Bento #12

Sorry it’s been so long! My computer was having trouble but on the plus side, I have a back log of bento’s to upload!

For this bento I used my veggie cutter to cut out cucumber flowers and I threw in one peach flower as well on the left hand sided. I also sliced some peaches and put a cucumber flower in with them to tie it all together. For the right section I fried an egg in a flower shape (though I’m not sure you can tell against the background of white rice) and cut a hotdog in half almost all of the way through, I left a little bit attached at the end. Then I bent it over to make a heart shape and used one of my bento picks to hold the loose ends together.

This is a super easy bento that only takes about 10 minutes to make, altogether.

My son has been wanting to eat lunch at school a lot, which makes me super sad because I really love making lunch for him but I understand, he wants to do what all of his friends are doing. I think it’s nice for him to have a hot lunch full of greasy food sometimes too, it is an essential part of childhood.

Bento #10

Yummy BLT

This bento started out like the above picture and then had to be rearranged because I realized the ranch dressing would probably spill out of the bento cup. I switched the ranch to a cute little piggy sauce container and it all worked out.

Adjusted for less spillage.

So, on the far left you have a Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on toasted bread held together with a cute orange bento pick and resting on a bed of cabbage. In the top left corner I used a veggie cutter to cut a cute flower shape in the wax of a baby bell cheese.

In the right hand section on the bottom you have some boiled quails eggs which are great for lunches, much cuter and easier to pack and eat than regular eggs! In the top right hand corner I used a melon baller on some honey dew and used a little bento pick to break up the monotony a bit. To the left of the honey dew arranged some baby carrots and broccoli around the piggy container that holds the ranch.

A super easy lunch and I got to eat the leftover bacon and quails eggs for breakfast!

Bento #9

I am super excited about this bento, it’s probably my favorite out of all of the bento’s I’ve made lately. I just love how pretty it turned out!

My favorite bento ^.^

On the far left of the bento you see my lovely and delicious sandwich which I will describe a bit later wrapped first in regular wax paper and then in a small piece of decorative wax paper then tied with twine. I let a stray blueberry fall down beside it because I enjoyed the way it looked. To the right of the sandwich you have, from the top, baby carrots, sliced mushroom and broccoli on a bed of arugula which I allowed to poke up in strategic places. In the far right section I put a plum on the bottom, bordered by green cabbage and on the top I cut off the top of a kiwi for color and surrounded it with purple cabbage. I then scattered blueberries and white chocolate chips as a finishing touch.

The sandwich was really very amazing, I ended up having it for lunch as well. You can find the recipe I used here.

Yum!

The sandwich is arugula, prosciutto, mozzarella, green apple, honey, Dijon mustard and black pepper and it is such a nice sandwich, very light and refreshing. Making and eating it left me feeling very happy.

Aaron has been having a little trouble in school lately, they use green, yellow and red stars for good and bad behavior and he’s been coming home with a lot of red stars lately, he gets mad and pushes other kids apparently. We are working hard with his teacher to help him to improve his behavior and he is making progress, which is good but it’s a frustrating problem.

Bento #7: Starry Night or My failed attempt at being artistic.

Starry Night as Bento

The original that I massacred.

I am not artistic, at all. That being said I had seen something similar to this on Pinterest and, having just watched the Van Gogh episode with my Doctor Who loving son, I thought I’d give it a try. I failed pretty hard so I think this is probably my last attempt at actual bento “art.” It didn’t help that even my biggest container was far to small and squished for what I’d originally planned to do.

At the very top you have spaghetti noodles that I dyed blue and yellow respectively and tried to swirl in a way that was similar to the painting. I used half of a boiled egg for the moon and American cheese cut into stars with my vegetable cutter. I used seaweed for the mountain and a chunky tomato sauce for the hills. I used chopped ham at the very bottom for the fields and village and threw in some baby carrots for the larger houses. My son mixed it all together before eating and it made a pretty tasty cold pasta. In the smaller section I cut up an apple and used it to fill up space around my favorite part of the bento, a chocolate I found at E-Mart with Van Gogh’s self portrait on it.

So, I do not plan to do anything like this again, I think I’ll just stick to making things look cute in general.

Bento #6

I quite liked this bento, it’s very simple but I think it ended up very pretty. I do wish that I could find some proper bento grass instead of just using cabbage all of the time. My son liked it really well too because of the stars, he is trying very hard to get enough good behavior “super stars” at school to go to the class treasure chest for a prize. He is also making a real effort to keep his class star on green everyday instead of having it flipped to yellow or red because of bad behavior. He is having a little trouble at school, he pushes and gets overly physical with his classmates. We are all working hard with his teacher and he very much wants to improve, he is trying his best. He doesn’t want to be a “bad guy” that hurts people, it upsets him to think that he might be so he is trying his best to get over his anger and frustration issues.

Anyway, on the left of this bento you have a simple ham and cheese sandwich on a bed of cabbage, I used one of my vegetable cutters to cut out a little star in the bread. There was a lot of space left over so I moved the sandwich to the bottom and put a cherry tomato in the top, left corner with one of my cute new bento pics stuck in. I put in a little pink piggy for the ham sandwich but also because I have been working on my color harmony a lot lately and pink tied in nicely with the overall green, orange, white, pink color scheme. In the right hand corner I put some shredded carrot for the same reason, there was an open space and it fit nicely with the color scheme.

In the right section of this bento at the bottom I have cucumber and carrot flowers and stars. I used the green bento cup for the carrot and the orange one for the cucumber and I think it looks a lot more interesting than if I’d just filled the bento container. In the top right section I have a pink bento cup filled with blueberries. I used the cup so that the blueberries stood out a little from the blue of the bento box, it created a bit of a border. I used another one of my cute bento pics, a little white and pink bunny rabbit and I used the bread star that I’d cut from the sandwich as well. On the top left hand side I have a very nice Korean rice cake that I picked up at the store, it was so pretty that I actually built the entire bento around it. It fit perfectly into the bento compartment as well, which was a plus.

