bento#15-L SSBB Yoshi & Kirby

After having so much fun making Katamari Damacy bento, I wanted to make more video game themed bento. (yeah, I’m simple like that)
I made a list of video game characters my boyfriend liked first, and looked at each character to see which ones could be made out of food.
I knew that he LOVED Yoshi from Super Mario World when he was young (and still does!), so first I was going to make a “Yoshi’s Island” bento. Yoshi is green, white and red/orange, so it seemed pretty easy color-wise. But I couldn’t really figure out “What makes something Yoshi Island-ish.”
I did a little bit of research, but I wasn’t too happy with the sketch I drew, so I gave up.
I started looking at the game collection again, and one game just made me go “How the heck did I miss that?!”
The game was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. (a.k.a SSBB)
I started looking at screenshots of SSBB, then I thought “Hmm, maybe I can make multiple characters and put them in a bento,,, just like the real game!”

Bento#15-L: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Yoshi & Kirby)
Created and eaten on: 10/23/2008

This was my first two-panel bento, and I’m going to do two blogs about it.
First round, Kirby & Yoshi!

Let the brawl begin!

I love video games (well, I’m Japanese, so it’s in my genes), but that doesn’t mean I’m good at playing them. That’s why most games I have are fun and not stressful. And if you’re all about having fun, SSBB is for you. You can have fun even if you lose. I was so excited about SSBB that I dragged my boyfriend to a midnight launch, and made him play it with me until 4 in the morning that night.

There are soooo many different characters you can pick from in SSBB. My favorite character is Meta Knight, but since his body all is blue and purple I had to pass… (this time at least)
The characters I picked in the end besides Yoshi were Kirby, Pikachu, and Mr. Game & Watch.
The hardest part of making a bento isn’t actually making it. It’s how the food/color is placed in a bento, so I drew some sketches before making this bento, and tried to visualize it in colors.

The night before:
I made hamburg cubes the night before. I shaped the meat like a cube, cooked each surface evenly first and then kept rolling the meat cubes until they were fully cooked.
I also made potato salad the night before. It saves a lot of time to cook/make food as much as possible beforehand.

The following morning:
First I spread rice on the bento boxes, and put the meat cubes at the bottom to make the bricks from the Mario games.
After that, I made a ball with potato salad, wrapped it with ham, wrapped the whole thing with plastic wrap and put it aside for Kirby.
While Kirby was being shaped, I shaped potato salad like Yoshi and carefully wrapped it with microwaved lettuce. Then I cut/trimmed cheese for his stomach, mouth area, cheek and eyes. You can check out “how to make Yoshi” on my blog if you want to try making one for yourself! (I made the one on “how-to” a bit easy to make, so it might look a bit different from the Yoshi on here)

I cut a cherry tomato in half and put it on his back for the saddle, and put cheese string around the edge of tomato.
Then I cut lettuce in the shape of his arm and leg, put it on top of cheese, and cut around the lettuce. I used carrot for his scales (?) and his boots. The Yoshi’s egg is made of a quail egg with lettuce. Unfortunately, this brilliant idea isn’t original. I’ve seen a lot of kyaraben have Yoshi “quail” egg. Since most kyaraben is for kids, it makes sense that moms use quail eggs instead of chicken eggs.
My favorite part of this side of the bento is Yoshi’s tongue made out of a red pepper. If you’ve seen Yoshi in action, you’ll know why I like it so much. 🙂

Wamuuuuuuuuuuun (That's what he sounds like to me)

After I finished Yoshi, I unwrapped Kirby, placed him right above Yoshi, and put arms on him. The arms are layers of cheese and ham. (for depth) I sliced and cut carrot in the shape of Kirby’s boots.
I cut out tiny circles out of pink kamaboko (fish cake) and placed them onto his cheeks.
To finish the Yoshi side, I used a star shaped cookie cutter to cut an egg sheet and cheese to make the Mario Stars.

To be continued…

Yoshi:
– potato salad wrapped in lettuce, cheese, seaweed
– lettuce on cheese for his arm and leg
– carrot for his scales and boots
– tomato and cheese for his saddle
– red pepper for his tongue

Yoshi egg:
– quail egg with lettuce

Kirby:
– potato salad wrapped in ham, seaweed and fish cake
– carrot for his shoes

Mario Star:
-egg layered on cheese with seaweed

Cubes:
– meat squares

Other food:
– rice
– broccoli
– lettuce

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