Bento Box Blog

This bento is a Guest Post from Mombento on Livejournal.

I wanted to do another spring themed bento, because the weather is so very lovely here in the Netherlands at the moment. It’s a dinner bento because tomorrow me and my little girl go to a birthday party in the afternoon and I probably won’t have too much time to cook. So this bento is for my five year old and she’ll be having it for tea.

I made some lovely vegetable and tofu curry, which tastes great but didn’t look pretty enough for bento. So I put it under a thin layer of jasmine rice. I lined the box with lettuce, carrots and radishes. The happy bee is made of two coloured egg sheets and nori. The nori was so hard to put on the egg. For some reason it kept curling up… I made eggs with flower shaped yolks with my favourite kitchen tool: the “dreamland egg shaper”. This is a shaper that can turn the yolk of hard boiled eggs into the shape of diamonds, hearts, flowers and stars. I love it. But: cleaning the thing is a lot of work. A LOT of work.

My husband doesn’t understand that I spend over an hour boiling eggs. He certainly has a point there but……..well bento-ing isn’t about time saving, is it?

Mombento has  her own blog on Livejournal – please click here to go there!

This Guest Post is from Jenn’s Bento Blog, Fluteloop, check out her bento Gallery!:

To spice up your life why not try a little salsa on your lunch?

This bento has chicken (lightly breaded in panko breadcrumbs and sautéed in olive oil), red/yellow/orange bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, salsa, and crushed tortilla chips.  The chicken sounds fancier than it really is, and like it took more work than it did.  My Mom bought some pre-cooked chicken patties from Trader Joe’s, then after trying them, she gifted them to me.  They weren’t what she was expecting, but they aren’t bad at all.  I opened one up this morning with no clue what I was going to do with it.  Then I opened the cupboard, saw the breadcrumbs, and BAM idea!  I dipped the chicken in milk, then tossed it in the bread crumbs.  They didn’t stick very well but there were enough that the outside had a crunch to it.  The salsa is left over from our BBQ on Easter and is home made with grilled peppers and tomatoes (mmmm delish, I would eat this through a straw if I had to).  So, if you were me, and you had breaded chicken and a tiny amount of the best salsa in the world, what would you do?  Plop it all down on some baby spinach?  Weird.  That’s exactly what I did!

Pasta & Pretzels was for my little girl’s lunch.  I used Annie’s Homegrown White Macaroni and Cheese mix.  It’s from a box but still has no additives!  I topped the pasta with some shredded cheese and surrounded it with yellow and orange baby carrots, a kumquat, chocolate covered pretzels, and a baby gala apple.  I think she would have loved it.  Notice the past tense there?  Yeah, I dropped her off at the YMCA kid watch with her bento, then I left to swim.  I thought she would leave her lunch on the table and go play until she was hungry.  It turns out she was so afraid another kid would eat her bento she carried it around with her until she dropped it.  The lid popped off and her precious bento went splat.  Poor thing!  The bento’s have been getting a lot of attention at the YMCA but I had no idea she would respond in such a nutty and sweet way.  I will leave her bento with the helpers next time!

No apples we harmed in the making of this blog post.  The apple was, in fact, picked up off of the floor and rinsed.  Then promptly eaten.

Don’t forget to check out Fluteloop’s blog

Hi, I’m Kuusou from Bento Basket and I’m happy to be a guest poster this week!  I live in Texas with my hubby and two girls and have been making them bentos for almost a year.  A few months ago I decided to start a blog to share the lunches I make for my family with those who love bento.  Each week day I make four bentos – one each for my husband, girls, and myself.  Most of the time it doesn’t take too long to make all four since I’ve developed a system.

Today’s bento has homemade steak fingers separated by sakura-shaped carrots, a butterfly-shaped onigiri with various nori decorations, green beans, tomatoes, tamagoyaki, apricots, cranberries, bell peppers, and baby spinach leaves.

One of my favorite time-saving tips is to do some things the night before. For example, cutting out nori and putting it all in a covered container for the morning really helps when I’m in a hurry!  I also have the boxes and supplies set out on the counter so they are all ready at 5:30 am!

Y’all have a great day!

Today is my last full day at home before I whisk my kids off to England for a week to see their grandparents!

Of course I can’t wait to be there, but the journey is usually a nightmare. This time however, I am looking forward to seeing how the Trunki works out for us.

