bento#27 Wall-E January 20, 2009

When the trailer for “Wall-E” came out, my boyfriend was really excited about it. I’ve watched many different kinds of teasers, but all I thought “Okay… So, it’s Johnny Five in CG.” Even thought it’s by Pixar, I really didn’t expect anything at all.

Bento #27: Wall-E bento
Created and eaten on: 12/04/2008

After 10 minutes into the movie, no dialogue, no explanation, no introduction of the characters… I was in love with it already. I don’t know how to explain it, but the fact that more than half of the major characters in the film almost didn’t talk at all just made me rethink American animation films.

Maybe because I grew up watching Miyazaki films, but I just can’t stand animated films where characters talk and explain constantly what’s happening, so I never cared too much about them… until I saw Wall-E. My boyfriend and I just couldn’t get enough of Wall-E. It was such a pleasant surprise. (Especially for me since I didn’t expect much to begin with.) I spent about half an hour trying to write what I felt about watching Wall-E here, but I just don’t think I could explain it well. I suggest you just watch it, and you’ll know what I mean.

Anyway, I’m going to move on to the actual bento… When I started drawing sketches, I thought what food I could use. I knew I was going to make Wall-E and EVE with eggs, but then it’d be just egg and rice, so I started thinking about how to put meat and veggie in the bento. Something brownish… garbage cubes! Something green… plant!

First I spread rice in a bento box, and I made meat cubes with Japanese style hamburg for the garbage cubes just like the bricks from Super Smash Bros. Brawl bento, and placed them on the rice. For Wall-E’s body, I made a rice cube and wrapped it with an egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”). Then I made his treads with rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt (see “how to dye rice naturally”), I cut strips seaweed and put them on the treads.

I cut a piece of the remaining egg sheet and kamaboko (fish cake0 for Wall-E’s arms, seaweed for its stripes, and sliced konnyaku for his little hands and put them on his body. I cut konnyaku (yam cake) for Wall-E’s neck and eyes, and I sliced kamaboko to put underneath konnyaku for the height. Then I cut seaweed to wrap it around his eyes and for the pupils.

For EVE, I used two hard-boiled quail eggs. One for her body, and another one for her head and her hands. (I eat whatever is left over :P) Then I cut seaweed for the black part of her face, and I cut a piece of kamaboko which I had dyed with purple cabbage (see “how to dye eggs naturally” although it’s not egg, purple cabbage works the same way) into the shape of her eyes, and put them on the seaweed.

After the meat cubes, Wall-E and EVE were placed in the bento, I put broccoli and asparagus between the meat cube for the “plant” in the post-apocalypse world. Then I realized that the bento was too yellow, white and grown, so I made flowers with carrot to brighten up the bento. I was going to finish this bento here, but it still looked like it was lacking the color. So I decided to add “Wall-E” letters in the very end.

As many of you know, this bento made it to Gizmodo, kottke, reddit, etc…, giving me a lot more publicity than I expected. Some people said it’s just not practical, and some people thought it’s cool. I’ve never had so many people commenting on a bento I made for my boyfriend, so I had mixed feelings about it at first. But if one person think that “oh, I didn’t know food can do that”, or “Maybe I can make it for my kids!”, I think it’s all so worth it. 🙂

Wall-E:
– rice wrapped with egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”) for his body
– seaweed on cheese and carrot for his label
– seaweed on rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt for his tread
– konnyaku (yam cake) and seaweed for his neck and eyes

EVE:
– quail egg
– kamaboko dyed with purple cabbage juice on seaweed (see “how to dye eggs naturally”)

Garbage cubes:
– Japanese style hamburg

Flowers:
– carrot

Other food:
– broccoli
– asparagus
– rice
– lettuce

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