bento#20 Portal

After Professor Layton, I was still in the mood for making game bento.
I had many ideas for game bento, but they weren’t “finalized” yet… But I couldn’t sit on them forever, so I decided to try what I’d been wanting to make for a very long time.

Bento #20: Portal
Created and eaten on: 11/06/2008

If you’re a gamer, you MUST know Portal. Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game. I don’t think I have to explain how amazing this game is. The game is simple, complicated, addictive, and has a great sense of humor.
I’ve seen my boyfriend play it many times, but even watching him play the game was addictive. (I particularly love listening to the turrets)
I’ve always wanted to make a Portal bento, but the problem was, there weren’t that many characters/items in Portal.
There are the Companion Cube, Cake, turrets, GLaDOS… (I don’t make human characters. Sorry Chell…) also Portal has a very “clean” look to it, and I didn’t know how to make a “clean” looking bento.
I wasn’t really sure what I was gonna do, but I started doing a sketch anyway. Even after the sketch, it was hard to tell if it’d look clean & Portal-like… But I just had to try it.

This bento needed to be as clean as possible, so I made an egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”), and put it inside the bento box.
For the Companion Cube, I made rice gray with black sesame seed (see “how to dye rice”), put the rice on plastic wrap, and made a cube. For the darker gray part on the cube, I sliced konnyaku (yam cake), and cut circle shapes out using the back of a cookie cutter. Then I removed a bit of rice with a spoon from all six sides, and put the cut out konnyaku on the cube. I cut the white circle out of kamaboko (fish cake), and the pink part of kamaboko into the shape of a heart, also for the pink lines around the heart, and I placed them on top of konnyaku on 5 sides of the cube. (I didn’t put the heart on the bottom. I got lazy. >_<)

I needed to put more rice, so I made a simple barrel shape rice ball. I had the Aperture Science symbol printed out on a paper, so I just put the paper on top of some seaweed, cut it out, and placed the cut out seaweed on top of the rice barrel.

I wanted to separate the Cube site (left side) and the Cake side (right side) because I was worried about anything touching the cake. So I wrapped baby corn and asparagus with ham, pinned it with uncooked pasta, and made a divider for the left side and right side.

I knew I was going to make turrets with quail eggs, but didn’t know how much detail I’d put in. I was afraid that I’d mess up if I tried to cut the slits in like the real turrets. After thinking about it for a while, I just used a straw to cut out tomato skin for its eye (?), put it on, and decided to leave it as is.
After I put the turrets into the bento box, I realized that they weren’t not going to be steady… (Duh, it’s an egg!) I quickly boiled some edamame, stuck them on uncooked pasta, and put it in front of the eggs like a fence, so they wouldn’t accidentally roll into the Cake.

"I don't hate you." (for eating me)

For the Cake, I used two Japanese style mini-hamburgs from the night before. (I actually layered two hamburg like a cake) I put the sauce on the hamburg, and carefully placed it on cheese, so it’d be easier to place it in bento later. I cut out little circles out of kamaboko for the whipped cream. Then I cut carrot into tiny pieces for the cherries. When I was slicing radish the other day, I realized that radish with its skin would make a great candle. So I cut radish with skin on one side, and stuck it on the cake. After I decorated the Cake, I slowly and carefully placed it in the bento box.

At first I wasn’t happy with the turrets, because I thought they lacked details compared to the other food in the bento. But I’m starting to like them now, because if you know of Portal, you’ll recognize the Companion Cube, and maybe the Cake, but only people who actually played the game would get the turrets, and that’s the best kind of kyaraben. =D Also my boyfriend got a Canon Rebel XT a couple of days before this bento, and I wanted this bento to be super special.
And yeah, I think I could say “this was a triumph!”

"Triumph"? Actually one of the pieces of seaweed on Aperture Science barrel is flipped, but don't tell anyone!

Companion Cube:
– rice with black sesame seed
– konnyaku (yam cake)
– kamabobko (fish cake)

Aperture Science rice ball:
– seaweed on rice

Turrets:
– quail eggs and tomato skin

Cake:
– Japanese style hamburg
– kamaboko for whipped cream
– carrot for the cherries
– radish for the candle

Other food:
– egg sheet
– asparagus wrapped in ham
– baby corn wrapped in ham
– edamame

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

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