Bento Tales

It’s not just bears and mice, you know. I’m also on a mission to find out ALL the ways in which to make bento birds.

To make this one, you’ll need:

Something green for the foliage, thinly sliced roast beef (dinner leftovers of from the deli) for the branches, super thin one-egg omelette and hummus or baba ganoush for the birds, steamed carrot for the wings, corn kernels for beaks and a little seaweed for the eyes. Optional, enoki mushrooms to decorate forest floor.

Spread your “glue” over the omelette, roll and slice. Decorate with carrot, corn and seaweed. 

Spoiler alert: this bear is a vegetarian.

But Mr T. is not, so those roasted broccolini and fried crimini mushrooms are sitting on a bed of sliced roast beef. It’s all mostly leftovers. 

Today, for the first time ever, I was present for the unpacking of the bento. Part of the reason was a question I was asked yesterday: 

But How Does It All Stay Together?!

To be absolutely honest, it’s a question I’ve wondered plenty of times myself. While I keep pinning ideas for this blog, I am repeatedly struck by the impossibility of packing and transporting many of those beautiful creations.

Gorgeous! But it’s all sticking out (so how do you put a lid on it?), and there’s lots of fiddly little pieces, and I bet it would be just a rice and meatballs medley by the time my kid was done swinging his lunchbox on the short way into preschool. Not even a hint of Calvin and Hobbes. Nada, zilch.

And then I started seeing it. Cocktail sticks!

And that glorious food cement, mayo.

I wanted to see for myself if my precautions were working, so I made Mr T. a bento box for his nature class. It had to be stuffed in a cooler, carried in a backpack over rough terrain for almost two hours, and unpacked in field conditions. 

My precautions included sticky baba ganoush and cocktail sticks:

These are somewhat DIY (use your own toothpick), so I was able to adjust their height to the depth of the bento box. The slight give in the flowers allows for perfect fit with the lid.

Just to be sure, I put some cling wrap over the sticky part, and clamped the lid over the top.

Two+ hours later.

Toothpicks out, and after Mr T. started digging for carrots.

I got so excited about remaking #005, I wanted to get right back into it. 

But I didn’t really think it through, so here it is. It looked much better in my head. For one, the broccoli was supposed to stay on the branches, but it just kept splitting and sliding off. The birds were an afterthought, too, when my original plan (using tomatoes) did not pan out at all. 

Mr loved it. He’s especially fond of practicing his noodle-gathering fork skills.

I trimmed the carrot birds by hand, and it took way too much time and required way too many steamed carrots. We didn’t waste the leftovers, though. Yum.

Ingredients

Pesto fried broccoli

Spinach noodles

Boiled egg

Sliced olive (for mouse ears)

Quick! Or those teeth will snap shut right around you, poor little Baldrick!

Ingredients

- one boiled quail egg

- a slice of brie and a few scraps of cheddar

- spinach noodles

- peas

- teaspoon of pesto

The box

Mr T.’s favorite tomboy came to school with quail eggs once, and T. just couldn’t get over how amazing those were. So, when I found myself at our local asian supermarket last night, I picked up not just the seaweed sheets we actually needed, but some of those tiny eggs and fresh spinach noodles as well.

Weirdly enough, I’d never eaten a quail egg myself. 

But I put some cheddar ears and tail on it, and it worked just fine as a little mouse.

Next up, quickly fried some noodles and peas in pesto, and sat the mouse on that.

I liked it just like that, but I promised Mr T. some of his all-time-favorite brie, so smiling tiger teeth were called for.

Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!

Finished off with a handful of fresh melon and dried cherries and nuts. (Our old cherry tree offloaded more than twenty pounds of fruit this summer, so we’re drowning in the stuff. I just sliced them in half and threw in the dehydrator overnight. Yum.)

Result

Ta-daa!

The wait is over! Awww, right? Or maybe “Aaarrgh!” (We’ll figure it out as we go.)

Ingredients

- a pinch of pizza dough (or any other suitable base)

- tomato sauce

- olives

- cheese

- seaweed sheets

The box

Another valiantly rushed effort on the same going-camping day. I wanted to get it done as I was already baking some dough sticks and a big pot of tomato sauce to take with us, so figured it wouldn’t add much extra time.

