Lasagna Bento, Garden Update, and Cake Pix

Since I made two trays of lasagna for dinner for Baby Girl’s birthday, we ate that for dinner again last night and I have even more of it for lunch today. It’s kinda funny how she’s mirroring my childhood likes. She has the same favorite color I did as a kid and the same favorite food. I’ll admit, I only liked lasagna because it was Garfield’s favorite food and I used to LOVE those Garfield comic booksas a kid. She’s never seen one in her life, which is why I think it’s weird she still has the same favorite food.

I decided to make a kiddie kind of bento today to help inspire my child bento creative juices. The lasagna turned out to be a great platform for cute cheese stars with faces, though I realize now I probably should have use a kitty cat shape for the kitty cat face and a bear shape for the bear face. Oh well!

It was very easy to put together. I added a piece of lasagna to the middle first, then boiled two large pieces of broccoli and two sugar snap peas for about 30 seconds. As that cooled on my cutting board, I cut out the cheese stars and put them in the freezer for a bit so they could firm up. I found picks for the three tomatoes and put them in on three different sides. I cut the broccoli into smaller pieces, using some extra fluffy parts to prop up the tomatoes since they looked a bit sunken in. I sliced a pea in half diagonally and tucked those into the empty side on the right.

It lacked a little bit of color, so I added three baby carrots with the ends lopped off and put cheese flowers on top of them. This is similar to how I’ve seen ShoppingMum do some of her bentos and I love the idea, so I had to try it. I cut the flowers out using the gift Mr. Pikko got me for my birthday: Wilton Floral Collection Flower Making Set. I’ll probably never use this thing to make cakes, but they come with a lot of awesome cutters that work great for cutting cheese.

I peeled a kiwi and then quartered it, adding two pieces to the bottom. I ate the other half. Last of all, I punched the faces, took the cheese stars out (which were nicely frozen by now), and added the nori faces. I put the stars on top and that was it! Aerial shot:

I’m pretty happy with this one, especially since I did it quickly and without much planning other than thinking about it as I dozed off last night.

Okay so, on to the cake. I had to bake it at Grandma J’s house and I totally messed up the frosting. *sniff* I didn’t refrigerate it while I baked the third layer so by the time I was ready to frost, it was past 8 and everyone was like, let’s sing already so we can go home, omg! I gooped the strawberry frosting (which was freaking heavenly) on top, added three cupcake pops, the Hello Kitty candle, then wrote “Baby Girl is 5” in really terrible icing writing.

The cupcakes sank down and started to tip over. Hello Kitty and her much-nicer-cake-than-mine began to slide off. It was terrible! Luckily, this doesn’t matter much to a newly-five-year-old girl, just her really picky mother. Mr. Pikko cut the big, sloppy, goopy cake and gave her a slice, which she then embellished with ALL the candles. Apparently turning five means you get territorrial because I must have heard her shriek at Buddy a dozen times, “NO! IT’S MY BIRTHDAY NOT YOURS!” It was kinda scary.

I have to admit, that’s one cool plate of cake. It tasted pretty awesome, especially the goopy frosting. This helped make up for its gross appearance. Seriously, it was like a pink lava flow. She thanked me again this morning for the cake, which was so nice. ^_^

I haven’t done a garden update in a while, so I’ve got some exciting pictures to share. First of all, my prize tomato is almost ready. I took this picture a couple days ago:

Since I’ve been watching it like a hawk and it looks to be ready today or tomorrow, this means I expect to find it eaten by a bird tomorrow morning, at which point I will fall to my knees and sob uncontrollably. I will then hate all birds forever.

I took this picture yesterday to show all my awesome tomatoes, which are coming out of a really scrawny looking vine. Take that gigantic useless tomato bush that is no more!

My kumquat tree has oodles of flowers and smells great, but since my three little baby kumquats fell off, I have a feeling I’m going to be really sad soon.

One of Mr. Pikko’s miracle berry bushes is doing something new. I had thought those little brown boxing bag things were actually dead berries, but yesterday when we checked, there were little thingies coming out of it. He thought they were berries, but I looked closer and am convinced they are flower buds. I can see lines on them which look like petals. It’s very exciting!!!

Tomorrow’s bento will be a first, so look forward to that.