Winnie The Pooh Bento Lunch

Well, once again my bento posts have become infrequent. It's just what happens when fall rolls around and I find myself back in school. I have been eating a lot of soup, which isn't very bento-pretty, or just being lazy about my lunches because I'm busy. I promise I am still making bentos, just a little less often than in the summer.

Today's lunch is salad, an egg salad sandwich on gluten free bread, a gluten free piece of cake, and some tortilla chips. This gluten free bread is yucky (I can't remember the brand right now). I have yet to find one I really like. Pooh is made from rice cheese and nori. Pooh is an easy face for cute bento making. It is all packed in my laptop lunchbox, which is an excellent bento system, but it is always too much food for me. I have to learn to pack less.

Hunger Games Bento Lunch

In honor of the release of the third and final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, I decided to take a break from reading to make a Hunger Games Bento. The bento is a tomato, yellow pepper, and tofu salad. The mockingjay pin logo, and flame details are made from Nori. I thought this bento would be easy to make. Just cut some veggies and nori into the shape of flames right? Well, it was much more difficult than I had anticipated, and I'm not satisfied with the results. But, I haven't posted a bento in a while, so here it is. On the side is some delish gluten free pizza with vegan cheese. Ever since I went gluten free I have been craving pizza. I'm so happy I found a local pizzeria that has gluten free and vegan pizza.

If you aren't familiar with the Hunger Games, it is a hugely popular middle reader/young adult dystopian series. If you are looking for a good read, definitely check it out.

   

Happy Star Bento

Today's bento full of fresh veggies (corn on the cob, tomatoes, and cucumber), grapes, and two store bought falafels. In the front is some hummus to eat with the falafels, and the two happy stars are vegan cheese and nori.

Laptop Lunches

I promised myself I wouldn't buy any more bento boxes, but when I saw Laptop Lunches at a local natural food store, I couldn't resist. So, here is my first ever lunch packed in my Laptop Lunches lunchbox. It is pretty ordinary. I included a salad, some cottage cheese, some vegetarian chik'n salad on gluten free bread, some rosemary garlic potatoes and green beans, some cashews, and two gluten free cookies. I love this cute lunch box but it was way too much food for me.

And just because I haven't posted in a while, here is a bento I made on July 5th including some picnic leftovers

A vegetarian BLT, potato salad, corn on the cob, fresh pickled cucumber, and apple pie.

Laptop Lunches are described as "American-style bento boxes" and are free of phthalates, BPA and Lead. The makers of Laptop Lunches are proponents of healthy and waste-free lunches.


Laptop Lunches are also available on Amazon.

I'LL EAT YOU UP!

So, here is Max from Where the Wild Things Are. This was a frustrating bento to make. First of all, it has been oppressively hot in my neck of the woods, and my AC couldn't keep up. My veggies wilted before I could snap the picture. Second, I made Max too small, so his face was really hard to cut out, especially considering the way the heat and humidity effected the nori. In the book, Max is a line drawing with heavy outline and shadow. To try to mimic this, I created a nori sheet shaped like him (but a bit bigger, and with a tail) to act as a background.

Max's costume is cheese and nori, while his face is tofurkey lunch meat and nori. He is resting on half a sandwich, surrounded by veggies. In the side dish area, I put some potato salad which was totally delish, but looks nasty in this picture.

Twilight Bento featuring Edward Cullen

A while back I made a Twilight Bella Swan bento. Bella came out o.k., but I didn't put much effort into the rest of the bento, and I was much less experienced in creating charaben bento lunches. Despite this, it is still my most popular blog post, probably because Twilight is so popular. Anyway, I decided to do a new Twilight bento to make up for it. This time I chose Edward.

Like last time, I used the illustrations from the Japanese translation of Twilight for inspiration. These three books comprise the first Twilight book. I used the picture of Edward on the cover of the second book (part 2 of Twilight) for this bento.

Edward is made of white and yellow cheese, vegetarian turkey, and nori. The rest of the lunch is a PB and J sandwich and some fresh veggies. You can check out my Bella blog post for detailed instructions on how I made these Twilight characters. This time, I like the bento overall, but Edward didn't come out as well as I had hoped. Oh well. 

This Edward bento is also featured on my squidoo post: How to Photograph Your Bento Boxes.