Frog Onigiri Bento (305)

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to vote in my 200k Bento Contest! I’ve also got the Furikake Frenzy going on all this month.

The kid hilarity continued again this morning when Buddy suddenly yells in the car, “MOMMY! THERE’S DUST!!” He starts slapping his hands together to get the particles and then transitioned to karate chops and kicks. I told him to yell too, so he starts furiously attacking the flying dust particles going, “HI YAH! YAH!” The wild, crazed look in his eyes had me in stitches, so I took some video. You know, to show at his wedding later.

Today I’m having leftover tonkatsu with frog onigiri and a salad on the side.

This one took me a while because I was making pancakes this morning, but things went pretty smoothly because I decided to be responsible for once and plan out my bento while watching tv. In addition, I made half the salad last night. I know. Whoa.

Grandma J has scratch paper saved up from years of elementary school teaching and some old marble tablet journals with the used pages ripped out. I asked if I could have one and so now I have some 4th grader’s old journal remnants to sketch my bentos in. It would totally slay me if it turned out somehow that she reads this blog. Not that I’d post her name or anything, but it’d still be funny.

I can’t draw, so don’t laugh too hard. I’m at the level where at least when I draw animals, my kids know what they are. This is good enough for me.

I had this notebook lying around this past weekend and Baby Girl saw it while I was re-doing some of my older bento photos. She asked if she could draw some of them and here are three that she did:

“Piggies in the Bank Wank” is the title she requested I write in. Apparently she speaks Tarutaru without ever hearing a Tarutaru speak. Yes, I am proud. The Hamburger one is a salad I did a while ago. The last one is the Sootballs bento I did in 2007. I don’t know where she got “If you want” from that bento, but there were like 10 more words to the title that I didn’t help her write down.

I cooked this rice last night to save time in the morning. It’s 1 cup of uncooked rice with two drops of food coloring added to the water in the rice cooker. I have to figure out what else I can do with green rice now, cause I have a lot of extra, even though it was only a cup.

The first thing I did was add lettuce to the box. I chose a red box so that the colors would be nice and contrasting. I think this is butter leaf lettuce. The leaves are kind of elongated, but I love the way it looks and since this box is long, it works out quite well. It also serves as a good support for the onigiri. I’ll eat the lettuce with the side salad. Next, I added the two onigiris to the box on opposite sides. I used my bear shape for them. We have this stuffed animal frog named Pickles in the car and one day before I stuck him under my head (he makes a great pillow) I thought, “Hey, his head looks like a bear!” You simply put their eyes where the ears go.

I sliced the tonkatsu piece into strips and layered it in between the frogs. Next, I stuffed a pink paper food cup in the space under the left frog and dropped vegetables into the cup. On the top right side, I added a little lady apple. I used to LOVE these as a kid and when I saw some in the market, I just had to buy some. The price tag is pretty steep, but they’re so dang light that a bag of like 5 ended up costing me maybe a dollar. I also tucked in a little bottle of tonkatsu sauce, but I didn’t do that until after so it’s not in the bentorial photos. Finally, I added some nori eyes and mouths that I cut out freehand with a little scissors.

The salad has butter leaf lettuce, edamame, grated carrot, and quartered cherry tomatoes. I didn’t pack salad dressing as our office fridge has like a dozen different bottles of dressing for me to help use up.

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