(Yes, I’m a tomato sauce snob, and I make my own. I cannot eat onion, so there’s very little I can happily stomach from the pasta aisle, but I do love pasta, and love tomatoes. Turns out, boiling down a large can of crushed tomatoes with one large cubed sweet potato and a bunch of herbs works as a perfect substitute for pasta, lasagne or ratatouille. And you can even make it in extra large batches and dehydrate for backcountry camping. Or hot-process or freeze if you’re into once-a-month-cooking. Sooo... I was already making a massive pot of tomato sauce.)

I shaped a bit of the dough into tiger face, slapped a little sauce on it, and cut a few olives into stripes. When it was baked, I added some cheese detail for eyes, ears and cheeks.

Eyes were easier cut with a drinking straw. I held them in place with dry spaghetti, and finished the face with seaweed punch detail, applied with a cocktail stick.

Finally, I put the tiger on a second batch of steamed peas and broccoli. The rest was whatever I had to hand, and we were out the door!

Result

We planned all along to drive over nap time, so Mr T. didn’t get to eat his tiger until a couple of hours later. It did not travel well. Even in an air-tight cool pack, it dried out and set, and Mr T. only had the patience for maybe a half of it. He still thought it was neat, and now, two weeks later, still says he really liked it. 

It was fun to make, too, so I’m thinking fresh tiger pizzas for a kiddie party.

Now, if I could only find that bento box somewhere among the mountains of post-camping debris, I could really get back into the swing of this.

4/21/16 update

I’m in a makeover mode, so here’s another one. 

I’ve been looking for a way to have the same tiger head shape without the cold-pizza factor, and came up with this. Roasted red pepper baba ganoush on pita. 

I already had a lot of baba ganoush (because Whole30, ghaaaa), so all I had to do was to take about half a cup and blend it with a roasted red pepper for that orange tint. You can cut the shapes by hand, but I figured - if I carry on with the story - I might need the tiger shape a few more times, so I made myself a cookie cutter.

I used it to cut out three tiger heads out of pita, and one out of cheese. Then, I smeared a thin layer of baba ganoush on one of the pita tiger heads, and cut out matching cheese details using a toothpick and a large drinking straw. Decorated that with olives and seaweed, and set aside.

Then, I made tiger paws out of carrots, seaweed sticks and sesame seeds (attached using a touch of baba ganoush).

To arrange the box, I stacked two plain pita tigers, placed the paws on the sides, filled the space between the paws with carrot sticks, and put the decorated tiger face on top of that. Then, I filled the space above with broccolini and purple baby carrot sticks. The pita and veggies were meant to be for dipping, so I also packed a separate box of extra baba ganoush, and whatever olives we had left over from decorating (and snacking while decorating).

Are you even ready for this?...

Ehem.

I’m honestly sorry for the quality of the following two boxes. We were in the middle of packing for nearly two weeks of camping, and I was more preoccupied with clearing the fridge than making pretty lunches. I did think I’d be able to post it at the time, but... life. We moved around eastern Washington, somehow always managing to stay off the grid, then came home to piles of laundry and a tent in need of extensive repairs after force 6 winds got the better of it at Wanapum State Park. And no sooner that was done, I whisked the two of us away to the “family-friendly” Timber! festival, for some more open-field camping and eating out of Mountain House pouches. 

Where we also established that Mr T. (and a few other tender-eared souls) are not Recess Monkey fans. But I digress.

Good news is, I think I’ve gotten all that outdoors-ing out of my system now, and can get back to eating better, sleeping soft, and telling more silly stories. Here it goes.

Ingredients

- steamed carrot “flowers”

- broccoli and peas “meadow”

- ham and cheese sandwich with veggie chip “dry leaves”

The box

I was rushing this as much as possible, so instead of shaping perfect petals, I just cut bits off with an arm of a little star cookie cutter.

Then, I quickly and messily sliced those into individual flowers.

And scattered them on a bed of steamed broccoli and peas. There, meadow.

The bag of chips was for camping, but I cracked it open early. Couldn’t resist including some “rustling dry leaves,” and we do love the treat of a snap-crackle-pop ham and cheese sandwich from time to time.

Mr T. swiped it happily enough as I tried putting the top of the sandwich on. 

Result

It met with bemused approval, and got eaten, meadow and all, though Mr T. insisted these weren’t flowers at all.

