Bento Corner

Hot dog bento since my daughter started requesting them again.

Thanks to all the education I received from the commentary about "pigs in blankets", I was all set and ready to induldge in making them again when my son and I came across these ready made hot dogs sold at the nearest convenience store. Excellent!

These hotdogs were called hot dogs with mayo -- mayo is serious business here. The bun is super soft and there is a small sausage inside with a thick white stick that was cheese-like...So I thought "Hey, there is cheese in here too! Calcium! Nutrion! Great!" So I re-read the packaging to confirm and the contents were restricted to just two ingredients -- sausage and mayo.

Wait, no cheese...

Just a whole stick of mayo (!!)...yeesh, what's a mama to do?

Glanced at the clock, saw that we were running late, laughed in the face of cardiac arrest and shoved not one, but 2 in my daughter's bento, that's what.

Bento also includes cucumber salad with chirimen jayko (baby sardines) and wakame, and orange segments with apple star.

If you've got the work commute blues, check this out and cheer yourself up!

Rush Hour for Tokyoites.

If this happens to be your commute, my deepest sympathies...

As I was making this bento I thought about Peter Gabriel and sang that song as I was assembling the monkey together -- geek at heart, absolutely. I just googled the lyrics and true to form, I had the lyrics completely wrong. And of course after all these years, it all makes sense now about shocking monkeys! Erh, slow much?

I have 2 pictures of the same monkey because I assembled the one in the pink box first and my daughter said it was too much food. She can eat more that this but she is a really, really, really slow eater. She will chew one morsel of food for like 5 minutes -- I am so not kidding. Well, I guess it's more like a minute, but even that is a really long time. So I have to adjust bentos a bit so that she can finish in time with her peers and function as part of the classroom unit. This is very important in Japanese culture -- do as everyone else does, don't stick out, follow suit, be orderly... So I stuffed it all in the smaller yellow box and everything fit except the broccoli and a few beans. Doesn't the color scheme in the yellow box look better anyway?

The monkey is made of tamagoyaki, cheese face, carrot cheeks, and nori face. I made the cheese part the night before and just placed on top of the tamagoyaki in the morning. Underneath the face is an onigiri with hijiki mixed in and underneath the two ears are tamagoyaki with spinach. Under the heart carrots are sweet kidney beans and Japanese sweet potatoes.The last item is the mayo shrimp dumpling (frozen item).

I also packed a small box of whole yogurt mixed with maple syrup and added cut kiwi and raisins -- the raisins should be soaked a bit in hot water first to soften. This was dessert, which can always be eaten quickly and needs only 5 seconds of chewing each bite. How convenient for my girl.

So I got this new bento book from, say it with me, Pal System!

I really like this book because it's a compilation of bentos for kindergartners from 26 different moms. I got the French toast presentation idea from the bento  book, but used my own recipe.

The recipe in the book calls for thick sandwich bread, milk, egg, and sugar. To this basic recipe I add vanilla, cinnamon, and brown sugar. And I like to use french bread or some baguette but didn't have any on hand I used butter rolls which worked very nicely. Sometimes I have used whipping cream or half and half in place of milk -- this makes it a bit richer, but is really good. Fry the dipped bread in butter and when done, cut into heart shapes. If I were serving this at home I would serve it with a side of whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Bento also includes breakfast sausages on the left pick and a meatball on the pick on the right. And added broccoli and cauliflower to balance out the meal (read: so the teachers won't have to remind me that bentos need to be nutritionally balanced).