bento#50 prinny May 28, 2009

My boyfriend is still playing Patapon 2 on his PSP the most of times, but just the other day, he was trying out a new game.

Bento #50: Prinny
Created and eaten on: 5/27/2009

Prinnies are penguin looking characters that first appeared in Disgaea. According to wikipedia, “a prinny is a small, usually blue, pouch-wearing penguin-like creature with disproportionately small bat wings and two peg legs where feet would normally be. When thrown, they explode on impact.” Prinnies gained such popularity, the game company decided to make a game of Prinnies, and “Prinny: Can I really be a hero?” was released for PSP in February this year. The game is an action platformer, but with 1000 lives to spare. Nothing that complicated but looks very fun.

I thought of re-creating the scene from the actual game first, but then Prinny would be very tiny… So I decided to just steal the design from the game package. Of course, I didn’t think I could make complicated enemies in the background, so I drew the daikon (Japanese radish) from a stage in the game.

First I put sauteed renkon (lotus root) at the bottom of a bento box. Originally I was going to just put soboro (see “how to make soboro”) for the ground, but I used soboro recently in the Patapon bento, and it’d be a bit boring. So I cut up chicken breast into squares, put panko on (Japanese bread crumbs) and fried it in a pan and made tiny chicken cutlet bits. (it’s slightly healthier than regular chicken cutlets because it doesn’t use egg and flour) I put it together to make the stone pavement Prinny stands on. It was tedious, but it worked out better than I imagined.

I made the basic shape of Prinny with rice mixed black sesame seed and plain rice, so I knew exactly how much rice I could use to put above the stone pavement. After I used all the rice, I put boiled broccoli above it. And I cut daikon into a shape of small daikon, microwaved it (to remove the bitterness), put it over the broccoli and made a daikon leaf with broccoli.

For Prinny’s beak and the belt I cut cheese and put a black sesame seed on his beak. Then I cut seaweed for his wing, put it on cheese, and cut the cheese around it.
For the pouch, I carved a potato into the shape of the pouch (two parts) the night before.

Carved potato

Back of the pouch has no side.

For the peg legs, I cut potato into skinny triangles, and I fried them. Then I cut a small piece of cheese for the logo on the pouch.

I was going to use fake crab meat for his red scarf, but I wasn’t sure if it’d stay wrapped around his neck, so I decided to use some red pepper I had in the fridge.

To make his sword I cut konnyaku (yam cake) and kamaboko (fish cake) and used leftover fried potato. For his eyes I sliced and cut out kamaboko with a straw and put seaweed I cut out using a hole puncher.

To make Prinny more Prinny-sh, I made a sweat drop with kamaboko and put it on his head.

Originally, I wanted to put more characters and items in the bento, but because I changed my plan and used cooked chicken cutlet, I was running out of time, and could only make a strawberry shortcake with cheese and tomato skin…

I should’ve definitely put something on the plain rice part in the background. Because both daikon, rice and the blade on the sword are white, it makes the bento look very washed out. Also his legs and the chicken cutlet are almost the same color, so his legs are barely noticeable. Arrrgh, only if I had a little more time… =/

Prinny:
– rice mixed with black sesame seed, and plain rice
– red pepper for his scarf
– seaweed on kamaboko for his eyes
– cheese and a black sesame seed for his beak
– seaweed on cheese for his wing
– fried potato and cheese for his pouch and belt
– fried potato for his legs
– kamaboko for his sweat drop

Daikon:
– daikon and broccoli

Strawberry short cake:
– cheese and tomato skin

Other food:
– renkon
– rice
– broccoli
– chicken cutlet

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