Bento Box Blog

Weepul Bento

I was looking at Bentovention’s site the other day and noticed that her Makkuro Kurosuke (Susuwatari) bento characters reminded me of those Weepul pom-pom stickers that you used to see everywhere in the 80’s.

Weepuls

So I thought I would make my own “Weepul sticker” out of rice and cheese! I coloured the rice purple by mixing red and blue food colouring, made the eyes from some egg white and used a hole punch on the Nori seaweed for the pupils. The cheese letters for “Have a nice lunch” were cut free hand using my pergamano needle pen. You can learn how I do my cheese colouring on my Cheese Food Colouring Bento Tutorial

This was fun and simple to do and although it’s not really a full bento today, it’s still a nice Sandwich Topper decoration to brighten up lunch! I have put this on “What’s for Lunch Wednesday” – Go have a look it’s like a bento party where you can show off your Wednesday Bento!

Did you know? I love puzzles! I love rubiks cubes, logic problems, jigsaws etc. I also love Moroccan Tilework which is called “Zelij” or (Zellij / Zellig / Zellige).  I wanted to try and do some kind of swirly mosaic and was entranced by this “How to draw Zellij” Tutorial

I ended up reading about Wang tiles / Wang Dominoes and aperiodic tiling, Penrose tiles and Quasicrystals…!

To keep things simple, I decided to go with these Penrose Tiles to make a “tile and dart” design, from coloured cheese. It was only to experiment and play really, but I ended up making it into a Bento by adding some of the home made pizza and Ginger and Choc Chip cookies (from my trusty Be-Ro recipe Book!) that I had made previously the same day.

Penrose Tiles bento

Happy Anti-Procrastination Day! Here is the special pen I use to cut my cheese:

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Alvin and the Chipmunks bento

I don’t usually enter the online bento competitions, (I’m not a gambling lady LOL!) but I wanted to try to make something for the “Rock My Bento” competition from The Kawaii Bento Club seeing as this one is a voting contest.

I like the  album covers of Alvin and the Chipmunks Original Sound Track and Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel!

My kids love these kinds of songs, along with the “Spongebob singing” on Youtube and The Gummi bear songs.  I have to admit they are all quite catchy. I love this one – Chipmunks – FunkyTown

Chipmunks

I used biryani spices in the rice to get a lovely aromatic flavour and just the right colour brown for the chipmunks, and I used cheese to cut out the chipmunks’ clothes. The white bits are boiled egg white and the dark is Nori seaweed. The rest of the bento is made up of chequered cucumber, cherry tomatoes, grapes and a baby apricot. I also used some spinach for the borders. It’s completely edible (or should I say “was completely edible” – my DH enjoyed munching on this one today!).

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Peacock Bento

We had a fantastic day out at “Wildtierpark Poing” in Munich (a wild animal park) on Wednesday! We were able to stroke some rabbits and guinea pigs, and feed antelope, goats, ponies and donkeys! We also saw some huge bears. There were random peacocks wandering around the picnic area as well as chickens and ducks.

Here is a bento that I made inspired by the beauty of the magnificent bird, the peacock! I also wanted to try out the sealed sandwich idea that Lia from Bentolicious blogged about.

I don’t have a bread mold / sandwich shaper (apart from the toastie maker) but after rummaging through my plastics box which is mostly full of old baby bottles and lids, I thought I would try using a large teat ring and a smaller one, that seemed to nest inside each other quite well. I made some chocolate spread sandwiches from brown bread and pressed the larger ring onto it to get my first circle, then I turned it over and used the smaller ring to seal the sandwich. I was pretty impressed because they came out quite neat and tidy considering the improvised tools for the job!

These are the teat rings from the old baby bottles that I used to make the pressed sandwich with sealed edges.

And then I put coloured cheese peacock decorations on and carved the same design into a red apple. You don’t get a zoomed out photo today seeing as this was only a snack experiment bento and there isn’t really much else in it apart from some cucumber slices, but someone has been messing about with my fridge settings and the cucumber was frozen solid so it does not look how it is meant to, and I don’t have any other salad or fruits to do much bentoing with. But I’m a big believer in making do with what you have got, so here it is!

