bento #59: meta knight July 30, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.Tags: bento, charaben, kyaraben, meta knight, SSBB, super smash bros. brawl, video game
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I finally decided to make this after making two Kirbys in a row.
Bento #59: Meta Knight
Created and eaten on 7/29/2009
Meta Knight is from the Kirby anime / game series. I don’t actually watch the Kirby anime, but I have Super Smash Bros. Brawl (a Wii game), and I like Meta Knight. Hardcore SSBB players, don’t call me a cheese now. I suck at SSBB and I still like playing it, so give me some slack. I like him because he’s Meta Knight! I think one of the reasons is that he looks like an MS from Gundam. 😛 Also he has no mouth which I find it very cute. Anyway, Meta Knight from the Kirby anime show has way too much blue, so I decided to make the one from SSBB.
First I put sauteed renkon (lotus root) I had prepared the night before on the bento box. For meat, I put asparagus in boiling water for a couple of minutes, took them out and wrapped them with bacon and cooked it on a pan. Then I cut each of them in half and put it at the bottom of the bento box in a line. It’d be too much bacon if I filled the entire bottom part with just asparagus & bacon, so I decided to put some veggies. I cut the tip of a cherry tomato in four different directions, making 8 petals. Then I opened it up, stuffed it with loose kernels of corn, and placed them between the asparagus & bacon.
You can stuff cherry tomato with green peas, edamame, mixed vegetables, etc...
For Meta Knight, I made a rice ball with plastic wrap, and put some seasoned seaweed inside. Meta Knight is dark blue with a gray mask, so I put ground black sesame seeds around the bottom half on the side of rice ball for the blue part.
You could see that I didn't put enough black sesame seeds...
For the mask I mixed plain rice with a little bit of ground black sesame seed molded it with plastic wrap. (I didn’t put the mask on the face yet.)
For the shoulders I made small rice balls, and wrapped them with seaweed. For his hands I made plain small rice balls, and put them under each shoulder.
It doesn't look like hand and shoulder at all up close...
I boiled broccoli and sprinkled a bit of salt and put it above the asparagus & bacon. Since the renkon was brown, I was worried that the yellow/orange sword would not stand out. So I boiled and cut snowpeas with a diamond shaped cutter and put it on the background next to Meta Knight. I cut cheese into the shape of his sword and put it on the snowpeas. I used a straw to cut out a small round shape from tomato and put it on the hilt.
The sword is made with two layers of cheese.
Originally, I was going to use seaweed to make his cape (which also can turn into wings). But I was looked at the red cabbage (purple cabbage), and realized that the cabbage leaves looked a lot like his wings. So I changed my plan and decided to make his wings with red cabbage. I cut the cabbage leaf into the shape of the wing, put it in a bowl with water and vinegar (vinegar seasons it and preserves its color) and microwaved it. I put them beneath his shoulders and hands. I was pretty surprised how good they looked.
The lines on the cabbage leaf was perfect for his wing!
Finally, I made an opening on the mask with a butter knife. Then I put seaweed on the back side of the mask, cut cheese for his eyes and put them on the seaweed on the front side of the mask. For the line on the middle of the mask and sword I cut out seaweed.
"Meta Knight!"
I was thinking about making his feet with dyed quail eggs, but after I boiled quail eggs I realized that they were too small for his feet. So to make the feet I just made a small rice ball, wrapped with seaweed and put red cabbage on the rice ball.
Originally, I wanted to put a small Kirby in the bento, but I ran out of space so I just put in a star shaped carrot I had frozen previously.
No sace for Kirby. =<
I guess this bento was more for me than for my boyfriend… but he still liked it! 🙂
Meta Knight:
– rice with seasoned seaweed inside and black sesame seed on the outside for the main body
– seaweed, cheese, and rice mixed with black sesame seed for the mask
– rice and seaweed for his shoulders and hands
– red cabbage for his wings
– cheese and tomato skin for his sword
Other food:
– renkon
– asparagus wrapped with bacon
– tomato and corn
– snowpeas
– carrot
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
bento 57: Metroid Prime 3 July 11, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.Tags: bento, charaben, kyaraben, metroid, samus, video game
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My boyfriend has been playing old games he had, and he recently beat this game.
