I'm Crazy Pooh You, Hunny!

I'm not a big fan of pancakes, so I rarely make it. HOWEVER, sometime last year we discovered Bills restaurant (in Decks, Odaiba) and I swear in the name of Winnie the Pooh, they serve the BEST (<-- in bold and underlined for ultimate emphasis) pancake!! Ever!! 

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This bento consists of:
- Rice mixed with turmeric powder to make Winnie, and crab stick for his shirt.
- Pancakes for the tree trunk and broccoli for the leaves.
- Pancakes for the beehive as well as the honey pot.
- Tamagoyaki for the bee, with crab stick for the wings and nori details.

Kinmokusei

There is a huge sweet olive tree (or kinmokusei in Japanese) right outside our building. It has just started flowering last week and it produces an amazing fragrant, which we could smell from inside the house when the window is open. Every time we go out, my daughter make us pick the flowers into a bucket and she'll 'plant' (sprinkle) them all around the grass or bushes. Here is a picture of the flower I got from Wiki:

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Daughter's bucket full of kinmokusei

The kinmokusei flower is made of:

- Carrot

- Cheese

- Salad leaves

- Rice mixed with purple sweet potato powder

Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

Today's bento looks rather simple, but "EMMERRGAADDDD!!!" it took a long time to do >.< I had to cut many tiny bits of cheese and egg sheets to make the pumpkin costume Hello Kitty is wearing to her party. I also had difficulty applying the food-dye as they were in powder form. (Note to self: Order gel food-dye A.S.A.P.!) I ended up skipping making the face on the pumpkin and photoshopped it instead. All together now - "Boo! Cheater!" 

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Without the photoshopped pumpkin face

Hello Kitty is made of:

- Cheese

- Orange and green-colored egg sheets

- Red, black and yellow food-dye

Haunted House

It has been a rainy week, and when it's cold and dark and rainy outside, do you know what comes out? My laziness! Haha! Who wouldn't love curling up in bed under the warm duvet and dreaming away in such weather?!? LOL! But finally took out my tools and here is today's bento. Boo! 

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The haunted house is made of:
- Rice topped with soboro for the dark background. (See my previous post on Soboro.)
- Scrambled egg for the moon.
- Cheese and nori for the haunted house and all the details, and also the bat.
- Yellow and red food-safe pens for the windows and eyes.
- Japanese umeboshi (pickled plum) snack for the fence.
- Japanese fish cake for the ghost, and a drinking straw to prop it up.

The pumpkin is made of:
- Boiled pumpkin!

Here Is My Secret

Alright. Here it is. I'm letting you guys in on my secret. I'm spilling the beans. Off with the Superman cape. Haha ;D

I have mentioned a few times that I get my inspirations from bento magazines. Indeed they are one of my precious bento 'gears'. I get (a.k.a. steal, LOL!) a lot of ideas and acquired many bento skills from the pages of these magazines. I ADORE them and could spend a good few hours looking through them over and over again ;)

My collection so far >.<

Cute!!

Pretty!!

Ideas!!

Step-by-step guide

Step-by-step guide and the final bento

Anpanman bento step-by-step guide

My Anpanman bento from following the guide

A Chef bento

My version of the Chef bento

I have eight by Akinoichigo  

This is one of the latest one I bought. It came with free Hello Kitty rice mould and nori puncher!!

You know what they say. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery :D

The 5 Shades of Beet Red

No special story about this bento. Just have a stash of blended beet in the fridge :D Found the cute mini apple and that colourful vegetable (which is Swiss chard) at a supermarket in Meguro.

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The lipsticks are made of:
- Rice mixed with blended beet.
- Egg sheet.
- Nori.

Popcorn for Movie Night

Who doesn't love Fridays? It's the start of the weekend, and my daughter especially loves it because it's 'movie night' in our house. After dinner, we'll set up the living room, grab some popcorn, and pop a (Disney or Pixar or Ghibli) movie on :D

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The popcorn is made of:

- Rice hand-shaped to look like the box.

- Cheese and crab stick for the red/white stripy look.

- The word 'Popcorn' made from cheese using alphabet cutters, and coloured black using some food-safe pen.

- Cauliflower with some cheese pressed onto them to make them look like buttered popcorn.

Side-note: I usually make bento for lunch, simply because I need the light to take a good photo. I made this for dinner last night and I was really struggling to take a decent picture :( Really need to learn some photography skill.

Play With Your Food

My 4-year-3-month old has learnt how to play Tic Tac Toe from my husband since a couple of months ago. She plays it while we wait for our orders, or whenever we want her to stay at one place instead of running and jumping around especially in crowded places. She loves this bento and we played a few (like 8-10) rounds before she started eating her food. Final score: Daddy - 8, Aleesya - 146. However the winner is Mommy for making a bento which daughter loves :D

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P/s: Apologies for posting too many pictures; this bento is a special one ;)

A Croaker On Crack

It is just one of those days. When everything doesn't seem right. All you do turned out all wrong. 

I saw a tadpole-themed bento, and it was in my bento-theme-to-try list. (We caught some tadpoles back in spring; my daughter held some in her hands.) And since she has recently grown a liking to black olives (to make into the tadpoles), I thought it was the perfect time. I even went ahead and bought green olives to make into a frog. Sound perfect, right?

Well, some how the frog ended up looking like it was on crack (maybe when making the bento I was!), and the tadpoles looked a bit ghostly. What's more, my daughter made it clear that it was not a pretty bento this time >.<

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Look at him!! LOL!!

Got to be one of the weirdest (or ugliest) bento I have ever made.

Well, it is October after all ;D

Croaker is made of:
- Green olive
- Cucumber for the feet
- White kamaboko coloured with red food-safe marker and a bit of nori for the crazy eyes
- Pink kamaboko for the tongue

Tadpoles are made of:
- Black olive
- Nori tails
- Sesame seed eyes

Water lilies are made of:
- Cucumber
- Pink kamaboko and cheese for the lilies

Pretty Peppers

Last night Tokyo was hit by a typhoon; the laundry (which I had forgotten to bring in) was ruined, the noise of the strong wind and heavy rain kept me awake for a while, and this morning I had to clean our porch from all the messiness the typhoon had caused.

However, today turned out to be such a bright sunny day. Thus it calls for a rainbow-themed bento!

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The rainbow is made of:

- Purple: Japanese pickled vegetable

- Blue: Crab stick with a little bit of blue natural food-dye

- Green: Long beans

- Yellow: Pepper

- Orange: Pepper

- Red: Pepper

The sun is yellow cherry tomato, the clouds is kamaboko, and the birds are tiny bits of raisin. 

I am not a fan of green pepper, and this is the first time I really had the red, yellow and orange peppers. I was pleasantly surprised of their yummy taste, and my daughter finished hers too!