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.


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