Gears!

As long as it gets eaten, I’m happy.

4/20/16 update

As I’m working on getting back to this blog, Mr T. keeps asking to have this or that lunchbox again. The flower-gears came up a couple of days ago, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try something slightly different. (I’ve rewritten that day’s story “bite” as well, to account for the supposedly falling rain, so it made sense there would be no more crunchy veggie crisps.)

Baldrick at the edge of the now soggy forest.

I’ve taken some ideas from Yum-Yum Bento Box and enslavedbyfaeries, and put them together into this meatball mouse.

It did require some investment:

Tweezers, mini condiment pen, and two sets of metal flower cutters. Luckily, we live in a city sizeable enough to have a few Daiso Japan stores, so it all cost barely as much as a single latte.

I knew from my previous experiences with a plastic bear-shaped cutter that punching shapes out of fresh pepper was going to be tricky, but Mr T. loves his peppers, and multicolored carrots are not in season yet, and there was a chance metal cutters would fare better. They did, somewhat. The edges were still ragged and some of the flowers cracked, but they were just the pop of color I wanted, and the gloss was very rain-like. I did perch them on a pile of steamed carrot flower-gears anyway, seeing as that was what the boss requested.

The mouse was another challenge. I liked the enslavedbyfaeries’ idea of using a mini corndog, but wasn’t going to buy a whole bag of them just to make this one thing. Mini sausages were another option, but I couldn’t find any without corn syrup in them. I was, however, making myself some Whole30 breakfast sausage, so I rolled some of the meat into balls and baked them along my patties. Yum-Yum Bento Box recommended frying dry spaghetti to make it hold up in moist food, and I used that trick for the whiskers. It was their idea as well to use a straw to cut out small circles and ovals (squashed straw), and that’s what I did for eyes and nose. Then, I used a condiment pen filled with mayo to attach the eyes and nose (though a dipped toothpick would have worked as well), and finished the eyes with a little seaweed. I made ears from sliced almonds and tail out of cheese, and sat the mouse on a bed of fried green tomatoes and leafy greens, mixed in with fresh pea shoots for that shaggy, mossy look.

(Mr T. won’t touch tomatoes unless they’re fried or cooked down to a sauce, so that’s how it has to be done in our house. I won’t touch melon no matter what, so I can respect his aversion to that one particular mouthfeel. Which is to say, do whatever works for you and your family, and have fun with it.) 

We made this on a day off school, and started a little late, so by the time the box was all set, Mr T. had already eaten most of a can of chickpeas, all the carrot and pepper offcuts, and whatever else he’d scavenged from the fridge. By the time the box made it to the table, he was no longer hungry. All he ate was the mouse (which he thought was awesome and just the right size to pop in his mouth whole), and the pepper flowers (his favorite vegetable). But that’s the great thing about mostly-veggie bentos:

Could it be?... I think I can feel the inciting event coming at last!

And a lot of poorly assembled sausage mice.

Ingredients

- half of a jumbo hot dog, grilled

- thick slice of ham

- one olive

- thick slice of cheese, cut into circles

- a few sticks of uncooked spaghetti

The box

This was a complete experiment and, yes, I might have had more luck with an egg shaper or a handful of rice, but I have a feeling that Baldrick will keep popping up, so I’ll get plenty of chances to practice making mice out of different foodstuffs. I had some hot dogs leftover from our weekend camping, so figured I could give them a spin. 

Once the hot dog was grilled, I hollowed out the already cut side and bunched up the skin into half of an olive, for nose. I attached it with some dry spaghetti, then cut a slit for ears, and stuffed two ham circles in. Good enough.

For eyes, I used a drinking straw to punch two circles out of an olive, and attached them with some more dry spaghetti.

The tail was a little trickier. Again, it was just an idea, I’ve never seen anyone else do it, so it could have turned into a complete disaster. It worked, sort of.

First, I cut a bunch of cheese circles using icing nozzle and holder. (It was all that I had on hand in a remotely right size, but if I had to do it again, I’d go with something even smaller.)

Then, I stuck those circles onto a spaghetti stick, finished Baldrick, stuck the tail onto the body, and left the whole thing for a couple of hours in the fridge to soften.

When the time came to assemble the box, I cut out a couple of trees out of green apple skin, sprinkled it with lemon juice so it wouldn’t go dark, and filled the gaps with nuts.  

