Guest blog post
Seasonal Bento Fun
by Diane Verrochi
aka Bento Nurse of http://busynursebento.blogspot.com
Back in May, I did a sort of “bento basics” guest blog post
here (http://kitnchi.blogspot.com/2012/05/dianes-beautiful-bento-boxes.html). I'm pleased to have been invited back to do
one on autumn- and Halloween-themed bento-making. I mentioned in that post that I was interested
in kyaraben, though I hadn't done much with it yet. I still haven't done a whole lot, but I have
been getting a bit more adventurous.
Here are some of the things I've tried that may give you some ideas if
you're looking for fun ways to do up a lunch or a potluck offering.
The box on the left, my husband's breakfast/snack box (I
started making these for him to bring to work and snack on at his desk. He isn't that patient and ends up having them
for breakfast.), has turkey sandwiches cut out to look like ghosts and a
jack-o-lantern. The bread is wheat
tortilla, and the faces are drawn on with Wilton edible markers (basically food
coloring in a pen). There are also
leaves made of provolone over baby carrots and slightly more mundane
tomato-cucumber salad and apple chunks to go with it all. The one on the right, my dinner, is in a
two-tier cat-shaped box and has the same salad, carrots, and apples, plus two
silicone cups of sausage, peppers, and onions, and a little cup of
pepitas. The Thermos in the back is
lentil-kale soup to go with mine.
It's turning into a Sunday tradition to make a “share with
your coworkers” snack tray for my husband that started with this one.
You see, there was this Bento of the Week meme with the
prompt “favorite team.” (http://www.bentoblognetwork.com/2012/10/botw-favorite-team.html) I don't care much about sports, but my
husband is a Patriots/Celtics/Red Sox fanatic.
(He doesn't care about hockey, but roots for the Bruins in the same “I'm
from Boston, it's what I do” way that I root for the others.) So, I set out to make a Patriots-themed
box. Then he mentioned that his friend
and coworker, who is a fan of the St. Louis Rams, had a birthday coming up in a
couple of days, and could I include him too?
So I did, and the result was some football- and
helmet-shaped sandwiches (turkey and muenster for the Pats, roast beef and
provolone for the Rams), team jerseys made of Pepper jack with their respective
quarterbacks' numbers. All decorating
done freehand with the edible markers and the shapes are courtesy of Wilton's
football set of cookie cutters. The
toothpicks kind of spoil it since they're plain old wood and not even colorful,
but I had a feeling the sandwiches would fall apart in transit otherwise. To fill it out, I put the snacks over a bed
of popcorn taken from the team tin you can see behind the tray and sent them
both bottles of apple cider in Patriots chiller jerseys.
With a little more advance thought put into it, this is what
I came up with for a healthier snack-and-share tray this week.
When not rooting for the Pats, Chuck can often be found
rooting against the Jets, and there's plenty of both if they're actually facing
off against each other as today, so the Jets got chicken and provolone
tombstone sandwiches on wheat tortillas.
I'd had an idea in the grocery store about using spinach tortillas that
I just had to try out, and so he also got about a half dozen ham-and-colby
Frankenstein's monster sandwiches. I'd
also hit a too-good-to-resist bargain on red, yellow, and orange peppers, so he
got some of those along with carrots to dip in some cucumber-dill-feta Greek
yogurt dip, plus grapes and apples to fill it out. I still don't have picks that are other than
plain, so I waited until after snapping the pic to stab the sandwich stacks so
they stay together en route.
I'm sure you're sensing a tool theme here, and that is, I
have to say, the easiest way to do a whatever-themed box: get some cookie
cutters and use them on not-cookies. I
had already picked up a box of the Wilton autumn mini-cutters from Michael's
and then I ran across a bucket of larger ones that were more Halloweeny for $5
at Ocean State Job Lot. Edible markers
were equally inexpensive at Walmart and are an easy way to add a little
detail. (Get extra-fine tips if you want
to add a lot of detail, though. I only
got fine, and when writing/drawing on bread, they're not so easy to
control.) You can also cut out something
that is a contrasting color (the traditional would be a sheet of nori, the seaweed
used for sushi) and stick it on with whatever ingredient makes sense, but I
don't tend to have that kind of time. Or
patience.
If you don't want to go the sandwich route, it's a bit
harder. I tried making some sweet potato
oyaki (http://justbento.com/handbook/recipe-collection-mains/potato-oyaki-and-sweet-potato-and-carrot-oyaki)
shaped like pumpkins, and they came out great … until I put them into the
frying pan and turned them back into little blobs. I think maybe I was supposed to cook them first,
then cut them. For a not-sandwich
example that worked, though, I made this dish for a potluck autumn festival.
The grass is made of zucchini, the leaves on the ground are
summer squash and red bell pepper, the trunk of the tree is cinnamon sweet
potatoes, and the leaves on the tree are variously colored apple chunks, all
over a bed of rosemary-oregano rice. I'd
been so focused on how it looked, though, I worried when it came time to serve
it that the flavors wouldn't go together well, but they did.
There are many, many other things you can do, of
course. I hope this has given you some
fun ideas to try!
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