Badtz Maru

There have been a lot of cute penguin bento going around this week :D So here is mine, in keeping with the Sanrio theme we have the penguin Badtz Maru!


Badtz Maru is cheese on top of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Along the side are pretzels, checkered apple, grapes, and a clemetine wedge.

I have been looking for a black food coloring marker that will work on cheese for a long time. Never have I found one. *sigh* But I really wanted to do this bento! And he wouldn't look right as blue or green. So I took a little jar of black food color paste that was basically out of gel, added a bit of water and shook it up. Then I used a paint brush to color him in and it worked!! I am so excited! It's a little more work than using the markers but it has excellent results!

Cinnamoroll

I didn't have a plan for today until I saw Lia Chen has said that Cinnamoroll is her favorite Sanrio character. Perfect! I showed it to Kidlet and he was very excited! I was going to use our little Cinnamoroll box for his snack today but when he saw it he insisted that despite it's tiny size, it must contain the bento lunch!


So little Cinnamoroll is cheese on top of a soy ham sandwich. On the side are clementine wedge, grapes, tiny checkered apple, and pretzels.


And a larger view of the box so you can see it's cute cute lid! I should have put Kidlet in the picture to show it's tiny size!

So, one more day of Sanrio, who is your favorite? :D

Keroppi

Kidlet loved his Pankunchi bento so much that I thought I would do a few more Sanrio friends. Here is Keroppi!

Keroppi is cheese and food color markers on a tofurkey sandwich. On the side are grapes, clementine wedges, green beans, and pretzels. There is a little kitty pick sitting on the oranges, just for fun :D

Pankunchi

Pankunchi is a Sanrio character of a Panda who loves to eat Bread! His two best friends are bread and when he gets hungry they get nervous and rush him away to some food to eat! Kidlet and Pankunchi are kindred spirits because he loves bread!

Pankunchi of cheese and food color marker sits on leftover pasta bake. On the bottom are two boca nuggets, container of ketchup, green beans, clementine segments, and an apple. I tried a new kind of fancy apple today and Kidlet loved it! It was much harder than checkers tho! I messed two of them up and nearly cut off my finger before getting this one!

Accessory Storage

Today's post will contain no bento because the bento that left this house was not....pretty. I get a lot of comments from non-bento makers about how they can't believe I do this everyday. Well, I don't :) I woke up late with just enough time to slop leftover pasta salad and a fruit cup in to containers and in to the bag before running Kidlet to the bus stop. It happens!

So today I thought I would show you how I store my bento accessories. We live in an apartment and have limited space for storage. Bento accessories are something I use often so they needed to be accessible. So the drawer most people would use for silverware is used for bento accessories for us. This expandable divider works really nicely to keep my things separated!

At the top are little sauce bottles. Then left to right we have silicone cups and cupcake liners, sauce containers for thicker sauces, baran *fake grass*, lots of little pics, and in the far right are some winter pics, an octopus hotdog molder, bento band (There SHOULD be more of these but Kidlet loses them.....a lot. tsk) , random swirl punch, and a cookie cutter that doesn't belong there.

Having everything within reach when I am trying to put together a bento really helps! How do you organize your gear?

LPS: Panda

Littlest Pet Shop is another popular thing to play around here. Kidlet and his friends like these funny little things a lot. One of the many things I really admire about Kidlet is his ability to not care about what anyone else thinks. He is his own person and happy to be so! In many respects he is a typical 9 year old boy who loves to rough and tumble and play bakugan and video games but he also has a sweet side still that loves hamsters and littlest pet shop animals and whose reaction to feeding his frog in the morning is "awww he is sooo cutteeee!" . I appreciate his friends for the very same reason, they are all happy to be little kids and I like that! I see too many kids eager to be cool and grown up so it is refreshing to see the kids play so nicely as kids!

Bento today is a Littlest Pet Shop Panda of cheese and food color marker on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On the side are striped apple, green beans, mandarin oranges, and pretzels.

Tortellini Bento

Kidlet has a long day so I tried to pack a little bit of a larger bento. He is staying at school until 5pm for Math Club which is new, so we will see if this sustains him enough through the day! He was invited to participate in this math enrichment program on Tuesdays and a reading one on Thursdays which is exciting! I am really thankful that his school does such a good job at giving all the kids the opportunities they need to succeed whether they are lagging behind or excelling!