There, the edge of the forest.

Finally, I (extemely carefully) sat Baldrick on a bed of steamed snow and garden peas.

Result

Because it’s still too hot for proper food. Have some fruit kabobs! 

It’s a double rainbow, no less!

Ingredients

- colorful fruit, chopped into gradually bigger pieces

- piece of cheese

The box

I used whatever fruit I already had in the house, stuck onto toothpicks (green for visibility, so Mr T. wouldn’t try to eat them), and then into a piece of single-serving round cheese cut in half. 

It seemed to me cheese and fruit would go well with some nuts, so I assembled the rainbow to end with apples, hoping they’d keep the nuts in place better than any soft fruit (and still taste okay after a couple of hours of rubbing against each other). I told Mr T. the nuts were storm clouds, but I knew he’d eat them anyway.

Result

We all have our off days, okay?

Ingredients

- toasted wholegrain bread

- tuna cream cheese filling (mix and season to taste)

- seaweed rain

The box

It’s a gray day in the story, but a hot hot hot one out there. Being in the kitchen hurts, so I tried making this as fast as possible. It’s not a school day, so fish was okay. I mixed it with cream cheese simply because I had some left, and wanted to make the filling as sticky as possible. It worked. (I thought it came out a little bland, but Mr T. chose to eat the leftover filling on its own before he tried anything else, so I guess it passed muster.)

The seaweed rain clearly didn’t show very well, especially after I decided to sprinkle some olive “pinecones” over the top. And yes, I scoured the olives so they’d have the pinecone “scales,” but that didn’t show well either. Mr T. liked them anyway, and totally bought into them being pinecones. (Next time, though, sesame seed rain instead.)

I still have most of a bag of snow peas left, so expect them to show up a lot. This time, I cut them into chevrons, mixed with sliced mushrooms and quickly fried with a little pesto. Good enough for soggy fungal moss. 

Result

You win some, you lose some.

It all got eaten eventually, but the peas and the mushrooms turned into a post-nap snack. He wasn’t hungry enough and they weren’t attractive enough to get his attention at lunch. And maybe calling the moss “soggy” put him off as well.

3/14/16 update

I’ve never quite liked this bento, and it’s been bugging me for a while, so today I’ve decided to rewrite the story a little and make a new rainy day bento. 

Now this is what I like.

All it took was some pretty ingredients:

Clockwise from bottom left: quail eggs, bunapi mushrooms, crab sticks, pea and basil puree, tomatoes.

I’ve mixed lots of chopped up crab sticks into the pea puree:

And held everything together with dry spaghetti:

You can see it sticking out of the bunapi mushrooms in the photo of the whole box. The longer bit poking out of the bottoms of the quail eggs here was what held them up in the puree.

No time for sushi! Let’s slap a carrot beak on something!

That’ll do.

Ingredients

- shredded carrot chips

- tail-on prawns

- a few crushed pistachios, a slice of carrot, one snow pea for wings

The box

Making a deep-fried noodle nest seemed like too much hassle, and I didn’t relish the idea of shaping rice clouds and jamming them in there with all those noodles either, so in the end I didn’t do either. I had a delicious recipe for oven-baked carrot chips, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to try adapting it a little. 

I thinly shredded one large carrot, preheated the oven to 400F (because they were thinner than original recipe and my oven tends to run hot), arranged the strips into thin rounded piles on a piece of parchment paper, and dutifully waited by the oven (while listening to an audiobook, because, dammit, I’m totally doing this tongue-in-cheek and need an ear-worm not to feel like I’ve gone the whole Stepford). 

Fail. Three cheers for another just-human day!

I pulled them out at half time, and still they were seriously burnt. Yummy, though. Nom, nom, nom. I salvaged what I could (that is, left Ted some while I gobbled up the “ruined, just ruined!” rest), heaped it into something resembling a nest in the middle of Ted’s bento box, sprinkled with crushed pistachios and left it well alone. 

It tasted good, it was on the crispy side, and I wanted it to stay that way until lunchtime the next day, so the rest of the box had to wait till morning. 

I did prep, though. I set a bowl of greens on the side, with snow peas pre-cut with a Christmas holly leaf cookie cutter and broccoli chopped into small bites, and I did roll out the big guns for the clouds: a fresh coconut. 

