Bento #67: Keepon

I wrote before how much my boyfriend likes Keepon. He asked me to make Keepon bento many times so I finally gave in.

Bento #67: Keepon
Created and eaten on: 11/9/2009

I didn’t make Keepon kyaraben before because it would be hard to make a kyaraben with just one character. But then I remembered “Ano-niku” bento (manga meat) where I made an entire bento with one theme. So I decided to try that for Keepon bento. Well, actually I didn’t really plan on making it until that morning.

I woke up in the morning, and it was way too late for a kyaraben. But the Keepon bento I had in my mind was supposed to be very simple, so I started making it anyway.

As usual, I put lettuce at the bottom of bento with sauteed renkon on top. I realized that the homemade frozen meatballs I had were pretty small, and weren’t enough for him. So I thawed frozen ground beef and made bigger meatballs. If I had made the meatballs the night before, this bento would’ve been a breeze… Making 15 meatballs from scratch in the morning before going to work seemed like such a waste of time. T_T Anyway, I used four meat balls to make two Keepons and I froze the rest.

I made a hard boiled egg and mixed the yolk with rice to make the rice yellow. I wrapped the rice with plastic wrap, made two rice balls and stuck them together.

I made two more rice balls mixed with ground black sesame seed and salt.

I also made two hard boiled quail eggs, and stuck them together to make a white Keepon.

It didn’t look like there was enough green in bento, so I boiled broccoli to make green Keepon.

When all the Keepon bodies were in place, I realized that there was still some space at the bottom. So I put grape tomatos and edamame to fill the space. I thought the shape of the tomatoes and edamame would go well with Keepon, and also I thought the bento needed more colors. I think it worked out fine.

After everything was ready, I sliced kamaboko (fish cake), and cut it out with a small bottle cap, and cut out seaweed with a punch hole for the eyes, and nose. Always put the face (small seaweed parts) at the end, otherwise it’ll get wrinkly before the photo shoot.

Nothing that complicated about this bento and they didn’t dance to music like a real Keepon, but my boyfriend still loooved it.

Keepon:
- rice mixed with egg yolk, kamaboko, seaweed
- rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt, kamaboko, seaweed
- meat balls, kamaboko, seaweed
- broccoli, kamaboko, seaweed
- quail egg, kamaboko, seaweed

Other food:
- renkon
- lettuce
- grape tomato
- edamame

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

Tagged as: BeatBots, beef, broccoli, edamame, eggs, Hideki Kozima, Keepon, Marek Michalowski, meatballs, quail egg, tomato