Last Summer Bento

Next week lil P goes back to school. I don't think i'll be doing any more bentos unless he requests for it. So I decided to make this my best bento ever made. hahaha.

After reading a bunch of bento cookbooks and understanding of the placement, etc. I finally able to put them all together and make this bento the most presentable one. I just hope the soy beans stay in place since they're going to the Battle Ship Missouri today.

I made 3 bentos, one for lil P, the other two are for his friend and his friend's brother. My original plan was to make 3 little Pigs, with triscuits (as straw), pretzel rods (as wood), and chocolate bar that has blocks (as bricks). I thought that was a GREAT Idea! But when I asked lil P, he said his friend would prolly like the pokemon better. I'll do the 3 little pigs another time. :)







In these bento, I have 3 mini pepperoni pizza manapua: pikachu (american cheese, nori, swiss cheese as dot on the eyes, pepperoni as cheeks and mouth) and pokemon ball (swiss cheese, nori, and pepperoni), soy beans, a clementine (lil P doesn't like it, so I gave him some Juice Plus daily veggies and fruits), and an oki doki star cracker packet. All the remainder cheese and pepperonis from the cut outs are reused into the filling. So I've got nothing wasted!

I think this is a perfect wrap up for my summer bento-making. Now i can finally have time to clean the house....hahaha..

bentos (con't)

6/30 Pizza Manapua

















Lil P likes pepperoni. I picked some up a while ago and used it for pepperoni roll from previous post but didn't use them all up so I put them in the freezer. I pull them out of the freezer yesterday and bought pillsbury biscuit dough and thought instead of pizza roll, I'll make it into mini manapuas!

Mini Pizza Manapuas

Pillsbury mini biscuit dough
spaghetti sauce
Pepperoni slices (chopped)
Shredded cheese

1) The dough is already individually cut up, so I flattened it.
2) Put in the center a penny size spaghetti sauce
3) Top with some chopped pepperoni, then shredded cheese.
4) Pull the sides up to cover the fillings, it's hard to close it, so I flip it over so the seal side is on the bottom.
5) I did 6 of these then place them on the pan to bake in the toaster oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.
6) I then pull them out, added more shredded cheese on the top of the buns, place it back in for another 3 min or so to give the cheesy look on the top.
7) Or, if you want a shiny top, simply brush beaten egg on top of each bun.

You can do more than just pizza!

6/29 "Froggy Business"


















Yesterday I felt a bit lazy and was just going to pick up musubi at the okazuya this morning. But I got half an hour to kill last night so I told myself to save money and make my own spam musubis. The only cutter I have that is small enough to use for the spam is the frog cookie cutter. So I cut 3 slices of 3 frogs last night and put the rest in the freezer. This morning I fried up the 3 slices of frog spam (1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp shoyu, 1 tsp mirin), microwave leftover white rice, and cut up some nori strips to make the musubis. I had some eyes cut out from cheese but I decided not to add any more details as is as I was afraid lil P might not eat it. My friends saw the pics and quite a few of them were asking what it was. I guess I should have made eyes for the frogs. :( and cutting the nori thinner would help too. 3 mini musubis wouldn't be enough for lil P, so I added in fried chicken from the leftover I made couple days ago. The fried chicken recipe was from a japanese bento making book. (marinte bite-size chicken in shoyu, ginger juice, and mirin for 10 min, then drench in flour and then fry. note: I would suggest to drench them with flour and cornstarch mixture. The flour alone didn't make it crispy enough)


6/28 Pikachu Turkey and Cheese Sandwich

















Cut out pikachu shape with cheese, cut of eyes, ears, nose, mouth with nori. add cheeks with ketchup, add mouth with turkey.

Planning is everything, if you know what you're making and know the steps to do them, it'll make your cooking time much faster. For lil P, I wrote out the things I could make (in less than 20 min) and ask him to tell me when he wants them, and I put the schedule on the fridge. For example: Day 1 is fried rice, Day 2 is musubis, Day 3 is ham and cheese, Day 4 is meatballs with fried noodles, Day 5 is peanut butter, Day 6 is hot dog, etc once I'm at the end of the list, I just start over again. The truth is, not even I follow it to the tee (probably because lil P doesn't care as long as I make things he'll eat), but it's good to know you have variety without pulling your hair off trying to figure out what to make, or having sandwiches everyday.