Both Ted and I are absolutely mad about fresh coconut. It’s pricey, though, so we only indulge sometimes. This time, I figured it would compliment the rest of the box beautifully, and the evening was sweltering, so I had the perfect excuse to drain a coconut all by myself. Then, I peeled the flesh gently with the back of a teaspoon, shook it out in one piece onto the cutting board, and shaped with kitchen scissors like it was (slippery) craft paper. Padded dry, covered, and left in the fridge till morning.

The shrimp were “left over” (that is, jealously set aside) from Sunday dinner. I made little slits in their “heads” and cut thin carrot wedges to use as beaks. Fingers crossed they, too, awaited morning in the fridge.

We slept it. But then, miraculously, it all came together somehow anyway. Bleary-eyed, while Ted chomped on a reheated banana muffin, I threw the shrimp on a tablespoon of hot coconut oil and sizzled on both sides, then added the veg, squeezed some lemon over it all, pulled out the shrimp and set it in the nest, decorated them with carrot beaks and slivers of a snow pea for wings (just one per bird), set veg on a paper towel to drain, arranged the clouds above the nest and the veggies below, and there it was.

Egg with a carrot beak, right?

Well, Mr T. rarely finishes a whole egg, so I had to think of something else if I wanted a whole bunch of birds and lunch that does get eaten.

And you didn’t believe me when I said “seriously out of hand,” did you?

Ingredients

- prepared roasted pepper sushi rice (I didn’t have sushi, so just used jasmine, and mixed it with a splash of sushi vinegar, and then colored that with some finely chopped roasted pepper in about 2:1 rice to pepper proportions)

- chopped avocado

- seaweed sheets

- blanched carrots (or steamed, but only to the point when they’re easy to cut with a cookie cutter, but still firm)

The box

As a family, we’d always been very fond of sushi, especially in ridiculous quantities, so over the years I’ve become pretty adept at putting together my own rolls. But last night was the first time ever I’d heard of kazarimaki sushi, or sushi art rolls. I didn’t have any brighter ideas for this box, and I knew Mr T. would eat that up, so I’d decided to give it a try.

First things first. When going into a battle, you need a plan.

And a good batch of super-sticky pepper-rice. 

I know it’s customary to dye the rice with ketchup or food colors, but I wanted more than one color, had no commercial dyes on hand, and figured that was a good way of giving the rice a pleasant flavor and smuggling more veggies in.

It worked?

It worked!

I just had to remember which was the “pinch” edge, and cut in a way that complimented it. I cleaned and wet my knife between every 1-2 cuts to keep the colors tidy. 

It wasn’t until I started cutting out the eyes with the nori punch that I realized the birds could have been made much, much easier, if I just mixed the rice evenly with whatever veg I was using to color it, made a regular roll, pinched it after cutting, and then just slapped on the nori “mouth” (those two dark semicircles at the bottom edge of the plate) as a wing. 

I applied the eyes with a toothpick and covered the lot tightly with wrap, so they’d adhere better and the moisture wouldn’t make them curl up.

Beak time.

I cut the nori-punched seaweed (no good for anything else) into thin strips, lightly steamed some carrot blocks (the height of the sushi), then cut them lengthways into small wedges and shaped to the curve of the sushi by chopping the thick end with the edge of an unrelated cookie cutter. Then two wedges to a bird (so they look like their beaks are open), and fastened around with a nori strip (like the roll on top of the picture, which I laid on its side so the end of the nori strip would better fuse to the nori around the body of the bird).

When the birds were done, I set them on a bed of salad leaves and used some more as padding to hold it all in place (knowing Mr T wouldn’t touch that anyway), and filled the bottom with chopped apple and cheese. Clearly, there was so much more that could have been done with that bottom, but I was just about crafted-out for the evening.

Result

Mr T. decided the cheese was the nest, and spent lunchtime arranging his sushi all over the table on top of the cubes. Then, he saw that I had a few carrot blocks left, and asked to be allowed to build a tree. 

A thing of beauty.

This is going to get seriously out of hand.

Seriously. Having way too much fun with this.

