Fringe Bento for Walter (313 & 314)

As mentioned last week, I had an idea for a Fringe bento. After a ton of prep work and a bit of planning, I was able to do what I had envisioned. Although the photographs didn’t come out quite like how I’d imagined, I think the overall effect is still pretty good. If I’ve done my posting right, you should be hearing the intro music for the show right now. If not, you’re probably like me and have a freak version of Firefox. >_>

The bento contains mochiko chicken, furikake rice, garlic asparagus, raspberries, and coffee cake topped with an apple slice. Sorry Fringe fans, but I am crazy enough to bake an entire coffee cake for a bento, but not crazy enough to carve apple seeds into little tiny fetuses.

[audio:http://www.adventuresinbentomaking.com/images/Fringe-Intro.mp3|autostart=yes]

I marinated this chicken, baked some coffee cake, cut letters, and cooked rice all last night to help prepare for this morning and it was still a hectic dash. The first thing I did when I got up was to fry the chicken. While waiting for it to cook, I took the letters I had printed and cut out last night and laid them on top of thick slices of Korean Shingo pear.

It wasn’t nearly as hard as I had thought it would be. The pear is very firm and holds the shape of the letters very well. I’d been afraid that the black ink would run into the pear, but thankfully it didn’t.

I have no bentorial today because I was in too much of a hurry to take photos of each step. I put the coffee cake in first, then squished it in with the food divider. The coffee cake looked nice and puffy last night, but since it finished baking at 1 am, I put some foil over it to protect it from any bugs or critters while it cooled down. Unfortunately, this made the cake sweat and it fell kind of flat as a result. The funny part about the cake is that it called for a package of butterscotch pudding. I was at Longs trying to find some when I realized that butterscotch pudding is something that Walter mentions he hates because of the pudding they served at St. Clair’s Asylum. That ended my search. I ended up subbing chocolate pudding instead.

I’d thought about putting fruit cocktail where the raspberries are since that’s another food that Walter Bishop has mentioned he likes, but it was too watery and my raspberries were almost dead, so I had to use them up. On top of the coffee cake I put a slice of lady apple to represent the apple that they show just before commercial breaks. The six-fingered hand didn’t fit in anywhere, so I didn’t put it in. Besides, I was afraid that Inigo Montoya might show up and slice my precious bento to pieces. Oh, the horror!

Lettuce garnishes the box, though I didn’t put enough to go all around. At the top I have furikake rice, then the garlic asparagus. At the bottom is mochiko chicken and in the photo above, the Fringe letters without the toothpicks to hold them up (except for N, that one needed support).

I had wanted to make another bento for Mr. Pikko with the letters HONOLULU like how they do the location letters on the show, but the O’s weren’t cutting nicely, so I had to scrap that. I ended up making him a rather plain bento, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to just have a yummy lunch.

I wish I could have made it nicer, but time was running out. I actually tried the chicken this morning though, it was very good. I stuck the rest in the freezer for bentos later. I’ll post the recipe when I use that chicken for other bentos because it’s at home right now and I’m not.

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