Easter Bento

HAPPY EASTER!

This Bento was not made for Easter or with Easter in mind….but it does have some cute little bunnies, so I figure since it took me this long to revisit my supposed St. Patrick’s Bento series that another holiday is here, I might as well embrace it.

This bento features a bed of rice and steamed broccoi, with yellow pepper bunnies & colby jack bunny babies.  The heart is red pepper and the flowers are “Orange Carrots”- a recipe from the book The Just Bento Cookbook that SteffanandPolly got me. Get the book for the full recipe, however it is basically lightly cooking the carrots in freshly squeezed orange juice and peel with a little sugar and salt.  I find it works best to cut your shapes into raw vegetables before you cook them.

Here’s the other side of the Bento:

The ingredients here are obvious: hotdog heads & little cherry tomato “balloons.” I was excited to finally use these cute toothpicks for this Bento. The faces are made with this little plastic tool that you press the hot dog into. I did not carve out those faces individually.

This above is NOT the one I used for my hot dogs- but just an example of what the tool looks like. You make the cut on the hot dog using the plastic tool and then you cook up the hot dog.

Here it is all together. I always hope it looks this cute when Fiona opens her lunch, but likely everything has shifted a bit. The bunny bows were made from deli sliced turkey and the eyes were olives. Maybe below you can see those little tiny cutters.

And here is the mess to clean up after. I am showing this just to note that there is potential for wastefulness when you make cute bentos. Obviously: picture cutting up a pepper into practical and boring strips- no waste. Then as pictured above: cutting a heart into a red pepper with a cookie cutter. I haven’t used any bento blogs as guides so I imagine this is a topic addressed, but I assume that other moms like me don’t let these unused items go to waste, but just use them somehow.

You can also see the bag of cute toothpicks in the above photo. I think I was in a hurry that morning so I just put the pepper pieces into a tupperware with plans to cut them up for stir fry later on in the week. Oh! I think I put them in Goya Chanpuru. Yep, just searched my photos and found it!

Goya Chanpuru using the leftover peppers from this Bento.

  I also just eat the little pieces that aren’t worth keeping as I’m going along- since it’s healthy anyway. I wonder what other moms do to reduce waste when making Bento.  Oh, here’s another thing I did since at this time Leif wasn’t in preschool yet. He would get the “Second Tier” Bento. Meaning….a Bento made with the scraps of Fiona’s.

This “Second Tier” Bento is my own invention….although I’m sure I”m not the first mom to have done this. Leif wasn’t in preschool at this time, and after making FIona’s lunch, I cobbled together a version for him.  So Leif got the hot dog parts that didn’t look as good….the middle parts of the hot dogs that didn’t have the cute faces..the extra cheese bunny that didn’t make the cut and the pieces of the cheese that the bunnies were cut out of.

Obviously Leif had no idea that his hot dog faces weren’t as “cute,” and he really had a fun time eating his lunch too. Plus, since he was at home, I got to witness it!

Oishii desu ne!!!

Next post….maybe I will actually post about our real Easter traditions….

Until I get around to that post….

THE END!