Bento #74: Oruchuban Ebichu
February 23, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - anime Tags: heart shape, oruchuban ebichu
4 comments
I actually wanted to make this bento on Valentine’s day, but Valentine’s day being on Sunday, and we because had to go to IKEA, I couldn’t make bento on the 14th. It didn’t feel like it was appropriate to make this one after Valentine’s day, but oh what the heck. No man would mind a bento filled with heart shapes, right?
Bento #74: Oruchuban Ebichu
Created and eaten on: 2/18/2010
Oruchuban Ebichu was an anime show, originally aired in 1999, based on a manga. Ebichu is a housekeeping hamster. She may look dangerously similar to the hamster from the kid’s show, Hamtaro, but this seemingly innocent and adorable show is probably the cutest, funniest, dirtiest show I’ve ever seen.
Ebichu always tries her best to make her master happy but almost always ends up painfully embarrassing her in front of other people. So I decided to make a super love-love bento to hopefully to embarrass my boyfriend a little when he goes around to show the bento to the co-workers at work.
I put sauteed renkon at the bottom of the bento first, and made rice into the shape of Ebichu. For orange part of her ears I mixed a little bit of rice with ketchup. I cut ham for her mouth and apron, and kamaboko (fish cake) for her hand and one of her legs. I also used the pink part of kamaboko for her trademark pink cheeks.
The ham apron wasn't as easy as I thought. I should've made her arms and legs with rice too.
My idea was to make the right side of the bento look like a bento made by Ebichu so I made three small rice balls and put them in.
I thought about making rice balls into heart shapes, but I actually liked these tiny rice balls.
I searched for recipes for any “heart shaped” food, and picked the easiest ones to fill the rest of the bento. First I cooked hotdog, cut it at an angle, put two pieces together, put them together with a piece of pasta to make a heart shape. This is a very popular food item for kyaraben in Japan. No cooking skill is involved and this looks still adorable in any bento!
People usually use cute bento picks to hold hot dog pieces together.
I had cooked tamagoyaki (it’s like a rolled omelette) the night before, so I cut it in the same way I cut sausage and put them together to make a heart shape. I didn’t do a good job on this tamagoyaki though. I didn’t use enough oil and egg. So I put ketchup to draw another heart shape on the tamagoyaki to hide the mess. 
"Good tamagoyaki" doesn't have any spaces between each layer. >_<
I wrapped five pieces of asparagus and carrot in the middle with bacon, pinned it with toothpicks, and cooked it. When you cut it, it looks like cute flower, doesn’t it? I put a couple of them in the bento to fill the empty space.
I like putting carrot inside asparagus wrapped with bacon now. It's so easy, yet it adds a color and nice touch.
Then I cut the surface of a hot dog like to look like a flower/heart shape and I put cooked broccoli to fill the rest of empty space.
The hot dog at the bottom is also very easy. It does look like four heart shapes, don't they?
After everything was set in the bento box, I cut seaweed for her eyes and eyebrows. For the sparkle in her eyes I cut cheese.
Ebichu's eyes are always very sparkly.
When it was done, it didn’t look that “love-love”… so I just use a heart shaped cutter to cut out carrots and sprinkled them all over the bento.
I think I could've made bigger heart shaped carrots.
I really thought this would be easier to make than it was… The apron was hard to make, and it still didn’t turn out good. I probably should’ve used something redder for her mouth.
As for my boyfriend, he didn’t get embarrassed by this bento at all. (as I expected) After all, I’ve been making him kyaraben for more than an year. He wouldn’t have been showing off his bento if bunch of heart shaped food would embarrass him.
Ebichu:
- rice, rice mixed with ketchup, kamaboko, seaweed, cheese, ham
Heart:
- sausage
- egg (tamagoyaki)
- cheese, carrot
Other food:
- asparagus and carrot wrapped with bacon
- renkon
- lettuce
- broccoli
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
Valentine’s day, prawns, and high-tech toilet
February 20, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else Tags: Japanese high-tech toilet, sushi
2 comments
I hope everyone had a great Valentine’s day and President day!
