bento #41: Ryuk from Death Note

When I made the Braid bento, I had some extra quail eggs left over from the bunny, so I put them in my bento. Later on, the pinkish color of the egg has turned to blue-ish purple. As I was eating the egg, I remembered something…

Bento #41: Ryuk from Death Note
Created and eaten on: 3/13/2009

One of my boyfriend’s favorite manga/anime is Death Note. Death Note is a Japanese manga/anime series. The story begins when Light Yagami, a high school student, finds a supernatural notebook the “Death Note” which was dropped on Earth by a shinigami (death god) named Ryuk. The story is very dark, clever and full of twists. Not to mention it was beautifully drawn, and each episode has a very tense cliffhanger. It made a huge impact on manga/anime world.

Ryuk may be a hideous looking death god, but his behavior and the way he talks do not suit his appearance at all. He talks like a modern young man, and has a great sense of humor. He also looooves apples, and Light sometimes even uses an apple to make Ryuk do him a favor.

Since I knew how big Ryuk’s head was going to be, I drew a sketch based on the size of a quail egg. (I used pictures of the nendoroid figure of Ryuk as reference) I also knew he’d have a lot of small pieces that had to be put together in the morning, so I decided to try making the rest of the bento simpler than my usual bento. The night before, I prepped purple/blue quail eggs. Even though I only needed one, I dyed a couple of quail eggs for backup, and I left them soaking in red cabbage juice in the fridge overnight. (see “how to dye eggs naturally”)

I also cut out seaweed for his wings, hair, mouth, eyes, feathers around his neck, body, arms, and legs. I put them between two sheet of paper in a Ziploc bag, so the seaweed wouldn’t get wrinkly from moisture in the air.

I sliced renkon and put them in a tupperware with water and a little big of vinegar to make sauteed renkon. Peeling and slicing renkon takes only about little more than 5 minutes, but I usually cut renkon the night before to save time. The vinegar is to prevent discoloration.

When I was drawing the sketch, I thought the color palette of this bento would be too dark. So I made an egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”) just in case, and put it in the fridge.

The following morning, I sauteed renkon, put lettuce in the bento box, and placed the sauteed renkon over the lettuce. Then I mixed rice with black sesame seed and salt (see “how to dye rice naturally”) and put it over the renkon.

I microwaved asparagus for about 30 seconds, and wrapped asparagus with bacon, put together with a tooth pick, and cooked it on a pan until the bacon was cooked. (I don’t even need to put oil in the pan, because the bacon will provide enough oil) I put asparagus with bacon to the sides of the rice, but as I had thought before, the bento looked a bit too dark. So I cut sausage and made sunflowers with the egg sheet (see “see how to make a sunflower”) and put them below the asparagus with bacon.

After everything was ready, I started working on Ryuk.

I put seaweed on cheese, and cut around it with an exacto knife. I also made the Death Note with just seaweed and cheese. I cut cheese for the eyes and teeth and put it on seaweed, but I realized that the cheese was too thick, and I was worried the teeth wouldn’t stay on the round surface of quail egg. So I carefully sliced it in half so the cheese’s thickness was half of what it was. So the egg would stay in one place I made a little hole with a spoon for the quail egg. I put the egg, and put the body parts around it.

Before I put the face and hair, I took the stem off from cherry tomato and stuck a tooth pick in it. For the apple’s leaf I cut a small piece from snow peas.

Finally, I placed the hair and face parts on the egg, and cut a small piece of tomato skin for his red eyes. I had to move really fast putting Ryuk together, because seaweed tends to curl up when it absorb moisture. You can see the body parts already starting to warp a bit in the pictures. Especially the hair which was just seaweed with no support had to be put on at the very end.

I woke up late this day, and considering this bento actually took an hour less than my usual bento, I thought it came out pretty okay. Until I realized that I forgot to make his earring… T_T

I think preparing food the night before helped a lot. I could’ve sauteed renkon, cooked asparagus and saved even more time. (My boyfriend puts his bento in the fridge and heats it up in the microwave, so it wouldn’t really matter if I had cooked food the night before)

*As I mentioned in my blog before, blue is an appetite suppressant. So if you’re dying something blue-ish to put your bento, I’d put something small that wouldn’t take up entire bento.

Ryuk:
- Quail eggs dyed in red cabbage juice
- Seaweed on cheese, tomato skin for his eyes

Apple:
- Cherry tomato, tooth pick and snow pea

Sunflower:
- sausage and egg sheet

Other food:
- asparagus wrapped with bacon
- rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt
- sauteed renkon
- lettuce

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

Tagged as: asparagus, bacon, death note, dye, eggs, quail egg, renkon, ryuk, sausage, tomato