bento#53 google chrome bento

A little while ago, I received an email from someone who was doing a promotion for Google, asking me if I wanted to participate in a promotion for Google Chrome. The event was called “make the Google Chrome icon,” and he’d seen my bento somewhere and wanted me to make the Google Chrome icon with food. There were three conditions: the first was that I had to keep it secret until they began the event. The second was to make the Google Chrome icon with food.  The last condition was that I had to videotape myself making it.

Bento #53: Google Chrome bento (actually it was “Bento# 48.5”)

Created on: 5/17/2009

See my video and other entries on the “Make the Google Chrome icon” event page!

As I told the interviewer on Wired.com, I lack of finesse. That’s why it takes a long time for me to make a bento, and I wouldn’t make good how-to videos. So I was kinda reluctant to do this project at first, but my boyfriend was excited about it. Fortunately, he is a video editor, and the video needed to be only a couple of minutes. So I said I’d do it if he’d make everything look pretty, and he said “of course! :D”

Usually, my boyfriend is not allowed in the kitchen when I make bento. The main reason is that I like keeping each bento a surprise, but another reason is that the process of making bento isn’t as impressive and exciting as the final product.

I had a rough idea of what I’d do, but the bento box I use is a rectangle and Google Chrome icon is a circle. I doodled some flowers and bugs around the logo’s sketch, and I began making it.

I’m not going into too much detail since you can see that in the video. But, since I’m moving pretty fast in the video, I’ll just write what I did. First thing I did was to soak a hard boiled egg in red cabbage juice for the blue orb in the center. (see “how to dye eggs naturally”) I boiled broccoli for the green part, pan fried red peppers for the red part, and scrambled an egg for the yellow part.

Then I proceeded to make asparagus wrapped in bacon, sausage sunflowers (see “how to make a sunflower”), and cut snow peas. And I cut one side of ham, rolled it and made flowers.

After most of the ingredients were ready, I used a plastic bottle to mold the rice into a circle (see “how to make Totoro sandwich” for the plastic bottle cutter), and put broccoli, red pepper and scrambled egg on the rice. Then I put black sesame seeds between each color to make the black line. Finally, I put the dyed egg in the center, and carefully removed the plastic. It was nerve-wracking  to remove the plastic. I was worried that the red pepper or broccoli or scrambled egg or rice would come apart, but it held up. Phew!

Red pepper on the edge of a cliff

Then basically I just tried to fill in the spaces with everything I made, looking at the color of each food, trying to balance it out.

To pretty up the bento, I made a ladybug with seaweed on a cherry tomato, and a bee with seaweed on cheese.

A lady bug!

A bumble bee!

Looking back now, this bento seemed so easy to make. In fact, it was far less complicated from other bento I make. But when someone’s watching & video-taping me while I’m making something was very… different from what I was used to, and I felt like it took a lot longer than it should’ve taken.

I was exhausted when I finished making this, and I wasn’t sure if I was 100% happy with it. But then my boyfriend used a little magic, and voila! In the video, I’m moving at the speed of lightning and look like I know what I’m doing. 😀 Not to mention the awesome music from Giant Robo. (It’s an epic anime show from the 90’s. It is composed by Masamichi Amano, performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.) I get chills every time I hear this music, and it’s playing on the video of me making a bento! How amazing is that? My boyfriend used to work for a company that made trailers for movies, and he’s got mad skills. 🙂

I want to thank Jason for putting this event together. I guess this bento is considered a “requested bento” or “how-to bento” and it’s something that I would rarely do. But honestly, I wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t ask me to make a video of myself making it. I mean, my boyfriend and I use Google but it’s not like it’s a video game or anime. (we’d often imagine how cool it’d be to work at the Google office, though. :P) But I love a challenge, and I was also curious to see how the bento making process would look in the video. Besides, now my parents can see and believe that I really make those bento. 😀

Ta-da!

See my video and other entries on “Make the Google Chrome icon” event page, or just go straight to the Google Chrome Channel on youtube.

Unfortunately, Google used the darkest part of my video (we were losing light) in the main event video which they put all entries together and edited into one video. =/ Oh well, but it was still tons of fun. 🙂

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.