I realized I hadn’t blogged this week! O_O It feels like time flies even faster when you have a long weekend and a full-time job.
My boyfriend and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s day. But it was Sunday so we decided to go to IKEA (romantic, isn’t it?). We failed to get the furniture we wanted, but succeeded to get Swedish meatballs and “prawn cheese spread.” We’ve been trying to get a certain piece of furniture from IKEA but it hasn’t been very successful… My boyfriend did a comic about it on his site, so check it out!
After we came home, we just played video games. He played Batman: Arkham Asylum and I played Okami for the Wii. At night, we made sushi and watched District 9 on Blu-ray. We had tuna, salmon and shrimp. How appropriate to watch District 9 while eating shrimp (prawn), right? =D
It’s so easy to prepare shrimp for sushi. Also, it’s easier and cheaper to get fresh shrimp in the U.S. than fresh salmon sashimi or tuna. So if you’re fan of shrimp sushi, you should try making it by yourself. I’ll do a quick how-to prepare shrimp for sushi soon. Probably this weekend.
I made two un-flattened shrimp to make a heart, so it was a very romantic Valentine's after all. =D
On Monday (President’s day), it was really nice out so we decided to go into the city to try out a Japanese restaurant called “Hasaki”. We picked the place because I’ve read that they have one of those super high-tech Japanese toilets. (Hasaki is located on 210 East 9th Street, between 2nd 3rd ave)
There’s a side story to this which is our quest to review restaurants with high-tech Japanese toilets. When we went to Curry-ya (a curry restaurant) in the East Village, they had a super high-tech Japanese toilet. (My boyfriend also did a review for Curry-ya, so check it out here.) I was so happy at this little surprise that I did research when I got home and made a list of restaurants in the city that have the high-tech Japanese toilet. Most locations are fancy up-scale Japanese restaurants, but Hasaki was affordable and had very good reviews for the food as well.
I ordered the Twilight Dinner, my boyfriend ordered grilled salmon. I was pleasantly surprised when they brought me my meal. It was a lot of food, and all for $20!
the Twilight Dinner - Salad
the Twilight Dinner - Main course, From top left (clockwise): Kinpira gobo with shiitake, vegetable & fish cake (real fish cake!) & shrimp tempura, grilled fish, Hijiki, Satoimo (Japanese sweet potato) O_O;
the Twilight Dinner - It also comes with either sashimi or sushi!
the Twilight Dinner - Dessert was assorted fresh fruit
It didn’t fit in the picture, but it comes with a bowl of rice and red miso soup. Did I mention all this is just for $20!!! Yes, salad, the whole plate, and desert. The only catch is that the Twilight Dinner is served only from 5:30 PM~6:30PM. Thus the name “Twilight.” Not a reference to the movie
I’m not good at reviewing restaurants, but my boyfriend did it on his blog. So you can read his detailed review of Hasaki here!
If you want to try different kinds of authentic Japanese cuisine, this is well worth it. The portions of each dish is pretty small but everything was very carefully prepared and seasoned just right. I ordered sashimi, so it came with a bowl of rice. But if you order sushi, you don’t get rice separately. The rice bowl is pretty small, but don’t feel embarrassed to order another bowl of rice if you want. Oh another thing, the miso soup here is pretty unique. They use fresh red miso and it’s very robust, so don’t be alarmed by the distinctive aroma.
Of course, we both went to the bathroom to check out the toilet. The lid opens when you get closer, washes & dries your bottom and flushes automatically afterward. Oh and the seat is heated!! Many people think that it’s just another wacky Japanese invention, but this high tech toilet is a lot more ecologically friendly than using paper.
The black part on the seat is a motion sensor, so it opens when you get closer to the toilet, and flushes when you move away from the seat.
The control panel on the wall. "Front" and "Back" on the right of the display screen is to change the angle of water. The one on the left is to change the pressure.
A simpler version is on the top of the control panel. The three buttons on the right is to close the lid, open the lid, and lift the seat.
Only one stall for each men and women's bathroom, but it is very roomy, clean and calming.
