Bento Inari Hairclip Bears

Today's bento post Inari Bears with Hairclips, is consist of Inari sushi, which is simply made of rice stuffed into tofu pouches, and some cucumber on the side. Sometimes I add cream tuna or corn into the pouch too, but this time  its plain.  I didn't take long to prepare this bento, because its just stuffing the rice into the pouches and slicing cucumbers. Later on I just stick foodpicks (which I bought recently from Bento&Co) near the corners to form ears for the bears. They also look like hairclips for the inari bears. So far this has been my favourite set of food picks because it's quite funny.

Bento Bears with hairclips which are funny looking foodpicks I ordered from Bento&Co

If you see the picture above, they looked like butterfly and clover "hairclips" but there's more to it than meets the eye. Here's how the funny foodpicks look like from the side:

Funny Bento Foodpicks 1 - sideview

Funny Bento Foodpicks 2 - sideview

Hehe, I think this picks will come in handy for cherry tomatoes, little quail eggs or grapes. Using food picks means that dirty fingers will not come in contact with the tomatoes, quail eggs or grapes and it instantly adds some colour to a bento.

Bento Elf Babies - Inari Sushi - Meat-free

These two elf babies are essentially Inari sushis, simply tofu pouches and rice balls.
I made this Bento Elf Babies with some leftover tofu pouches from the Ninja Bento I made for Mr Bear on Friday. Even though I am carnivourous (most of the time), I really will eat meals without meat if its delicious and presented in an appealing way. I guess you can say that I am a big kid in disguise. hahaha!

Bento Elf Babies Inari sushi, shown here with 2 black Ojue compartments

Hope you like this Meat-free Inari sushi Elf Baby Bento!

Bento Funny Frog Face Fillet o Fish for a Friday

Today I'm in a pretty funny mood when I decided to make this bento. It's fish fillet burger with chopped apples on a bed of lettuce. Maybe I should give this bento a funny sounding name as well. Bento Funny Frog Face Fillet o Fish. hahaha, now I want to hear someone read this title out loud and fast :p

Hope you have a good laugh with this Bento Funny Frog Face Fillet o Fish and have a happy funny Friday! :)

Bento Sandwich Naked Baby Salami Star

Its been a long time since I made bentos that doesn't require any cooking. Today I have decided to wake up at 0700hr to make what I call a Cook-Free bento for Mr Bear.

Bento Sandwich Salami Star and Naked Cheese Baby

Close up : Bento Naked Cheese Baby and Salami Star

This is what I did while Mr Bear was getting ready to work:

- Cut of the crust of bread.
- Spread butter on 1 side of bread and lay the cheese and salami.
- Cut the bread neatly into half and squeeze them into the bento box.
- Add the salami star and cheese baby which I had prepared last night.
- Fill up the rest of the bentos with fresh strawberries.
- @ 0715hr BENTO FINISHED!

For this Naked Baby Sandwich Bento, I had used a black bento box from Daiso. I guess its meant for  men because of some funny words printed on the lid. It says, "THE KING OF KINGS the king wore a crown. he is the king of kings" :D :D :D I bought both sizes and this is the larger one.

For the cheese, I chose to use sliced young Dutch Gouda cheese ( Goudse kaas - Jong belegen) instead of the usual cheddar cheese because Mr Bear doesn't like cheddar and also because it doesn't go all floppy so soon. For the nori bits, I used a nori punch for the mouth and the leaf piece. The leaf shaped nori punch I had does not have the jagged edges, so I add them in myself. This is how I made this Naked Baby Salami Star Sandwich Bento. Hope you like it!

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 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

Bento Accessories - Nori Punchers

Nori Punchers

Hehe, once again, these are some goodies I grabbed from Daiso last summer.

I used these as nori punchers (seaweed punchers) for my bentos sometimes. Tried all of them and they worked pretty well, as long as I don't stuff like a whole stack of seaweed in them. But then again, because of the way they are designed, I doubt anybody can stuff like 20 pieces of seaweed at the same time anyway. LOL!

In fact, of all these 3 nori punchers you see here, only 1 of them is labeled as a nori-punchers. The other 2 are actually craft punchers, the type that's typically used for scrapbooking and they work just as well as the real nori puncher.

Usually I punch the nori pieces one at a time, sometimes I make 2-cm folds on the nori and punch like 2 layers of nori together. (Even though it says on the packaging that I can do like 3-4 layers at the same time.)

So.......... which one is the real mccoy? Scroll down for answer :D

 

Just like scissors, they will turn a little blunt after cutting thick layers or thick papers, that's why I would suggest not to stuff too much nori at one time. Also, I would suggest not to use these punchers as paper punchers AND nori punchers at the same time, because it seems a little unhygienic to me and also they probably won't cut nori just as cleanly/sharply after cutting paper.

(haha, this is again from the scissors theory, that's why I have 2 pairs of scissors - one labeled "Paper", one labeled "Fabric", bet my ex-teacher from my fashion design education must be real glad that after so many years I still remembered what she said. ahhaahaha!)

To clean: simply give a good shake for the little bits of nori to drop out. Gently wipe the surfaces and avoid touching the metal areas.

Answer: The green one with the ship