Octopus under the sea bento • 03.11.10
octopus bento
Today’s bento is an octopus in an “under the sea” type environment! There are 3 little fishies made out of pressed rice and they have carrot tails. The octopus is made out of a boiled egg and cheese slices cut into strips to make the legs. Now don’t start hating on me just because the octpus has 6 legs instead of 8! I did make 8 but a certain toddler/helper decided to eat 2 of the legs! I am surprised this bento survived to the photo shoot, seeing as he was everywhere today! He did a great job with the egg slicer. He even sliced up one of the rice fishies in it! The next thing I hear is “broke it mama, broke it!” The egg slicer had come off at the hinge. It’s nothing that will not fix! I dyed the rice blue for the sea and then, horrified to find that I have absolutely no greenery in the house, no cucumber, no lettuce, no green pepper, I had to resort to using grated cheese dyed green for the underwater plants. I experimented with melting some cheese in the microwave to make the octopus legs, and then put it into a piping bag. But my piping bags are disposable thin plastic bag ones and the cheese was so hot that it melted the bag! So I had to give up on that idea! It would be cool to try with a fabric piping bag to see what results you can get from piped cheese. I’m glad I boiled 2 eggs because peeling the shell off has never been something I was any good at! The egg always gets broken up somehow. The 2nd egg seemed to peel a lot better. I think letting them cool right down might help. Tips and advice on peeling eggs welcome please!
