Bentos!

[verdandi]

In an effort to help my kid develop interest in healthy food, I've been making bentos for her to take to school.  I make a decoben once a week (twice this week since it's Halloween!), and I'm not very good at them, but it's fun!

I've been posting the pictures on facebook for my friends and family, and they really like them but if you look closely you can see all the paint smears and things aren't packed as tightly or prettily as I'd like, but for being new at it, they're not too bad!

Does anyone else make bentos? Do you do deco/kyaraben, and if so, how long does it take you? Some of these take me hours - more proof that I'm still very new.

First day of school: she requested angry birds so I made them out of cheese. Very rough!



Meatball owls! The eyes wouldn't stay on very well, but they were cute anyway.



The Pumpkin King! The pumpkin "patch" is made of sweet potatoes, and the quail eggs are painted with food coloring.  As you can see, the paint bleeds a lot on eggs.  I found out the hard way and my eggs looked super evil. orz



Tricks 'n Treats! I hid a chocolate-covered cherry inside the brown rice onigiri.  The rice is dyed with food coloring, then I used the same to paint on the face.  The hot dogs were supposed to look like fingers, but failed. :-(



Spiders made from painted quail eggs.  The web is string cheese, and the weird-looking butterfly is a cocktail wiener and paper-thin carrot slice.

[`Roze`]

Oh my god those are so cute! I love those!

I wish I had the patience to do that. 

[Angel~]

Wow that's so pretty! I really can't do that...

[verdandi]

Trust me.  Yes you can! If I, someone with no ability to draw or even trace a straight line can do it, I'm pretty sure anyone can.  I don't even have any fancy tools; just a set of mini autumn/halloween cookie cutters, a couple paint brushes, and a cheap food coloring set.

[Angel~]

I don't even know how to make onigiri... 

[verdandi]

I've been making them for several years, but just the other day figured out that if I use plastic wrap instead of my bare hands, I can get it squished together much better so that it doesn't fall apart.

So basically I only JUST learned how to make decent onigiri lol.

[Angel~]

I'm going to try sometime~

[verdandi]

I want to see a picture when you do!

[Angel~]

I'll post one~