Bento #57: Metroid Prime 3
Created and eaten on: 7/10/2009
Metroid is an action-adventure video game for NES system, and first released in Japan in 1986. The story is “set on the planet Zebes, the story follows Samus Aran as she attempts to retrieve Metroid creatures that were stolen by Space Pirates, who plan to replicate the Metroids by exposing them to beta rays and then use them as biological weapons to destroy Samus and all that oppose them.” (from Wikipedia) Samus wears a special suit that allows her to morph into a ball. There are five main Metroid series and six Metroid prime series right now and a new one was already announced to be released in 2010 at E3 (the biggest game convention in the world).
My boyfriend stopped playing Metroid Prime 3 a long time ago. He said that he got stuck at this one difficult section and stopped playing. He felt bad about buying new games when he hasn’t beat some games he had, so he decided to beat Metroid Prime 3. The other weekend, he finally beat it! So I wanted to make a bento to celebrate!
But…
I woke up late that morning, and I hadn’t even done the sketch for this. I was thinking that I’d just make a regular bento, but in the last minute, I thought “Oh what the hell, I’ll start making it and see how it goes.” … A horrible idea. I think this was by far the WORST kyaraben I’ve done so far. Worse than the Braid bento. (not going to even link it to the blog post… Go to index and look for it if you really want to see it T_T) I seriously considered not giving the bento to him when I finished, because it looked soooooooo bad.
It’s so painful to even look at it, so it’ll be a short post today.
For Samus, I mixed rice with ketchup and shaped it like Samus’ helmet with plastic wrap. For Dark Samus, I mixed rice with black pepper and salt and shaped it like Samus’ helmet with plastic wrap.
One of the rules of kyaraben is that the bottom of bento box shouldn’t be visible. That’s why I usually use renkon or lettuce to cover the bottom, but I didn’t have renkon or enough lettuce to do this. So I tried to cover the bottom using pork cutlet bits I cooked the night before. I wanted to put something green in, but didn’t want to use bacon/asparagus like I usually use since there were already enough meat. So I wrapped boiled asparagus with turkey ham instead.
I boiled broccoli and sprinkled sesame seeds over it, trying to fill the space between the pork cutlet bits. It didn’t look good, but I left it in there anyway.
I made potato salad and wrapped it with microwaved lettuce to make Metroids. (Floating jellyfish like monsters with very nasty fangs) Then I cut out red pepper with a small bottle cap for the red things. I sliced and fried potato for their legs.
The only thing I like about this bento is this cute little Metroid.
I could still see the bottom of the bento, so I sliced broccoli stems and put it around to cover it up.
Metroid takes place in space, so I put in star shaped carrots I had from the freezer I had cut previously (see “how to freeze carrot flowers”).
For the helmet visors I cut lettuce for Samus, cheese for Dark Samus, and cut seaweed for the lines on the helmets. To cover up more empty space I put snowpeas in the bento.
Arrgh. If there weren’t Metroid (the jelly fish thing) in this bento, no one could’ve guessed what this was supposed to be. Sighs.
I swear to myself that I’d make a better Metroid bento again someday…
Samus:
– rice mixed with ketchup
– lettuce and seaweed
Dark Samus:
– rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt
– cheese and seaweed
Metroids:
– potato salad wrapped with lettuce
– fried potato, red pepper
Other food:
– pork cutlet
– broccoli
– asparagus wrapped with turkey ham
– snowpeas
– carrot flower
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
bento#55 LocoRoco June 18, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.Tags: bento, charaben, kyaraben, locoroco
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I woke up a bit too late for a kyaraben, but a bit too early for a regular bento this morning. I sat down, started up my laptop, checking my email, and just stared at my sketchbook. I had drawn the sketch for a bento, but I hadn’t figured out how I’d put meat in it. I went to the kitchen to get orange juice, and I just decided to try making it.