The star of the show

- inside-out yellow pepper omelette (one egg, whisked and gently fried in a pan in a ring with leftover pepper trimmings sprinkled on top, set open under a broiler, then dried off, trimmed with a slightly smaller round shortbread cutter, flipped over so the browned side faces up, then back into the wiped pan, sprinkled with grated cheese and melted under the broiler, then half decorated with fresh peppers and other half folded over so the cheese glues both together, and decorated with a nori punch face - sounds like a lot, but I love my omelettes so, with a little practice, it now takes minutes and barely any effort)

- blueberry sky

The box

I wasn’t quite sure where to go with it as I wrote today’s part of the story, but then pulled out my “tricks box” and saw some tools and pieces for a flower bouquet I got in post-Christmas sales and never used. Bingo. It was designed to be used with pineapple and melon, but worked just as well with a thick piece of off-the-bone ham.

Kiddo pulled the “I cannot believe you didn’t think of it earlier!!!” face and ate it all up. And asked for more.

In the background, the starter that kept Mr T. occupied while I put it all together. I know I said we don’t like peanuts, but we make an occasional exception for those in shells. It amuses him to smash them on the floor, and fish out the kernels. (He doesn’t have enough strength in his fingers yet to do it manually, and it takes him so much time and he gets to eat so little, I love to use it as busy work.)

Tools of the trade

Yes, it all could probably be done by hand, one way or another. But having a few tricks up my sleeve helped a lot.

Round cookie cutters (the bigger one used upside down as an egg ring), a couple of “flower stems” and a leaf cutter. The stems could probably be swapped for some sliced celery sticks or the [some form of protein] leaves mixed with asparagus or anything vaguely twig-looking. 

Result

And so it begins - ominously - with broccoli.

Ingredients

- oven-roasted broccoli (I chop mine into bite-sized pieces, mix with a splash of lemon juice, little olive oil, and a couple big tablespoons of pesto, then spread on a large perforated pizza tray and put in an oven preheated to 400-425F for about 15-20 minutes, then take out and mix with a little grated parmesan cheese or crumbled feta - the family go totally gaga for it) - but use anything green your child might eat, raw or cooked, flavored or not, as long as you know they won’t “accidentally drop it on the floor”

- hard cheese, sliced thick and cut into stars (I forgot I meant to put sleepy nori faces on them... oops)

The box

The broccoli was leftover from dinner the previous night, and so was the rotisserie chicken. Every time we do an afternoon Costco run, that’s what we have for dinner - rotisserie chicken, and whatever veg and carbs I’d prepared in advance or can put together fast. I also keep a box of mixed nuts and dried fruit on hand, and we dip into it almost every day. Most often, it’s the “treat” for the lunch bag. The kiddo loves it, and it’s much cheaper (and helps me know what’s in it) than store-bought mixes. Plus, none of us like peanuts (which seem to be used as “padding” for most of the pre-packaged stuff).

TMI

This is not the entire lunch, but just what I know my child will definitely eat unsupervised, and what he can easily consume in 15 minutes. I used to give him more, but he’d never have the time to finish it at lunch break, and having more choices would just make it harder for him to decide and just tuck in. I try to make sure there’s some protein and some fruit or vegetables, and pad it out with what’s in the house already. Then, when he gets home at noon, the lunch continues, based on what he’s already eaten and what he’s still missing. (The general idea? Lots of veggies + lots of water = no constipation. No constipation = a kiddo who can feel his gut properly and get to the bathroom on time.)

Result

*facepalm*

They made quesadillas at preschool. 

30 minutes later. Bento Tales survive the first day!

2016/18/04 update

We were rereading the story, and Ted asked to have the stars again. I like making bentos as part of our usual cooking, and I’m in the middle of my first Whole30, so this one got adjusted for mommy’s needs:

I was using up different leftovers this morning, riffing off an overambitious book a friend gave me while I was pregnant, when I had to step back and take a deep breath: it worked! I took photographic evidence, in case that never happened again. Kid came from preschool happy, bears eaten. He was clueless as to the high broccoli, zucchini and carrot content, and I felt smug enough to brag to a few friends. One wondered if I was going to keep it up for long. Then, she asked if I could write a book all about those food characters, having adventures.

No. Obviously. Too busy packing lunches.

Let’s settle on a blog and one really long tale. Next box will set the scene, and we’ll take it from there. I promise to steal from popular culture, and maintain a vaguely healthy approach to the ingredients.