bento#23 Cooking Mama January 3, 2009

While I was making the Professor Layton, Portal and Bioshock bentos, I came up with more video game themed bento. One of them in particular seemed just so perfect for kyaraben. It was a game about cooking!

Bento#23: Cooking Mama
Created and eaten on: 11/14/2008

Cooking Mama is a video game for the Nintendo DS and Wii. Using the DS’s touch screen (Wiimote for Wii), you prepare and cook meals with Mama. It sounds silly, but this game is a lot of fun. You have to cut, slice, stir, fry, move the pan and many other various actions as instructed by Mama. If you’re good, she’ll give you high score, if you aren’t, you’ll make Mama sad.
Cooking Mama was released 2 months after the DS lite hit the market and I think because it was a very unique type of game a lot of people picked it up.

People who are reading this blog might think that I always cook for my boyfriend and he just eats it, but actually he’s a great cook and loves cooking. His seafood chowder and shrimp lo mein (of course, from scratch!) are out of this world! What always amazes me is that he cooks everything with a wok!! (even curry!)

Anyway, I was going to make Mama on the top half of the bento, and the “cooking screen” on the bottom half of the bento, just like how it displays in the game. But it turns out that there are more than 70 recipes in there! I just didn’t know which meal I was going to make.
After I checked out a bunch of recipes and the screen shots of meals, I just decided to go with the simplest one… Japanese style hamburg… I wasn’t too happy about with this decision, because I always used hamburg for bento, but I really wanted to make a pan and the food had to be easy to recognize.

First I put rice on the top half part of the bento box. I carefully unwrapped the outside skin of fake crab meat (fish stick), cut it into strips and placed them on top of rice to make gingham check background like the game. (This, by the way, took FOREVER. Never underestimate how easy it may look when making bento.)

When something looks simple and easy, it usually isn't.

For Mama, I shaped potato salad for Mama’s head and body, and put them on rice. Then I cut out ham for her face, ears and hands, yam for her hair, kamaboko (fish cake) for her mouth and shirt, and cheese for her apron. For her eyes, I first cut kamaboko out, cut seaweed around it, and cut tiny pieces of seaweed for her eyelashes. I also cut kamaboko into cross shapes for the “twinkles” in her eyes. The type of kamaboko I used had a pink outside, so I peeled the outside (only pink part) of kamaboko with a knife to make her bandanna.

To divide the top part and bottom part, I cut asparagus and put them in a line across the bento box. Then I put an egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”) down for the background color, and put seaweed cut into a circle for the bottom of the pan. For the edge of the pan, I cut seaweed into a long rectangle shape, and put a bit of rice on one side of it. I then folded it and put it around the circle seaweed. I used scallions and left over salmon to make a roll and cut it for the handle.

I put Japanese hamburg I made the night before on the pan with some broccoli. At this point, I was running out of time. (because of the gingham check background) So in a hurry, I wrapped baby corn with lettuce to make corn, made small carrots with baby carrots and broccoli, and I threw some cherry tomato and asparagus in. There was still some empty space by Mama’s head, so made a knife and a fork with yam and kamaboko.

Overall, I think this bento looked way too orangey, and because I had to rush through in the end, it ended up looking kind of messy too.

Mama's pig tail is falling off. I'm sure Mama will fix it...

In this bento, she’s giving you the “Better than Mama!” look, but I feel like it’d been more appropriate if she were giving the “Don’t worry. Mama will fix it” look…

Mama:
– potato salad
– ham for her skin
– kamaboko for her shirt and bandanna
– cheese for her apron
– yam for her hair
– kamaboko and seaweed for her eyes

Gingham check background:
– outside of fake crab meat

Small carrot:
– baby carrot and broccoli

Knife and fork:
– yam and kamaboko

Pan:
– seaweed and rice for its edge
– salmon and scallion roll for its handle
– seaweed for the bottom

Small corn:
– baby corn and lettuce

Other food:
– rice
– cherry tomato
– broccoli
– asparagus
– egg sheet (See “how to make an egg sheet”)

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