Christmas Party Bento

It’s funny how sometimes things turn out just right. I heard last week that Casa Bento (who is also having a 10% off sale on all orders this week, coupon code JOYFUL10) was having a Christmas Bento contest, so I started making plans and drawing sketches for mapping out a Christmas bento to submit. It quickly turned into a big bento and I kept thinking, how the heck am I going to eat it? Should I take it to work and share it? Feed it to the family for dinner?

I was still thinking it over while I planned out what time I’d start doing this last night. Then Baby Girl comes over to me and asks me if I was going to make her something for her Japanese school party today, which she had mentioned last week. I had told her previously that I would make onigiri, but then it dawned on me that I could simply give this big Christmas party bento to her to share with her class.

I didn’t make it into the finals, but here it is for you guys to see. I was hoping to get a good reception from Baby Girl, but her initial reaction of happiness and awe were soon overshadowed by the good old bento hater in her. After I told her this was what I’d made for her class party, she said her teacher said to bring things in bags to share, like chips.

Chips.

It took a lot of convincing to get her to accept that I bring this to Japanese school. She asked if it was Japanese food and I was like, “It’s sushi. It’s a bento. Yes, it’s Japanese.”

The sushi is Christmas inarizushi, which is something I had designed for Yum-Yum Bento Box, but it didn’t make it into the book. The rice has red and green hana ebi to make it have a Christmas look to it. Usually you’d put carrots and mushrooms, but I was too lazy. In the middle I have chicken karaage, takuan strips, and an ume.

And as usual, I totally messed up something. I found a recipe for inarizushi, made the sushi su, cooked 3 cups of rice, then proceed to dump all of the sushi su in. Only when I had about 3/4 cup left did I start to think that maybe the recipe wasn’t for all that rice. Sure enough, I was only supposed to put 1/2 cup of sushi su in. I was so mad at myself. I ended up cooking another cup of rice to mix in to help compensate, but I think it was still pretty sweet.

I don’t really like how the candy canes came out. I cut a stick of imitation crab in the middle and flattened it out to give myself enough room to cut a cane out, but peeling off the outer red layer wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I’ll have to rethink how to make candy canes. There must be a nicer way to do it…

I drew my Lock & Lock Giveaway winners, so let’s have a little imaginary drum roll!

Congratulations to Mariko for winning the blue set!

And now for the red…

Congratulations Kim for winning the red set!

I’ll be contacting you for addresses to send on to All Things for Sale. Be sure to check them out as they just got in some new Lock & Lock bento sets, including larger 3-tier square boxes.