The rest of the bread offcuts went into a bread and butter pudding, which I am told was delicious, but I didn’t try it seeing as I am trying not to have any empty calories. I have lost 4lbs so far since I started doing my daily exercise and watching my portion sizes, using the weight loss tips on this blog post and I have proudly marked it on my progress chart on my wall! only 22lbs more to go!

I recently placed a couple of orders with Cake Balls UK to have a box of Gluten Free coffee and walnut cake balls and a bag of chocolate and orange cake balls sent to my relatives in the UK as birthday gifts. As agreed the balls were sent out for delivery before the recipient’s birthday and I’m told they are really delicious and came packaged really neatly too. PippaD from A Mother’s Ramblings recommended Cake Balls on her blog and that’s where I got the idea, so thanks Pippa, and thanks Anna from Cake Balls UK for delivering the fantastic birthday gifts! You have my recommendation too!

You can follow Anna from Cake Balls Uk, Pippa from A Mother’s Ramblings and Lia from Bentolicious on Twitter and their Blogs.

I have never placed a bento items order before, I still consider myself a beginner seeing as I only started making bento in January 2010, and I have never bought any “proper” bento tools, preferring to try to make the best use of what I already have such as cookie cutters for shaping rice or cutting cheese or vegetables, craft punches for the nori seaweed and my craft needle pen for cutting the cheese. There are definitely some basic items that I would suggest could be bought as a bento starter bundle if you don’t already have any tools for making your bento. And I am very tempted to order them myself very soon too! The items I think would be the most useful are the nori face punches, the egg moulds, the  onigiri presses, the flower shaped vegetable cutters and the the decorative food picks.

Have fun and happy bento-ing!

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manga anime bento

This is from weeks ago – must have forgotten to click “published” as I found it in my drafts… weird

I’ve been a fan of the manga / anime style for a few years. I learnt how to draw a basic manga face from a “How to Draw Manga” book, a few years ago. I haven’t drawn or sketched in a long time, but I decided to see if I could refresh my memory and make a Manga style cartoon character out of cheese for my bento. So I had some fun this afternoon, with my parchment pergamano perforating pen, and of course lashings of food colouring. I made a caulifower in cheese sauce to sit at the right hand side in a scooped out green pepper (not having any lettuce again, and having run out of broccoli… sigh! ) Then there was not much room for much fruit, just a few apple segments. Today nothing went right really, because the dishwasher wouldn’t work – Put it on last night but it just sat there defiantly refusing to wash the pots, so this morning I had to either wash everything by hand (not my style!) or wait for it to get fixed…so the pots are still waiting to be rescued from their filthy state, and I have to keep going in there to get a spoon or plate or whatever to wash it by hand… I suppose I will have to eventually get the whole lot out and do it. Can’t someone else do it?! And then my camera kept taking fuzzy/blurry pics… yeah I know a bad workman blames his tools…but I can’t understand why I have been able to get crisp photos in the past and now I can’t. Winge over! I must remember to be grateful that I have the priviledge of hot running water, a luxury that I often take for granted. In some countries, they have to wash their pots using water pumped from a well, if they even have access to water that is. It makes you wonder doesn’t it? Maybe I WILL go and wash those pots now and stop being so ungrateful!

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Cupcake bento

It’s not a real cupcake – it’s a slice of apple in the shape of a cupcake with cheese on top!

There is tuna-mayo underneath the cupcake, and to the side are some rice ball mushrooms / toadstools.

I was really scratching around for ingredients today to be honest. The radishes have gone and the black olives had an incident this morning at 8am – they got yanked out of the fridge and ended up all over the kitchen floor (not mentioning any names but watch my eyes! *Looks over at baby*)

So I ended up putting some digestive biscuits in there to fill in some space – they are at the back, which you cannot see in this picture, but you can in the full, zoomed out  photo.

Cupcake bento

Don’t forget to have a look at the Contests page and the Bento Book Shop

I have been collecting Bento tips, tricks and tutorials and have put all the links together on one page, for your easy reference.

