bento #3: Happy Bee & GIR

I have been a big fan of Invader ZIM, and I used to make plushes of the characters.
I took a look at character images online, and decided to make the Happy Bee (a.k.a. Death Bee) because it looked pretty easy to make.

Bento #3: Happy Bee and GIR (from Invader ZIM)
Created and eaten on: 9/22/2008

I cooked chicken fried rice and then cooked a thin omelet to cover the fried rice.
It was supposed to be a piece of cake.
But of course, I ran into a problem.
I tried to make a small mountain with the rice, but the freshly cooked fried rice was too loose to hold its shape. I struggled with the rice for a while, but no luck. So I just decided to cover the rice with an omelet and put other food around it, so that the bee’s body would look round.

I still had some space in the bento and I was thinking what I could put in. I remembered that I had potato salad and lettuce in the fridge, then “GIR” came to my mind. I put a leaf of lettuce into boiling water, dried it with a paper towel, made a ball with potato salad, and wrapped it with the lettuce. Then I put eyes, nose, ears, and made a slit on the lettuce, and inserted the pink part of fishcake as his tongue.

The finished bento wasn’t what I had pictured… but in the end, I learned that if I’m using fried rice to shape anything, I should cook fried rice the night before, shape it, and put it in the firdge… so it was worth it. =P
Other than the shape of Happy Bee, I wasn’t too happy with its eyes and wings either. If I ever make Happy Bee again, I want to make the eyes 3D. The single layer of cheese was too flat. I’ll use something a bit harder for its wings too. They came out too floppy. Maybe I’ll use a slice of radish or white carrot next time.

Happy Bee:
- chicken fried rice covered with thin omelet for its body
- seaweed for its stripes
- seaweed on cheese for its eyes
- cheese for its wings

GIR:
- potato salad wrapped in lettuce
- seaweed on fishcake for its eyes
- seaweed for its nose and ears
- fishcake for its tongue

Flowers:
- fake sausage with pea in the center
- carrot cut out with cookie cutter

Other food:
- cherry tomato, lettuce

For more pictures of my bento, visit “Bento!” set and “Bento details!” set on my flickr page.

Tagged as: carrot, eggs, GIR, Happy Bee, Invader ZIM, Jhonen Vasquez, mashed potato, sausage, tomato