Lunch today is leftover cheese tortellini, small garlic biscuit swirls, green beans, boca nugget on skewer, checkered apple, and mango chunks!

Also, here are a couple of awards I have been given! I don't have time to pass them on yet but I will try to get to them soon!


Rose from The Heart of Rose has given me a Your Blog is Fabulous award! Thanks so much :D
And Lia Chen from Bentolicious has given me this cute award! Thank you!!

Zhu Zhu Pet Bento

So one of Kidlet's many current interests is ZhuZhu Pets. If you are unfamiliar with this it is a battery operated hamster. All the rage of the 7-10 yr old girl set. And Kidlet :D He and his friends have been spending a lot of time playing with their funny hamster so of course it needed to be a bento!

So this is the hamster called Nugget and he is made out of food marker on cheese and sits on top of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On the side are checkered apple, green beans, clementine segments, and pretzels.

And here is Kidlet with his ZhuZhus! He has two so far, the yellowish one is Nugget and the brown one is Scootles.

Mango Muffins

Kidlet and I adore mango! I was a teenager the first time I ever ate a fresh mango and it was in the Dominican Republic right off of a tree. I can still remember how sweet and delicious it was. Kidlet has been lucky to eat them his entire life!

For lunch Kidlet has a mango muffin, checkered apple, green beans, boca nuggest on skewer, and fresh mango chunks.

The muffins in a stack. I am still fighting the winter light issue.

And here is the recipe I concocted for these muffins. It took a few tries to get one that was just right. These are delicious!

Mango Muffins
___________
Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup fresh mango, chopped in to small cubes
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice *equal to one lemon*
zest of one lemon

Directions:

1.) Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a muffin tin, or use liners.
2.) In a large bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, coconut, sugar, and lemon rind. Set aside
3.) In a medium bowl combine buttermilk, butter, egg, and lemon juice
4.)Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add in the wet ingredients and mix lightly until combined. The mixture will be lumpy, be careful not to over-mix!
5.) Carefully fold in the mango chunks
6.) Spoon into your prepared muffin tin
7.) Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. let cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a baking rack to cool completely.

Yoshi Bento

I am really rather finished with winter!!! I opened my front door this morning hoping I could get my outside picture and the whole porch was covered in THICK ice!!!! So more orangey lighting for me. I'm considering making a light box.....I know there is a tutorial out there somewhere and supposedly it is simple. We shall see.



Following in our Mario theme today Kidlet gets Yoshi (food marker on cheese) on top of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On the side are checkered apple, clementine segments, and green beans.

Happy 101 Award

I'm tickled everytime I get an award from another amazing blogger! Dorothy from FuzzyKoala's Caketastic Adventures has given me this happy award! I am so pleased to be able to bring a little happy in to other's lives as so many of you do for me every day! Check out Dorothy's site because it is amazing! I have been drooling over her many creations today!


Here's what I'm supposed to do:

1. Copy the award image into a post.
2. List 10 things that make you happy.
3. Tag 10 bloggers who brighten your day.
4. Put in a link to their blogs.
5. Notify the award receivers.
6. Recipients should link back to the sender's blog. (I say this can be optional. If I have given you an award you are in no way obligated to link back to me, just enjoy your award!)
   

Things that make me happy! I am going to shorten this to 5 just to keep it from being a mile long. :D I could go on forever about things that make me happy!

#1 Being with Kidlet. We don't even have to be doing anything in particular, we just have a good time together.

#2 Making Bento!

#3 Visiting with family and friends

#4 Game night! Pizza and Wii Sing It competition every Thursday night!

#5 Hot Cocoa and a movie on a cold day like today! Brrrr


And now I get to pass this along to others who make my day a little happier! I hope they will brighten up yours as well! It was very hard to choose only 10!

