First Grade Picnic Party Bento

Last night, Buddy comes to me and is all proud that he’s got some song he wants to sing for me. He starts going, “Two plus two… two plus two… two plus two plus two plus! Two plus two… two plus two… two plus plus two plus two.” I thought maybe they were teaching them math with singing at preschool, so after two verses of that, I asked, “Okay so, what’s two plus two?”

“THREE!!!”

Doh… Apparently he had just made up the song out of nowhere after I started drilling Baby Girl with math questions during their bath. He just wanted to sing, not learn math. 🙂

Today Baby Girl’s grade had a little family activity where we made little kites and then had a picnic at the school. I had to make a lunch for three of us to eat after we made her kite, so I packed us this lunch for her special occasion, which she thankfully did not miss for once due to fever.

On the left are four different musubis, one plain, one ume, one dipped in Seto Fumi, and another dipped in Nori Komi. In the middle are five pieces of nikumaki, something that I read about in The Manga Cookbook, though I cooked it a little differently. To make them I rolled up three bean halves (from our yard) and two carrot sticks that I’d previously boiled in a thin-cut piece of pork (not bacon like the book says). After that, I wrapped it in a shiso leaf from the garden, which went around the whole thing because like I said, our leaves are HUGE. Over that, I wrapped deli sliced ham.

I secured it with toothpicks and then fried three rolls in a pan on medium heat. To finish off, I drizzled some teriyaki sauce in and cooked it on low heat until it was nicely dark brown all around. After that, I let them cool on my cutting board and then sliced up the pieces.

I snapped another pic when we were at the school, this time with my point and shoot. On the right side, I have nori tamagoyaki, crab salad that I bought at Foodland, and some simmered kabocha. I used Maki’s recipe from The Just Bento Cookbook and it was totally delicious, loved it!

As a backup, I took a little side container of rice and spam, cause I had a hunch she’d look at the nikumaki and be like, “Oh hell no, I ain’t eating that!” She ended up eating the spam, the crab salad, and began writing her name on half the pieces of eggs right away. I busted out a pack of Korean nori and she ate tons of rice with it, so I’m pretty happy with how much she ate. It had been pouring this morning, but at the school it was bright, sunny, and windy. Perfect kite weather, so we had a great time. 🙂

I think we’ve decided to name him Max, which is short for “Macadamia Nut”. Heehee! He’s a good dog, we love him!