Bento for myself

  

04/01/11

I woke up a little later today and couldn't rush out a pretty bento for Mr Bear this morning. There was still quite a number of tofu skins in the opened inari package and I had to rush to the library to study for the coming exams. 

I quickly cooked some rice in the rice cooker and let it do what it's supposed to do. In the meantime, I started chopping up a carrot into little thin 5 cm (2 inch) strips. Next. I heat a little cooking oil in the pan and threw in the carrot strips, letting the natural sugars in the carrot caramalize a little in the pan. I add some soya sauce for taste and add in a little more brown sugar just so to give it an even more caramel-y taste. If you happen to have some white sesame seeds in the kitchen, you can sprinkle some on top of the carrot too. It gives the carrot some extra "umphh!". I realised I didn't have any sesame seeds so I just went without them. So I set some aside the carrot to cool one of my trusty green sillicon molds and started munching on the rest as breakfast.

A few minutes later, the rice is cooked. I spread it out in a big flat container, fanning the rice so that it will cool down faster. Next I mixed about 2 teaspoon of rice vinegar and sugar together and sprinkle it all over the rice, mixing it and fanning it all at the same time. Adding this "rice vinegar + sugar" solution will give the rice a nice shine and add some flavour to the rice as well.

I mold the rice with my hands into little round balls (about 3-4cm in diameter) and stuff the rice balls into the tofu skin (inari). Since everything is still a little warm, I decided that I should get dressed to go out in the meantime.

By the time I was done, the foods are cooled enough to be placed into the bento boxes. So I did that, and realised that I forgot to add a piece of fruit. I grabbed a banana and tried to stuff it in. Alas, it didn't fit at all and I had to improvise: I ate half of the banana there and then and stuff the rest into the box. haha!

As for the eyes and mouth, there are made from nori strips that I had cut last night, with a pair of scissors. In fact I had a whole bunch of simple basic shapes that I like to always keep aside. My favourite is long nori strips thats cut about 1mm wide. When I need them, I'll just cut them into suitable lengths for slitty, winky eyes, chicken feet, chicken footprints, or even hair.

- rice

- tofu skin ( inari )

- nori

- carrot

- banana