An In-Flight Bento from Ajira Airways
Unlike last week, I didn’t come up with an idea for a LOST bento until yesterday. Maybe the long weekend and all just stalled my brain. I was also apparently harboring a cold one of my co-workers so thoughtfully gifted upon me last week, but that turned out to be a good thing, because I’d never have finished this in a regular morning since it took me five freaking hours to do.
So here we have a bento from Ajira Airways. I woke up at five to cook rice, did some swearing over my really sore throat, and then got to work. I finished right about 10 am, though I guess you have to take into account that I cooked breakfast for three and helped get the kids ready for school somewhere in there. One thing’s for sure, after I write this I’m going to go pass out until it’s time to go pick Baby Girl up, bento eating be damned.
When I first decided on the Ajira logo, I pictured some star thing with the words and figured it’d be fine. Then last night I googled the logo and I’m like, “Oh shit.” It presented a challenge though, and I wanted to see how I could do. I printed out six logos, which was a good thing, because I ended up using five of them and used the sixth as a guide to place everything together.
I cut out the Ajira sun thinger first, just the paper. Then this morning I laid it on a piece of cheese and began cutting it out with a toothpick. It wasn’t too bad, but still difficult since American cheese is so soft. Next, I cut out the tiger, then the white circle in the center. I had a circle cutter that was exactly that size from my Floral Gumpaste Cutter Set
The tiger stripes were a massive pain in the ass, but eventually I got him done. I started using any of the scrap slivers of nori I found lying around and that worked just as well as trying to follow the picture.
Next, I dyed some alphabet pasta red. I put two drops of red food coloring into a little dish and then added two drops of water. I plopped the letters in for a quick bath, then moved them to a paper towel to dry.
That turned out extremely well, I’ll have to use this again for spelling little words in more colors than pasty pasta yellow.
After that, I cut out the Ajira letters and laid them on white cheese, then cut that out with a combination of my paring knife and a toothpick. The toothpick was really bad for cutting straight lines, so I used the paring knife for those parts. After that, I painted straight red food coloring onto the tops of the cheese with another toothpick. Toothpicks are so freaking awesome, I swear!
Here’s a closer look at the logo. The tiger’s tongue is cut from a tiny piece of turkey and the two dots for the ‘j’ and ‘i’ are cut with a piece of coffee straw. The logo rests on a circle onigiri wrapped completely in nori. On the side are two teriyaki chicken wings. The lettuce is actually grown by Mr. Pikko in our yard. He was quite happy about it and has been asking me to eat it. It’s very fragile, but very frilly and therefore makes a beautiful bento liner.
Hope you all like it and happy LOST viewing tonight!
This past weekend I did a lot of baking, including these luscious red velvet cupcakes:
Scratch that plan I mentioned earlier. First I’m going to eat one of these then go pass out for the afternoon. Maybe two. As you can see, I’ve already fallen off the weight loss wagon again.
Here’s the dinner I made on Sunday, since we stayed home with the kids. Rib eye steak, king crab, garlic asparagus, and rice for four for 35 bucks. Thanks to Foodland for making these two favorite foods of mine on sale this weekend. It freaking rocked, especially since the kids took one look at the king crab and declared it gross. More for me!
On Saturday one of our tomatoes was ready and since the birds have been attacking our garden, we had to eat this thing ASAP. I went and bought hamburger meat, fried it up in my cast iron grill pan
Sadly, the other tomato I was going to pick this morning to go with Mr. Pikko’s lettuce was captured by the evil doves. I hope they choke on the seeds.