In addition, there is now a Bento Articles Page and the Badge is now easier to grab.

Have a great Anti-Procrastination Day!

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Bee and Butterfly Bento, with apple flowers topped with cheese

We had tuna, sweetcorn and pasta mayo today for lunch, and I made rather a lot, so I put the leftover into a bento for later or tomorrow. I put some of the macaroni tubes together in a row to make the body of the butterfly and gave it a tuna-mayo ball for a head. It started off Life as a Caterpillar and and then got its wings! That link there is to my new Twitter friend LesleyDH’s blog, which I have been reading recently and has pushed me to commit to using FlyLady babysteps and Jonathan Roche’s No Excuse Work Outs mentality to start getting fitter and healthier!

bee and butterfly bento

So although the wires keep getting ripped off my cross trainer, and I have already used masking tape to repair it 3 times this month, I will yet again repair it so I can go on and burn more calories whilst watching Ally McBeal tonight! Just finished watching season 1, so I can’t wait to get started on season 2.

Even though my efforts are being sabotaged! My DH is a feeder – Last night he brought  me a bowl of ice cream with actual chucks of chocolate on top, and before that he brought me a “bento biscuit selection”, which was some little teddy bear shaped savory biscuits arranged in a little dish, and this morning he made me a fried egg sandwich and then made me a second one with chips in it, even though I begged for only 1 egg. But I am not complaining – it is nice to be waited on sometimes! I have issues with wasting food, and you can’t really save a fried egg for later can you? So down the hatch it went. It was very yummy. I enjoyed it!  So the whole idea about this new attitude is to not get de-motivated by the sabotage. Just carry on, taking it day by day, and continuing with the babysteps and little things that over a long period of time will make a difference. Such as:

1. Drink a glass of water before a meal, to help fill you up
2. Get off the bus one or 2 stops before the usual stop and walking the rest of the way
3. Take the stairs instead of lifts (cannot do this one because of the buggy, oops there I go making excuses LOL)
4. Swap fried foods for grilled or poached
5. Reduce the amount of butter, mayo and cheese
6. Reduce portion sizes
7. Try to eat little and often rather than big meals.
8. Drink water instead of fizzy drinks and reducing the sugar in coffees
9. Use low fat milk in the milky coffees
10. Snack on apples and yogurts carrots and celery  instead of chocolate and crisps
11. Never give up!
12. Always eat breakfast
13. Don’t reduce calories too much incase you go into starvation mode
14. Kick start metabolism by always having a wholesome breakfast with plenty of fiber
15. Eat before you get hungry so you don’t overeat.
16. Drink water to keep the body functioning / metabolising efficiently
17. Have a small treat (not a binge!) every now and again, otherwise you will get bored or de-motivated
18. Aim to lose only 10% of your body weight at a time
19. Elevate heart rate for 30 mins at least 3 times per week
20. Consider it a lifestyle change instead of a diet

These are tips I collected and stored in my memory from various magazines (Rosemary Conley, Weight Watchers, Slimming World) years ago when I went through my Fitness Freak phase. They are very sensible tips and not too extreme, and helped me to lose 30kg (66lbs) over 2 years ALONG WITH going on my cross trainer for 30 mins 3 times per week. So I know it is possible to do. I just have to do it again (I’d be happy to lose half that amount this time!), God Willing!

I think the bento making is already helping me to snack more on healthy things like carrot, apple and salad, and the portion sizes are brilliant and I am not going hungry at all.

Patience, strength, motivation, determination, Can. We. Do. It? Yes! We! Can! )

Here are some of the Top 25 Bento Boxes and Accessories:

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Lasagne Bento

Today’s bento is leftover home-made Lasagne with a peanut butter sandwich, topped with a cheese character holding a bunch of heart shaped balloons. (for the cheese colouring tutorial, click here). If you look closely, you will see Daffy Duck in the lasagne topping – spooky – I didn’t put him there ! LOL

The apple is the other half of the one I used yesterday to make the ZigZag Apple

You could probably eat the lasagne cold, (I have been pleasantly surprised to find a lot of typically hot foods do actually still taste good cold) but I will lift this piece out and warm it up in the microwave before serving – I just don’t fancy it cold!

