliegine) and peas on picks.  Mr. Froggy has lemon pepper for the egg.

Time taken: I put it together last night while watching Amazing Race with DH, so I was a bit distracted.  I was at it 45 minutes or so, but that was not solid work time.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

TGIF?  The kidlet loves going to school as much as being at home, so he doesn’t really think of Friday as anything special.  And I actually found in last couple weekends that I *missed* making bentos — at least until I got sick, and then I didn’t mind the break so much 😉

I think he’ll like his lunch today.  Although right now cats are his professed favorite animals, he does like the puppies too.  He also said that the checkered apple yesterday was “super cool”.  The apples (which I made Wednesday night, dunked in lemon water, and then wrapped up well) are still looking pretty good.  Not brown, and the texture still seemed crisp.  If they are still usable tomorrow, I’ll call that make ahead a good success and do that again another time.

Black flame grapes (oops, there’s a cute little puppy pick in a row of grapes, but my camera angle cut that corner off), checkered apple, a  few strawberry flowers, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and carrot flowers.  Ham and cheese sandwich with a cheddar and mozzarella doghouse on top.  The pup is bologna, not ham, because ham doesn’t cut nearly as cleanly (its not a single texture like bologna) and its hard to make really small pieces with it.  The sun rays and puppy accents are made from an egg sheet — my very first one! 

Aside from needing to be beaten a little better (I had a couple whitish patches), the egg sheet came out beautifully.  I used a little cornstarch in with the egg and it was very tough and durable — no ripping or tearing, easy to flip to cook both sides.  I always seem to over brown my eggs when I scramble them, but I watched carefully, cooked at a low temperature, and it came out a lovely yellow color – no browned rubbery bits!

Time taken:  25 minutes.  About 15 minutes last night making the pup, house and sun (including cooking the egg sheet), and 10 minutes this morning to put it all together.  Pup and sun were really easy.  I used my wheel cutters for super fast construction.  For instance, the ears are the same shape as the arms.  After cutting out the shape, I flipped the cutter around and trimmed off the flatter side to make it shorter and more oval.  The doghouse I did with a little template that I made out of paper.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

Still sick and miserable but I managed to get most bento prep done last night. Kidlet loves cars (although ATM bakugan is trumping all) so I went car crazy.  I picked up a lot of car theme things when I was gathering supplies in anticipation of packing bento. Even with all I used, I still have another pile of it, hehe.  His k class is learning to read “I am” this week. Kidlet is way beyond that but I figured I’d include the lesson anyway.

 

 

Ham and cheese sandwich, black flame grapes, blackberries, apple and peaches cut into car shapes in the blue cup  broccoli and “am I fast?” spelled out in carrot.  Can you even read that? I had to tuck them into the broccoli pretty deep in hopes that they’ll stay until lunchtime. He has been so hungry when gets home I’m trying to add a little more protein to see if that helps. There’s fresh mozzarella balls (itty bitty carrot cars stuck to them) and a car shaped egg.

 

It doesn’t feel quite right though. I can’t put my finger on it (or I would have fixed it). Maybe the colors aren’t balanced – too much white, not enough … something?

 

Time taken: about 30 minutes. I might have been able to go a little faster but I’m still tired, sick, and a bit foggy.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

I am sick sick sick.  I put off making lunch until 20 minutes before kidlet needed to leave for school, and this is the result ;)  He loved the rocket in practice lunches, so I went ahead and did that again for him, so it would be a *little* cute! 

Ham and cheese sandwich with cheese bear (that looks kinds alien with the cream cheese showing through the eye holes — another sign of the “I feel awful and want to get done so I can lay down” rush!), surrounded by blueberries.  Orange mini muffins and peas.  Lemon pepper for his peas in the sauce bottle.  (Lemon pepper is almost always a sure way to get him to eat something he is indifferent about; he likes the flavor a lot).

Time taken?  2 minutes on the bear and 5 minutes to throw the rest together.  Super speed bento! 

And now I’m going to lay down and hope Baby L lets me relax a little bit!

Posted by Kristen in Bento

Ah Monday — a fresh start to a new school week and a new week of bentos to plan and prepare!  Just what I don’t need when I am feeling really crummy!  I’ve got what is probably just a cold, no fever yet.  But runny nose, sore throat and coughs, and I feel achy and miserable.  Taking care of Baby L should be fun this week.  The rest of the week may be simpler bentos, or maybe I’ll duplicate the cuter practice ones since they are no brainers since I’ve done them before.  We’ll see.

Jicama, carrot, sweet potato, broccoli, watercress, strawberries, honeydew, black flame grapes.  The beehive shaped sandwich is PB and honey (of course!) on whole wheat; the sesame seed “flight path” is black sesame seeds attached with honey.  The bee is a wax covered babybel cheese, decorated with nori, honeydew wings, and a spaghetti noodle stinger.  A couple of chocolate and biscuit mushrooms added to complete the look.

Total time:  Very long.  Because of the cold, I was really out of it.  I kept forgetting things I needed and had to go back to get them, which was very inefficient. I ended up cooking sweet potatoes and broccoli at different times because I spaced the sweet potato out, and so on.  An hour at least, and it should have taken less than half that!

Posted by Kristen in Bento