The Trunki is this fantastic Ride on/pull along Suitcase for toddlers and small kids. (3 different colours available here)  And it has these horns that they grab on to for handles and push it along with their feet. The strap

comes off and you can pull them on it too, or you can pick it up and wear it like a satchel, or they can! This is suitable in size for hand-luggage too, so the lucky kid (in my case my 2.5 year old! The one I always refer to a toddler who is fast becoming a boy, sniff sniff, I can’t call him my toddler any longer really. In fact my baby is not really a baby any more – he’s already 13 months now so really he should be the one I refer to as the toddler!) gets to keep all his toys, games,

colouring in book and comfort bunny for the whole journey!

Well anyway, sorry about that confusing side note interrupting there! Back to the bento blog!

Recently we have been watching some fun YouTube music videos for kids and this one caught my eye as something cute and cheerful that could be “bentofied”!

The children’s nursery rhyme goes like this:

I’m a little teapot, short and stout

Here’s my handle, here’s my spout!

When I see the tea-cups,

Hear me shout -

“Tip me over and pour me out!”

I made the teapot out of a big onigiri pressed rice ball, and the spout, handle and lid from cheese. I forgot to put the lid on, but if I’d put it on it probably would have fallen off anyway, because (and I should know this by now!) trying to get things to stick on the curved surface of the 3d rice ball is often disastrous for me! It is much easier to make the ball then flatten it down so you have a nice flat surface or “canvas” to work on. Well anyway I managed to get the spout and mouth to stick on with a bit of mayonnaise “glue”!

The cup is a strawberry hollowed out and filled with yogurt, which kinda makes me feel all gooey inside!In fact it makes me want to make a whole tea set from strawberries, cherries and other sweet kawaii fruits!

This really did not take long to do, despite trying to cut cheese while suffering a bout of the hiccups! I made the little strawberry cup while the rice was cooking, and prepared the tuna fish and mayo, and lined the bento box with salad, all while the rice was cooking. I am using another new type of lettuce today – this kind had black tinged leaves… what do you think to it? I have never seen this kind before!

Seeing as I will not be around to make bento, I am so excited to announce that have invited some of my fellow bento friends from the online bento making community to make a Guest Post here every so often while I am gone. So please don’t forget to come back (subscribe now before you forget!) and please welcome the mystery Guests of Honour on the Bento Box Blog page! Watch this Space!

How exciting! There is a new Bento Club for bento enthusiasts over at Squidoo!

The Kawaii Bento Club Launched literally a few minutes ago, and I am at the Facebook/Twitter/Squidoo Launch party now, eating choccie easter bunnies and drinking diet coke in celebration of this wonderful new Bento Club.

Here you can create your own Bento “Lens” which is a fancy name for a one page website, but you can create as many as you want and it’s all very user friendly!  At the Kawaii Bento Club you can use the Kawaii Bento Page Wizard creator, so sharing your bento photos, pics, links, tips, tricks, and achievements is all made simple!

There are already some pages on there, why not go Check them out now on Kawaii Bento Club brand new HeadQuarters! It’s so new, you can still smell the paint! )

The Kawaii Bento Club Leader is Briton, an adventurous mom whose appreciation for cute and healthy food led to her passion for bento. You can follow her on Twitter as @KawaiiBentoClub

Why not join the Kawaii Bento Club on Facebook too?

Right, I’d better get back to the party! Maybe I’ll see if Briton has any kawaii vol-au-vents on the go!

I am looking for guest posters for my blog! I am going away for a week and I normally update my blog daily or every other day. So if you want to “look after my hamster” so to speak(!), all you will need do is:

• Make 1 bento, (it does not have to be a charaben / character bento either!)
• Take a nice colourful photo, (watermarking is welcome, but not essential)
• Write about who you are and what your website is about, and link to it,
• Describe how you made the bento, what inspired it and who you made it for,
• Share your bento making tips and tricks if you have any!

This is a great chance to get your own blog promoted! You don’t have to be a superstar or a famous bento maker! Even if you have never made a bento before, why not give your first time a try and blog about it here? I will choose one each day to be published on the main page.

How to submit your content: Please send your photo and text in an email to bentoboxuk@gmail.com, with the subject “Guest Post”

I will be away from 7th – 14th April, so it would be terrific if you could send in your posts asap from now!

Many thanks and looking forward to seeing your entries!

Asfora )

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