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.

Tamago Branding and Two Lunches

I'm pretty excited. A while ago I was looking at sushi and bento box photos on flickr and found one with a tamago that had an image burned into it. Naturally, I have been wanting to do this myself ever since. I looked into mini stainless steel steak branding irons but they are expensive and I'm not a fan of the designs. I looked into making one, but I certainly don't have the equipment or knowledge to do so. I found an interesting version made from a wire hanger on the blog "A Radiused Corner." This site links to a great YouTube video showing tamago being made and branded (skip to 1:20). Great idea, I just don't trust a wire hanger to be food safe.

So, last night, after I made my bento lunch for today, I had a brainstorm. I have a ton of stainless steel cookie cutters in cute shapes! So, I cooked up a tamago and gave it a try.

I used pliers to hold the cookie cutter (the dull end) near the flame of my gas burner. I didn't get it hot enough on my first attempt, then I got it too hot on my second, causing it to stick to the egg. Finally I found a happy medium.

Here is a close-up of the final product. Isn't it cute? I'm not recommending that you try this at home. Unless you have extra long handled pliers, you have to get pretty close to the flame. If you don't mind spending some money, you can have a branding iron made, or purchase one for about $20. Just make sure you choose a small one.



So, I threw together a small bear bento to put my branded tamago in, but like I said before, I had already made my lunch.

This is a pretty simple lunch. Two PB&J pocket sandwiches, some veggies and dressing for dipping. I wrapped the bottom half of the sandwiches in decorative foil for something to hold on to, and packed them all in a sanwich bento box. I lined the box with a paper napkin to prevent crumbs from falling out all over my lunch bag. The pocket sandwich maker I use is from Pampered Chef. It works o.k. if you have really soft bread, but I'm not entirely happy with it.

So hopefully I will be hungry enough to eat two lunches today.