The Last Mimzy Bento

Hello Everyone!

         Today's post is about making The Last Mimzy bento!

                    

         I wanted to make the rabbit doll from the film (right). I figured my best bet would be using sticky rice, molding it with cling-wrap. If you've never worked with sticky rice before, it is hard to mold with just your fingers because it sticks to them, even if you wet them with salt water (it wears off).

   But nothing sticks to cling-wrap!!! This makes cling wrap the perfect tool. Start by spooning the amount of rice you think you'll need onto a piece of cling-wrap. Then wrap it up and start pushing and squeezing it in various ways to mold it (kind of like clay).

          The rice ball on the left is the head. The spooned rice will become the body. After you finish molding the whole rabbit it should look something like this:

           You can either finish the rabbit or store the parts and work on it right before you plan to eat (I stored mine). To add the brown and white fur I laid the parts out on a plate and put soy sauce using an eyedropper, leaving some parts white like the bunny in the picture. I cut the face features, toes and fingers out of nori. 

          Difficulty rating: 7 for soy - sauce dropping, shaping, Nori details and time (do in advance to refrigerate cling-wrap items so they hold well).

           Tada!

                                                  

Monsters Inc. Bento

Hello Everyone!

    Today's post is about making Monsters Inc. Bento, in time for the release of Monsters University! Monsters University was actually pretty good. The short before the film was cute too. But they released it 12 years later (Monsters Inc. was released in theaters in 2001) !

 

    I decided to base the bento on Mike Wachowski, the main character (or one of them, anyway). I skipped unnecessary details like his fingers, claws, toes and teeth - I just wanted to capture the idea of Mike Wachowski in this bento (or dinner meal, rather - this one isn't in a bento box).

 

      I used my Nori puncher for the mouth, the cucumber skin and more Nori (freehand cut - as in, without a puncher or other tool) for the face features. I cut the skin off a circle of cucumber and used it for the body. I cut the arms and legs from more cucumber, and used the brown edges of a corn muffin for the horns.

     Difficulty rating: 4.5 - its pretty simple! Just cutting everything out, really.

      Tada!

 
                                                   

      Mike is sitting on a puddle of yogurt, along with a Parota (fluffy Indian bread), beef stir-fry and roast veggies. Thanks for following!                     

Bento Bites: Using A Nori Puncher

    Hello Everyone! I have decided to start a new series of posts called Bento Bites, to simplify making bento. If you are new to bento, you may want to start here and work your way up to full-on bento.

   In today's post we will be using a face puncher to create simple and simply cute Bento Bites.
 
                                         

   You can find Nori punchers at Amazon.com (that's where I found mine). A Nori puncher is almost exactly like a hole puncher, (so technically if you have a nice hole puncher you could use that too) except it punches out faces out of Nori.


    Put the nori in the puncher and punch out a face, like this:

    Then simply put the design onto your food! Here I am using a quick omelette topped with snowflake cheese (using my cookie cutter).

    The second picture is an egg on top of curry, along with tomatoes - its from my "Snowflake Egg" bento post.



                                                                     

   And that's it for Bento Bites with a Nori puncher. Thanks for following and good luck trying it out!

Minority Report Bento

   Hello Everyone!

   Today's post is about making a Minority Report (the movie) bento*.

   In the film, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) wears this really cool watch, so I thought I would base the bento on that.















    Obviously the watch is too intricate to add every detail to the bento version, so I decided to go with the numbers on the outer ring, the needles, the white and green circles and the stars (on the green circle).


   Using an Exact-o blade and a wooden cutting board I cut the numbers, circles and needles out of Nori. I cut the stars out of a cucumber ring and used the ring as the green circle. To get the white circle shape, I cut the watch silhouette out of Nori and spooned sticky rice onto it, then I added the Nori details and cucumber. In the bento the watch is on top of a bowl of Mac and Cheese.

     Difficulty rating: 5 for cutting the numbers, working the rice (but it would be easier if you used cling wrap, when I made this I didn't know), and getting reasonable proportions on everything, plus a good watch shape.

 Tada!

Personally, the film was a bit dark but it makes a pretty good bento! Thanks for following!

*This bento is technically not a Kyaraben, as it doesn't have a character.

 

A Bento Inventory

   In my last post I talked about what bento is. You may want to check that out if you haven't already, especially if you are new to bento.

   Let's talk about supplies (yay)!

   So since bento is about making art with food, you are obviously going to need basic kitchen supplies. You will also need some sort of a bento box (you can be creative) and things to help you sculpt ordinary food into art. You don't have to get too elaborate here - you should start with stuff you know you need and add on to your collection as you do more and more bento. My hardest step was figuring out a good bento box, until I finally decided to start with an Indian Thali Tray and upgrade later.

   Even though Nori is a food and not exactly equipment, I consider it a must have for Kyaraben making. It is very easy to cut (pretty much like paper) and is great for all sorts of face features.

   Here is my Bento Inventory:

There are:

2 cuttingboards
4 Knives
3 snowflake cookie cutters with two accessories to make the holes (for shaping sunnyside up eggs)
1 Thali Tray for putting bento (my bento box)
1 pack of Nori
1 laughing smiley face Nori puncher
1 bowl as a rice mold
1 sheet of parchment paper for sketching faces and making face outlines using rice (more about that later)
1 pair of scissors (to cut parchment paper and Nori)
1 small fork and spoon for finetuning things
1 butter knife to spread things (like pesto)
1 glass dish as a smaller bento box




   My next posts will talk about making Kyaraben. If there is anything else you think I should post please let me know in the comments. Thanks for following!

An Intro to the Amazing........ Bento!!!

Hi Everyone! My name is Sara, I live in the U.S., and I just started making bento 6 months ago.

Ok, so what is bento? Bento, like most awesome things, is from Japan. Although it originated in China, it is more commonly associated with Japan. Bento literally means (in Japanese) "a nicely packed meal in a box". There are many different types of bento, such as Kyaraben, or character bento, where you make a bento starring a popular character (like Tom and Jerry, Pikachu, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Hello Kitty, etc.), Chuka Bento, with Chinese food, Kamameshi Bento, served at railway stations, and Shidashi Bento, the kind you get at a restaurant ("Bento" at wikipedia.org). Awesome, right? (in case you don't know the answer to that question its yes)  This blog is about making Kyaraben.

 People all over the world use stuff like leftover pizza, chicken nuggets, pasta, noodles, rice, wraps, etc. for bento. Really you can use whatever you have that's edible. You can also use traditional Japanese food like Onigiri and Sushi. For those of you that don't live in Japan, you can buy Nori (roasted seaweed) and sticky rice from an oriental grocery store and make Onigiri and Sushi. Onigiri is harder than it looks though - molding sticky rice is not easy. For some reason they call Onigiri in Pokemon jelly donuts. Nori is also really useful for making Kyaraben faces.


A Kyaraben (Photo Credit: Lucky Sundae at http://reyskakes.tumblr.com/)

So that's about it for now. I am going to post more about what you need, and the process of making bento. Thanks for following! ; )