bento#22 Farm bento right side

Whenever I make bento for my boyfriend, he’d show it to his friends at work and upload the pictures of bento on his flickr account and show it to other friends. One day, a friend of my boyfriend told him about a lunch box contest. I wasn’t that interested in the prizes, since they were a heavy duty lunch box and a rice cooker (I only use the same take-out plastic container, and I’m happy with my rice cooker), but I thought it’d be a nice challenge to make an original kyaraben.

Bento#22 : Farm bento Right Side
Created and eaten on: 11/09/2008

Since this bento spanned two bento boxes, I’ll do two posts about this bento. And today’s post is about the right side of the bento.

Some people may think that I’m creative, making lunch boxes out of food, but I believe that I’m just good at “copying” stuff with food because I had never made original kyaraben.The bento before I made my first kyaraben was probably the only non-anime/video game related bento I’d ever made before. I made a chicken out of a boiled egg and octopus out of sausage, but I don’t consider it a “kyaraben”… (My boyfriend still liked it though) But for this lunch box contest, I had to make something original. After I thought about it for a week or so, I decided to make a farm theme bento, because not only are the animals easy to make, but they’re the most recognizable characters of all.

First I made a list of farm animals I could think of. Pig, cow, lamb, chicken, horse and goat… Horses and goats are a little hard to make it identifiable. For example, a cow has a specific pattern, lambs have the fluffy coat, but horses can be different colors, and goats would look too similar to lambs,,, so I just went with pig, cow, lamb and chicken. Then I realized that one bento box would be too small for all those animals, so I decided to do a two box bento again.
With composition, color and nutrition balance in my mind, I did some sketches. On the right side I put a big pig, a cow and chicks. On the left I put a piglet, lambs, a chicken and a dog.

Before I even started making anything, I heated up a glass of water, and mixed a little bit of curry powder in it, and put hard boiled quail eggs in it for the chicks. (see “how to dye eggs naturally”)
I already had potato salad made from the night before, so I wrapped it with ham, and wrapped that with a plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge while I made the other animals.

I put rice where the road would be, and then I cooked “soboro” (ground beef with soy sauce, cooking sake, and sugar) for the road, and put it on the rice. You can make soboro with pork, chicken or beef. It’s a good way to cook/store raw ground meat in the fridge that you can’t eat right away. It’ll last for another day or two, and you can sprinkle it over rice, put it in croquettes, mix with vegetables, etc…

For the cow, I made a small rice ball, and freehand cut seaweed into cow pattern shapes. Then I cut cheese for the cow’s face, ears and tail, but I knew it’d be a little too thin by itself, so I put the cheese on ham, and cut the ham around it. I put another piece of ham on top of the cow’s face for its nose, and I used a hole puncher to cut out seaweed for its nostrils and eyes.

I also had an egg sheet made (see “how to make an egg sheet”) the night before, and I used the egg sheet and sausage to make a couple of sun flowers. (see “how to make a sunflower”)

Around this time, I took out the quail eggs that had been soaked in curry powder water, and washed them. I cut seaweed for the chick’s eyes, and cut a carrot for its beak.

I filled both sides of the road with lettuce, and put the cow and chicks. Then I unwrapped the pig (potato salad wrapped with ham) and put it on the road. Then I cut fake sausage (fish cake) for its ears, nose, and legs (I used uncooked pasta to hold the legs in the place), and cut seaweed for its eyes and mouth.

I filled the empty space with broccoli and scattered carrot flowers all over, (see “how to make vegetable flowers”) and I stuck deep fried potato alongside the road as fence. I still had some space to fill, so I made flowers with fake sausage and left over egg sheet (see “how to make sausage flower”), and lady bugs out of cherry tomato and put them in.

To be continued…

Road:
– soboro (ground beef with soy sauce, cooking sake, and sugar) over rice

Cow:
– rice with seaweed
– cheese on ham & seaweed for its tail, face and ears

Pig:
– potato salad wrapped with ham
– fake sausage (fish cake) for its face, ears, and legs (legs are held in place with uncooked pasta)
– seaweed for its eyes and mouth

Chick:
– quail egg dyed with curry powder
– seaweed and carrot for its eyes and beak

Sunflower:
– egg and sausage

Ladybug:
– cherry tomato and seaweed

Carrot flower:
– carrot

Sausage flower:
– fake sausage with egg sheet in the center

Fence:
– fried potato

Other food:
– lettuce
– broccoli

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