Bento Corner

This is what my daughter said to me this morning when she saw the onigiri. It's actually made from the bear mold, but I intended it to be a frog. Just imagine the eyes are where the bear's ears would be and the two dots are the nostrils. Can you see it? My daughter called it "obake frog" or "monster frog". Maybe I need to make it a green onigiri to enforce that it is indeed a frog...I got the idea from Ms. Chibibu who runs this site here.

Anyway, it's an umeboshi onigiri, with sweet tamagoyaki, fruit, broccoli wakame salad, and this Hawaiian noodle dish. We got this from a friend's party over the weekend. It's like harusame salad with bits of meat (I suspect pork). If anyone is more familiar with this dish and knows what it is, please let me know.

Had a very emotional weekend with an unexpected passing of a close uncle...hoping he is in a better place now...

Kuma Onigiri made of scallop rice with croquette, kanikama tamagoyaki, salad, and fruit.

Wow, it is hard to maintain a bento blog when you're on break for a while. I actually took my kids on an outing yesterday and made bento again for my daughter.

We went to a local park but took the CalTrain so the kids could enjoy riding on the train. Trains in Japan are quite a bit different from trains in the US. We all had fun though. The kids had more fun riding the train than playing at the actual park.

Bento includes a onigiri made of scallops, tamagoyaki with kanikama, cucmber and wakame salad, honeydew melon, and vegetable croquette (frozen variety). My daughter refused to eat the melon requesting another fruit immediately. She also didn't eat the onigiri even though she raved about how cute it was -- it's because it didn't contain umeboshi/shibazuke...mattaku shouganai musume dawa...

OK, so this is not really a bento, but rather what my daughter ate for breakfast this morning. At her request, I heated up some vegetarian pizza and served her some sliced apple both of which were left over from this weekend's activities.

Half way through her first slice of pizza, she began taking the sliced olives started arranging them on the apple.

Now you may be thinking that this should not even be placed within the bento section, but just feast your eyes on this:

Behold, ladies and gentlemen, the culinary talents of a 4 and a half year old!

Moments like these just make a mama so proud...

Ultraman umeboshi onigiri with hanpen, tamagoyaki, wakame salad, and fruit.

So the girl can be girly, but also loves Ultraman and karate. Really, she would rather be taking karate lessons than her current ballet lessons -- but the karate place won't take her until she is 5 years old...

The Ultraman was pretty easy to make since I just used sliced ham and eggs for the eyes. But in retrospect, I should have just done everything with nori since it stays in place better than the ham and egg. My daughter said when she opened the bento, it didn't look like Ultraman. It also doesn't help that the bento gets thrown in all directions when she carries it to school while swinging her backpack all over the place. She, of course, counters that the disarray of her bento is attributed to my "fast driving" on the freeway. Riiiiiight...well, sort of. Are four and a half year olds really that observant??

Moving on, I sliced hanpen and put some cheese in the middle and fried it in a bit of butter. The wakame salad has shirasu and mandarin oranges tossed in a soy, non-oil dressing. Bento also includes a sweet tamagoyaki and grapes and edamame on picks.