Quick Lasagne Recipe:

Ingredients:

Bolognaise sauce (Minced beef, 2 tins chopped tomatoes, 1 onion)

Cheesy white sauce (2 tablespoons margarine, 2 tablespoons plain flour, smi-skimmed milk, handful of grated cheese)

Lasagne pasta sheets

Method:

Let the lasagne sheets soak in some water

Make the bolognaise sauce by cooking the meat and onions and adding the tomatoes, stir and simmer

Make the cheesy white sauce by melting the marg in a pan and stirring the flour in and keep stirring it the whole time, adding milk very gradually so you don’t get lumps. Add the cheese and keep stirring. Add more milk if you would like the sauce to be runnier.

Put some of the bolognaise meat sauce into a pyrex glass or oven proof dish, then some lasagne sheets, then the cheese sauce, then the bolognaise sauce, pasta, cheese sauce etc, keep repeating until you can finish with a cheese sauce layer then sprinkle a little grated cheese on top. If you have used all the grated cheese up in the sauce (like I did!) you can tear strips/pieces from a cheese slice and arrange these on top. Then bake in the oven for 30 mins and voila! Your own home made lasagne!

Relevant links:

Krista’s Crockpot Lasagne – Made famous on the FlyLady circuit!

DianeDenmark’s Blog – lots of yummy (and well tagged!) meal ideas!

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Sometimes it is difficult to get inspired to make a bento, especially if you have limited ingredients. You don’t have to have many fancy foodstuffs or lots of time to be able to turn a normal boring sandwich into a decorative delight if you have some coloured cheese sheets prepared before hand.

To make the coloured cheese slices:

I recommend Gouda because it is a nice texture and flavour, and seems to absorb the colour well, and is nice and elastic-y and non-stick, without being too soft or too hard.

Cheese and food colouring

If you will only need a small amount of coloured cheese, you can use one slice and spread the colours on each quarter of the cheese. This is also a good way to get some of the colour to overlap slightly, which can be an interesting effect if you cut the cheese shapes out going over the join. You can experiment and see what colours or shades you can get. Tip: Red + Yellow = Orange, Blue + Yellow = Green, Red + Blue = Purple. I only have the 4 colours of food colouring so I did 4 sections. I have to wear latex free gloves when handling food, NOT because I’m a hygiene freak (even though I am!) but because of an allergic reaction when food comes into contact with my skin. Great hobby for me to pick eh?! LOL

So using a clean finger you spread the food colouring on the cheese, and rub it in. The food colouring I am using is washable and does not stain your fingers or gloves, but I don’t think it comes out of clothes. In the past I have used bits of boiled egg white or another piece of cheese to do the spreading of the colour, just use a chunk of it like a paintbrush. You could probably try a clean paintbrush, I haven’t but I think it would work just as well. You’re more likely to have a finger or cheese scrap to hand.

Spread the colour on and rub in

Then it will look all messy and wet. Don’t worry! Just put the piece of cheese on a flat tray or plate and cover with cling film. Then put it in the fridge to dry off and for the colours to absorb. You can do this at night and it will be ready in the morning. If you are impatient you can blot it dry with some tissue.

The colour is absorbed

When you are ready to use the cheese, it will be a lot more manageable and a lot less messy, and will be a pleasure to cut into whatever shape your heart desires. My best tip is to use a needle or a needle pen that you an get from a craft shop in the “pergamano” section. You turn the cheese over and cut the shapes on the back,so remember cut out the mirror image!

Cut the cheese on the reverse

If you know you will need a larger amount of coloured cheese, you can of course colour bigger pieces of cheese, and store them in cling film until you need them. I am a big believer in not wasting food, so all the scraps and off cuts get saved and made into “rainbow” cheese toasties!

Larger sheets of coloured cheese

Then you can arrange your new shapes onto a sandwich or cold rice (not hot unless you want the cheese to melt LOL!) add some salad andcrunchy snacks and voila! A decorative lunch!

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