Winnie The Pooh Bento!

Hello Everyone!

Today's post is about Winnie the Pooh bento, since it is A.A. Milne's birthday!

I decided to try making pocket sandwiches today. I used 2 glasses of different sizes to make this pocket sandwich without a cutter, as I don't have one yet :( , using the great tips from the Bentolicious blog here.

I decided it was going to be a sweet sandwich, so that the filling wouldn't spill, so I melted 3 Hershey's cookies and cream drops, mixed it with cream cheese and spread inside. I couldn't decide what to do with the sandwich, until I realized it should be a simple cartoon character, and for some reason Winnie the Pooh cam to mind. So I spread the top with butter, so it wouldn't conflict with the sweet taste, and cut out the nori face features based on a coloring page of Pooh I saw online (these are great because they are black and white, outlining exactly the features that must be made. For the ears, I cut them out of plantains, made incisions in the sandwich and stuck them in.

For the sides, I made plantain daisy flowers, a curvy checkerboard apple substituting the straight lines for wavy ones, parsley to fill the empty space, and 2 cherry tomatoes.

Lastly I reheated leftover penne pasta with corn, zucchini, celery and beef and topped it with melted cheddar cheese.

It was perfect timing too because Mamabelly is hosting an awesome Pooh link up at http://www.mamabelly.com/2014/01/winnie-pooh-bento-with-link-up.html. So check out her adorable lunch and some other really cute ones.

Tada and Happy Birthday to the late A. A. Milne! As always, thanks for reading!

Perfecting Bento Sides

Hello Everyone!

Today's post is no so much kyaraben (character bento) as it is trying to make the other tiers look pretty as well. If you've seen my earlier posts, I haven't really been focusing on the other tiers as much so I wanted to do that today.

I was going to have a dino cut sandwich but it was too hot when I cut it so the sandwich just went crack! :p So I learned you have to wait for a freshly grilled sandwich to cool before you cut it. I just freehand cubed this one so you couldn't see the split.

So here I have 2 cut slices of coconut macaron, two cherry tomatoes, 6 daisy cut plantains using my vegetable cutters and a checkerboard apple (based on Karenwee's awesome tutorial at http://kwbentodiary.blogspot.com/2012/10/checker-apple.html ). I rubbed it with lemon so it would not turn brown as I was making it the night before. I didn't cut away the apple but just used the whole thing. 

That's all folks and thanks for reading! :)

Skitty Sandwich Bento!

Hello Everyone!

So now that the year is in full swing, I am keeping my bentos short and sweet so I can have a cute lunch but time to do everything else. (:

Today's post is about more pokemon bento - Skitty!! :D   Here is Skitty (image credit to http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/May's_Skitty)

I am a little obsessed with pokemon and wanted to make a series of pokemon faces transcribed onto squares of sandwiches. 

I first made my grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, and then cut into 4-6 squares. I cut the red portion of a fruit roll up in strips to put on the highest square only at the top. Then I cut the cheese into an oval and from that cut out a sort of crescent shape (mine did come out messier than I would have liked). For the eyes and mouth, I cut out 3 arcs from nori.

This was a pretty simple bento that took me about 15-20 mins. I would recommend using something red other than a sticky fruit roll up because it stuck to the lid when it was time to be eaten. :P

To complement the sandwich, I added a small bit of corn (used a knife to cut it from the cob), a small pastry from the french bakery, 3 pieces of mango, a lemon flavored Starburst candy, two strawberries, and 4 slices of delicious starfruit. The bowl tier is holding the rest of the sandwiches as the middle couldn't fit it all. And that's my pokemon Skitty figurine <3. 

Tada!

As always, thanks for reading and enjoy! :)

ASDF Movie 7 Muffin Bento!

Hello Everyone!!

For the very first time, I have a real bento box!!! This is a 3 tier ninja girl bento box design by Kotobuki <3. It has a bowl as the 3rd tier, which is really nice to eat out of. The capacity is a bit small but I am learning to manage (: .

I made this for Monday's lunch for myself. I decided to do something simple since the tiers are small and I didn't have too much time. I did my nori cuttings and gathered the ingredients the night before, which took about 15-20 mins, and then 20 mins assembly in the morning. 

If you have never seen ASDF, it is a really funny/random youtube creation by TomSka. He has 7 3 minute animated videos, and this is based off of the adorable muffin in the 7th film. Luckily ASDF is black and white so it is pretty simple :) . 

I traced the outline onto wax paper based on a picture from Google Search. I used an X-Acto blade to start the inner cuts and continued with scissors. Here is the finished outline:

For the bento I placed him on a bed of rice (2nd tier), put broccoli, fish and a cantaloupe flower (3rd bowl tier), and canataloupe, orange AirHead, flower-cut kiwi and strawberries (1st tier). Tada! 

Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it!! :)

Mission Impossible (the first one) bento!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Everyone!

Thank you so much for visiting my blog!

Today's post is a tribute to the first Mission: Impossible movie, from 1996. I made this sometime ago but forgot to post, so I'm sorry. I always forget how amazing this movie is. They make the old computers look so high-tech! Mission: Impossible is on of my favorite movie series. Lalo Schifrin is a genius! No to mention the amazing Tom Cruise. Did I tell you I love Mission: Impossible?  =D

This is the scene where we we are all on the edge of our seats as Ethan Hunt descends from the airduct to get the disk. I thought it would perfectly capture the movie since it is the most well-known scene of the film (and a famous movie scene in general).

I started out by making the blueprints and the wax paper outlines of the vault computer and Ethan Hunt himself. I drew the vault on white paper from looking at a picture, and traced that onto wax paper. I later traced this onto cheese, and cut off the edges of the outline to do the nori outlines. The other details were freehand.

The blue buttons are made out of an AirHead, and the button on top was yogurt on cheese. The seat is cocoa powder on cheese with butter.

Ethan Hunt was more complicated. To do him, I converted an image of the actual scene into a bare outline with the program InkScape, and then traced the outline onto cheese. I cut out each component separately and traced onto nori. Below is the Inkscape outline with Ethan Hunt cut out so I could trace onto noir and cheese. 

Finally, the M:i letters are the same blue AirHead, to tie in with my M:i - 4 bento. I am hoping to make this a food art series, and will be doing M:i-2 and M:i-3 sometime in the near distant future. The cable is simply a line cut from nori. 

As a personal review, this didn't come out the way I was hoping but I am posting it to keep it as part of fan foodart tribute to the Mission: Impossible series.

Thank you for reading!