Bento Idea: Grown up Bento

Today is a pretty stormy day in the Netherlands. Winds were blowing pretty hard, so hard that all I heard was some scary howling voices. Mr Bear and I went to the closing of International Film Festival Rotterdam 2011 and here's a bento to go along with the event and weather, hopefully to make us strong and sturdy like Popeye.

Lunchbox: Ojue Lunch box

Mash potato
Beef Sausage
Creamed Spinach
Green grapes
and 2 little leave shape food picks to brighten up a grey day.

Click here for full recipe for this bento box. Enjoy!

Bento Idea: Musical Babybel

It had been a whole week of craziness of hiding in our cave for both Mr Bear and me. We were down with a bad bout of flu and had been hibernating the whole time. Now we are both feeling better and since stuffs had been left un-done for the whole week, it DOES really feel as though I have a lot to do/catch up on...

I don't know if its a world-wide thing or not, but I do notice a lot of my friends being sick as well last week. Its strange because all these friends come from different parts of the world ( Europe, United States, Asia,  Australia etc) and thus they probably didn't get it directly from each other. More like a coincidence I think.

Let's begin with something easy.

Bento idea: Musical babybel

- mini babybel
- nori for the musical notes
- green grapes
- Leftover chicken pesto pasta salad (click here for recipe)

How I did the mini babybel:
First, unwrapped the red cellophane wrapper from the mini babybel. Using a round bottlecap, I make a slight impression on the red wax. This serves as a rough guide for the circle. You can also trace out the circle with a sharp toothpick. Next I cut out the wax, leaving a circle of cheese exposed. If you see this picture carefully, you would have seen that I left the little paper strip intact. All mini babybels have this paper strip to make removing the red wax easier. I left it on, so that its easier for me to remove the rest of the red wax just before I eat it. If you like, you can always cut it through and remove the paper strip completely.

 

PS: Rio, this post is dedicated for you. Thanks for popping by my blog! :D

Bento Idea: Mini babybel belles!

Yesterday there was a sale on mini babybel cheese in one of the neighbourhood supermarkets. I thought that they make a great addition to my bento food stash, since they are:
-small (thus high in "cute factor")
-keep well
-individually packed (means I can portion it to exactly what I need = less food wastage)

I think I came across this sometime back from a taiwanese bento mom Tiffany Yang's blog and thought its pretty cute, so I improvise it a little to make it truly my own. At this point, there's no instructions for this on her site, so I reckon I'll just share with you my methods:

Basically I unwrapped the mini babybel and started cutting the shapes I want with a tiny sharp knife. If you are not comfortable with cutting out the shapes with the knife straightaway, you can lightly sketch the design you want with a sharp toothpick before you really start cutting. This way, its less likely for a mistake to be made.

From the discarded red portions, I carved a little shallow "u" shape to form the mouths. Using a toothpick, I place them at a desired position. *if your bento is intended for small children, use maraschino cherries or surimi stick skins instead of discarded wax!*

Next I used a food writer to dot on the eyes. Not exactly the best option I found out, because they tend to smudge. If black sesame seed is available to you, use them!!! Just 1 tiny black sesame seed for each eye. They work far better than the food writer because they give a "cleaner" look and those ever so cute tear-drop shaped eyes. Else a tiny tiny little round piece of nori will do fine as well. If you happen to have a musical note nori puncher on hand, use them!!! you can simply cut off the round part of the musical note and use them as eyes!

Other ingredients for this bento are:
- mash potato (decorated with leaf picks)(click here for mash potato recipe )
- green grapes (lying right under the mini baby bel belles)
- cut banana (instructions on how to cut them decoratively can be found here.)

In case you know someone who is crazy about mini babybel, you might want to check this out this out. Its fast and convenient and you won't have to rush out to the supermarket and then go to the post office to send it out, just to realise to that the postage for cheeses is already way more expensive than the cheese itself.

Bento: 2011 First Bento - meat balls and potatoes

01/01/2010
This is the first bento I made for this new year of 201. Ironically the ingredients are all made from leftovers from the potato and carrot stew Mr Bear and I had last night, or should I say "last year". hahaha!

Not that proud of it, cos it looked a little strange. But who cares, I made it for myself, since I couldn't wake up in time thanks to the iphone glitch on 20101 New Year's day. Here's something to pat myself on my back though, it was done in a record time of 10 minutes. Hahahahaha, fastest bento I have ever assembled so far. (and also one of most embarrassingly ugly ones ^..^! )

Rocket Leaves
Potatoes
Carrots
Meat Balls
Grapes
Full-cream yoghurt
nori strips (cut out with a pair of scissors - free hand)

The blue stuff you see on the yogurt is candied sugar (basically sugar laced with food colours, stumbled upon it in a bakery supply store)

Gonna practice more on speed and aesthetics!

Bento: A not-so-Japanese Bento

This is also one of my first few bento attempts. The spagetti was leftover from dinner the night before.
It tasted so good! To add to all the goodness: It was cooked with lots of tender loving care from Mr Bear  :D
The little white cube on the top is our fish apartment. Mr Bear figured out that since we live in an apartment, it will also be quite cool if our (future) fish also lives in one.

 Heres a breakdown on what's in this bento that's not typically japanese:
-Leftover spagetti
-Sliced cucumber (seperated by 2 rectangular silicon cake molds)
-Green seedless grapes

Rabbits and Elves

Its Boxing Day a few days back. Mr Bear and I just got back to our little apartment after 2 days of over-the-top Christmas binging at his parents' place. On Monday, its back to work for him and back to my books for me. I wanted something that isn't that rich after two days worth of Christmas menus. Yet at the same time, I am still clinging on to that Christmas/ Holiday mood and refused to go back to reality. Thus I made this Rabbit and Elves bento for Mr Bear so that he'll have a nice leisurely lunch the next day. I hope you'll enjoy it too!

Bento Box
-metaphys ojue lunch box

Greens
-rocket leaves

Elves
-inari-sushi (稲荷寿司) *fancy sounding name, but not that difficult*
Grab some abura-age (japanese tofu-skin pouches), you can get this in japanese supermarkets or even oriental supermakets. Carefully open the pouches. Make round clown-nosed sized riceballs and stuff the rice ball into it. Tuck in the raw edges of the pouches and carefully position nori eyes and mouth.

Rabbits
-sliced red apples, soaked in water and lemon juice solution to prevent the apples from turning brown.

Rubies
-red seedless grapes