Bento #55: LocoRoco
Created and eaten on: 6/18/2009
Loco Roco is a PSP game, and it’s one of the games my boyfriend loves. It’s a cute yellow round squishy thing that eats little fruit things and gets bigger and bigger. This yellow thing rolls and bounces around to very cute music. That’s the best I can do to describe the game. 😛 But if you look at the trailer, that’s exactly what it looks like.
Still unsure how to put meat in the bento, I boiled an egg, took the yolk out, mashed it and mixed it with rice to dye the rice yellow. I think I like the color of yolk better than curry powder. (see “how to dye rice naturally”) It’s more vivid than curry powder.
As usual, I sauteed renkon (lotus root). I didn’t want to see the bottom of bento through the renkon, so I put lettuce on the bottom of the bento box, and put renkon over it.
At this point I still hadn’t come up with a way to put meat in the bento. I had cooked beef steak the night before, and I didn’t think it’d fit in a LocoRoco themed bento… So I opened the freezer, and I realized that I had made bunch of meatballs the other day and froze them. I searched and see if there were brown ball looking characters in LocoRoco, but I couldn’t find any… So I decided to hide the meatballs inside the big yellow one. These meatballs were for bento, so I made them small (about 1 inch in diameter. They make great Makkurokurosuke), so I managed to put five meatballs in it. I guess it’s kind of like a huge onigiri. (rice ball)
The next step was the ground. I mixed the rest of rice with ketchup, put it in the bento box, and molded using a plastic sheet. I knew five small meatballs weren’t enough for my boyfriend, so I cut a couple of meatballs in half and buried in the ground. In game, the orange ground has circle patterns on it, so I cut out cheese using a plastic bottle cap, and put them all over the ground.
Once the ground was done, I placed the big yellow one in the bento. Oh my goodness the yellow rice ball was huge! I didn’t think it’d be this big.
I felt like I needed to put about two more meatballs, but there wasn’t enough space in the rice for the ground. I saw that I had drawn the cute cloud looking character, and I had a cutter of the exact same shape. So I sliced daikon (Asian radish) and cut out the cloud using the cutter. Then I sliced the tip of the meatballs and put the daikon cloud on the top of the meatballs. I was worried that daikon might fall off, so I put a tiny bit of mayonnaise between the daikon and meatball.
I carefully peeled the pink part of kamaboko (fish cake) with a knife, and cut out a circle shape using a plastic bottle cap. Then I sliced kamaboko and cut out a smaller shape using a plastic bottle cap and cut it in half for the wings.
For the color of green, I made bushes with snowpeas on the ground, and broccoli for the top part of bento.
Originally, I wanted to put more characters in the bento, but since the yellow rice ball filled about a half of bento box, I couldn’t make anything more except one small yellow rice ball.
After I put all the characters in bento, I started making the face parts. For their eyes I cut out kamaboko using a straw and plastic bottle cap. I used carrot for the cloud’s mouth, and the pink part of kamaboko for the smaller yellow rice ball. For the pupils I cut out seaweed and black sesame seeds. Then I took out the carrot flowers I had made and frozen from the freezer (see “how to freeze carrot flowers”), and sprinkled them over the bento. There are actually flowers that look exactly like the carrot flowers in the game. 🙂 How awesome is that? I cut out musical notes from seaweed using a cutter.
Even though I couldn’t make all the characters I had drawn in the sketch, considering that I spent less than half the time that I usually spend making bento, I thought it turned out pretty okay. 🙂 I think drawing each character in detail and having meatballs and carrot flowers already prepared helped a lot this time, and I’m proud of myself for it!
LocoRoco (the big yellow one):
– rice mixed with egg yolk
– meatballs (inside)
– kamaboko and seaweed
LocoRoco (the small yellow one)
— rice mixed with egg yolk
– kamaboko and seaweed
Pink flying thing:
– kamaboko and black sesame seed
White cloud thing:
– radish, kamaboko, carrot and black sesame seed
Other food:
– beef meatballs
– renkon
– cheese
– broccoli
– snowpeas
– carrot flowers
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
AnnaTheRed's bento factory 