Bento #5

For this bento I had it in my head that I wanted to do a sphere theme. I wanted to made a bento in which everything was circular and it didn’t turn out at all like I wanted it to. I think my problem with this bento was organization, if I’d gotten up a little earlier and made time to put everything in a more pleasing order and to fill in the gaps with some decorative cabbage then I feel it would have looked much better. I will remember this next time and try again! What I really liked about this bento is that I go to use my new seaweed punch to make the rice balls face and, if you look closely, the imprints on the quails eggs turned out really well. The teddy bear quails egg is definitely my favorite.

In the top section of this bento I have 3 little rice balls (I feel like I missed a great change not making them 3 little pigs, I’ll have to do a bento like that soon!) I wrapped two in seaweed and left the middle one plain to make a nice pattern. I used my seaweed punch to make the face for the middle rice ball and the other two I just cut out some cheese for faces, I used little bits of seaweed for the pupils of the one on the right but didn’t have room to do the same for the one on the left. There was a big space behind them that made it look rather bad so I put in a couple of pieces of leftover Kimbap to add a nice little background.

For the disgraceful bottom section I overused my bento cups, in the green one are blueberries, in the yellow are Korean rice cakes, like Japanese mocha but I’m not sure what it’s called in Korea, unfortunately. In the pink are the quails eggs with cute imprints and in the orange are miniature malted milk balls. I put in some cherry tomatoes to fill in the big gap.

First Day of School Bento Lunch (aaronslunch.wordpress.com)

Bento #4

I finally went shopping so I could final build a proper bento! I thought this one turned out rather well, if a little dark.

In the bottom section on the left you have little octopus hot dogs which are very easy to make and one of my favorite ways of making a bento that little bit prettier. This time I tried to draw on little faces with a food marker. I don’t think I’ll try that again because I don’t like the way it turned out. On the right side I put some rice with a fried egg on top. The egg was the thing I was most disappointed with, I meant for it to be pretty with the yolk showing and very bright and clean looking but it obviously didn’t come out that way and I didn’t have time to make another one.

In the top section on the left I put leftover mixed green beans and new potatoes in a balsamic rosemary sauce. On the right are two more octopus hotdogs with some sliced hotdog as filler and some ketchup in a little blue bento cup.

Bento #3

Breakfast bento

At the request of my son I made this “Breakfast for Lunch” bento which turned out alright, though I think the colors clashed a little.

In the top section on the left I have his favorite breakfast food, scrambled eggs and on the right I have little pieces of cut up maple sausage and some cantaloupe that pairs with it very nicely in a little blue bento cup.

In the bottom section I have little pieces of French toast. They are quite a bit thicker than they look in the picture or I would have put them down in two layers to avoid gaps, as it was I wouldn’t have been able to close the lid had I done that. I also put some syrup in a pick bento cup for dipping the French toast squares in.

This bento is super simple and took me only about 15 minutes to cook and box.

Bento #2

Bento #2 is, by far, my worst bento to date. I still hadn’t gone shopping and had very little to work with. It was my own fault of course, which doesn’t make me feel any better. Aaron still liked it though, he is so sweet. He loved his first day of school and couldn’t wait to get out of the door to go back. I’m happy that he enjoys school but I do miss him a lot, it’s not the same being home alone with just his little sister, Ellie. She is 1 and cannot talk yet so she is not very good company.

So, for this atrocious bento I filled the right hand section with rice and drew a heart on with a food coloring marker. In the larger left hand section I put the rest of his lunch. On the far right I interspaced crackers with cheese cubes and pieces of cantaloupe. Then I cut up some cucumber and put it in a row at the bottom left hand corner. In the top left hand corner is a boiled egg that I put into an egg shaper. It turned out well, it looks like a little car. I filled in the gaps with some more cantaloupe. There is entirely too much green and it definitely could have been better. On the plus side it inspired me to do better next time.

First Day of School Bento Lunch

First day of school bento

The day before Aaron’s first day of Kindergarten I didn’t get much sleep, I stayed up all night worrying about it. My son has been my best friend and constant companion for the last 5 years so the thought of him suddenly being gone for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week made me really anxious. He, of course, was fine with it. Besides a couple of nervous little suggestions that I could home school him in the weeks leading up to the first day he was very excited. He very much wanted to make friends and play and learn. He has always had a passion for learning and I’ve tried to nurture it in him, he wants to know everything, from why the sky is blue to how cars are made.

As a consequence of this late night fretting I woke up groggy and with the knot of anxiety still firmly lodged in my stomach. I hadn’t planned his lunch at all and I hadn’t gone grocery shopping so I had to work with what I had in the house and I had to make it all up as I went along. He still loved it though which made me incredibly happy.

To the left are some simple rice balls, very easy to make, just pop some rice in the rice cooker and when it’s done use the palms of your hands to form it into a little ball. I used a food marker to write I ❤ ❤ U. On the top left of the right hand side of the bento I cut some cantaloupe into cubes and put them in my decorative bento cups to make them look nicer, cupcake wrappers would work very well for this too. In the top right hand corner I layered baby carrots and cucumber sticks and on the bottom part of the right hand side I put a hot dog. I cut the two end of the hot dog into octopuses and then sliced the middle part up to put into the decorative blue bento cup. Then I put some ketchup into my cute, red, pig shaped sauce container and Aaron’s lunch was complete. Super easy.

Aaron's Lunch

Simple bento for those short on time and skill.

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