1.) LunchBox Limbo
2.) New 2 Bento
3.)Bentolicious
4.) I Blame My Mother
5.) Happy Little Bento
6.) Disposable Aardvarks Inc.
7.) Daily Essentials and Deals
8.) Foodie Footsteps
9.) Hawaii's Bento Box
10.) Hapa Bento

Toad Bento

Kidlet got the new Super Mario Brothers for the Wii for Christmas so he and his friends have been playing.....a lot :) So today Kidlet gets Toad in his bento! He was so happy he danced around saying "Toad is the Winner!" over and over....

Toad is the usual food color marker on cheese sitting on top of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On the side are green beans, pretzels, checkered apple, and clementine segments.

Orangey lighting is brought to you by snow. I couldn't take my pics outside because it was much too snowy. Sad sad winter light

Lazy Monday Cheesesticks

I hate to bento on Mondays. I love to bento every other day of the week but I just cannot seem to get it together once Monday rolls around. Of course I could do Monday's bento on Sunday but then I wouldn't have anything to complain about :P

Today Kidlet gets cheesesticks leftover from pizza night with 2 boca nuggets, cucumber, checkered apple, clementine segments, and container of dressing.

Fleur-de-Lis Cupcakes

I have no idea why but the Fleur-de-Lis is a symbol used by the Cub Scouts. I'm sure I could search out the information but I don't particularly care that much :P Kidlet had his Cub Scout Pack Pool Party last night so I made some cupcakes with the symbol. I used royal icing on wax paper to make them. The cupcakes are triple chocolate with buttercream frosting!


These lovely cupcakes nearly didn't make it to the party! No, they were not in some tragic accident, I just read the start time incorrectly. See, the POOL party starts at 8:15 pm but apparently the EATING started at 7pm. I didn't see that part and just saw the 8:15. I guess I am going to have to start reading these emails much more thoroughly. Luckily we still had lots of fun and the cupcakes went fast!

Food Marker Round-Up

The most commonly asked question of me is how I draw pictures on cheese. The simple answer of that is Food Color Markers. However, as I have heard from others and then found out myself, all food markers are not created equal.

*Disclaimer- All opinions below are purely my own through my personal research. I have not been given any product or paid by any of the companies*

I will start with the most commonly found in craft stores: Wilton markers

These do NOT work on cheese. They claim that they do, cheese is one of the listed things you can draw on, but they do not. I tried them on several different varieties of cheese even and got no result. A little color blurred out but no nice lines or anything presentable. If you see these and are trying to draw on cheese do not waste your money. They work on other surfaces but not cheese!

Next up is Americolor Gourmet Writers: I got these for Christmas and was so excited because they come in such a stunning array of colors! Now, to be fair they do not claim to work on cheese, I was just hopeful. They don't work on cheese at all, they rip it up. They work beautifully on hard frostings etc but nothing so soft as cheese.

And my lastly my beloved Betty Crocker FoodWriters: I love love love these. I have gone through so many packs now and I will keep going back to them because they work beautifully. The tip is longer and softer than the aforementioned products creating a smooth and thin line. The only sadness to these is that they come in only 4 colors: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow. I would love for them to expand their colors! But either way, I will be sticking with these as they are the only ones that work for cheeses!

Bakugan: Darkus

The final Bakugan attribute symbol! Kidlet has been waiting for this one since I have never had a black marker. Well, now I do!!!!!!!!! My wonderful brother bought me a new set of food color markers for Christmas and they have many new colors in them! I'm not sure how I like them yet since I have only used them once. I will keep you posted.

Kidlet has the Darkus symbol made from food color marker on cheese on top of buttermilk pancakes *yum*. On the side are a little bottle of syrup, checkered apple, clementine segments, and cucumber.

I made these pancakes last night using my ancient Betty Crocker cookbook and they are unbelievable!! There is no longer a date on this book because the front cover has been missing for a long time but my mom says it is probably mid to late 70's since she got it when she got married. I know that isn't actually ancient but it looks much older from the years of use :D

Favorite Pancakes, from the not-as-ancient-as-it-looks Betty Crocker CB

1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (I didn't have any so I substituted 1 cup milk plus 1 TBSP vinegar)
2 tablespoons shortening, melted (used butter)
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
1 TBSP sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients, cook pancakes :D For bento size pancakes use a tablespoon to measure out the batter.