My parents house and my brother’s place in Japan have it. It’s very common thing in Japan now. Unfortunately only the women’s room has a super high tech toilet, the men’s room isn’t quite as high tech. (The seat is still heated, and you can control the pressure, and it washes your butt!) My boyfriend looked very sad when I showed him the pictures of women’s bathroom though. He thought it wasn’t fair.
Anyway, the amazing deal on the Twilight Dinner and the super high-tech toilet aren’t the only reasons to visit Hasaki. The interior was tasteful, the service was also very attentive, and they also have a sushi bar as well. We will definitely go back there again!
You can check out the restaurant reviews and see more pictures on my boyfriend’s blog!
Curry-ya in East Village
Hasaki in East Village
Bento #73: BattleBlock Theater
February 12, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: BattleBlock Theater, dan paladin, the behemoth
5 comments
If you’ve seen this bento, this bento or this bento, you may already know that my boyfriend and I are huge fans of the Behemoth. I was so excited when I saw the teaser trailer for “Game #3″ (working title) last year. They’ve been working on this new game for a while. I even made something like this and this for the birthday of Dan Paladin, the art director of the Behemoth.
On Feb 1st, they finally posted a new trailer with the game’s story, and announced the title of the new game. I give you the “BattleBlock Theater” bento!
Bento #73: BattleBlock Theater bento
Created and eaten on: 2/11/2010
Actually my first drawing for my BattleBlock Theater bento was a lot more ambitious… but I stared at it for a while, and realized that there were too many characters and it wasn’t very practical… So I decided to just pick two characters I really liked, Hatty and the Golden Whale and drew another sketch.
After I put sauteed renkon (lotus root) in the bento box, then using plastic wrap I shaped a cube onigiri (rice ball) with plain rice and cooked roe inside, and I made the body with plain rice.
The curled up seaweed almost makes him look like he's smiling. Maybe he's THAT happy about the new trailer for his game.
I thought it’d be too boring to make his top hat with just rice and seaweed, so I made a small roll with fake crab meat, scallions, ham and cooked roe. I cut seaweed into a semicircle shape and put it on the top of the roll (hat). For the brim, I just rolled a little bit of rice in a long strip of seaweed and wrap that around the hat. I had to make sure that the rice was warm so the seaweed would rip.
Hatty's hat is filled with fake crab meat, ham and scallions! Who knew!
I’m not very sure about the story behind the green gem, but in the trailer, Hatty is holding a huge green gem, crying. So I sliced a broccoli stem and cut it into a shape of a gem. I wish I had a little bit more time to cut a couple of layers to stack on top of it so it’d make it more 3D.
I wish I could've worked more on this gem...
For his tears, I chopped purple cabbage, microwaved it with a little bit of water in a bowl. Then I sliced a piece of kamaboko (fish cake) and left it in it. While the kamaboko was being dyed, I moved onto the Golden Whale.
I used an egg yolk of a hard boiled egg which I had cooked the night before, and mixed it with rice. Then using plastic wrap I molded the rice into the shape of the Golden Whale and added plain rice for his stomach.
The color of Golden Whale is a bit off, but he still looks mighty happy.
The game looks like a classic platformer game where there are a lot of platforms which you can jump onto. The platforms are made with blocks so I made Japanese style hamburg patty (see “how to make Japanese style hamburg”) into cubes and cooked it. I used a cube mold for small rice balls, and cooked the cubes on a frying pan, one side at a time. I made the same cube hamburg for Super Smash Bros. Brawl bento and Wall-E bento. It’s not hard to make but it’s time consuming, so I usually make this the night before.
Not only do the cube meatballs look cute, but also they're very easy to pack in a bento and eat!
I couldn’t put all the meat cubes I wanted, so I wrapped asparagus with bacon, cooked it and put it in the bento. I filled the rest of the empty spaces with broccoli and snowpeas.
Maybe I needed a little bit of red (tomato?) in this bento.
When everything is set in place, I started working on cheese and seaweed parts. I usually make cheese and seaweed parts at the very end because cheese dries out or melts and seaweed absorbs moisture pretty fast. I used sliced cheese for the band around the hat on Hatty and for Golden Whale’s mouth. Then I took the dyed kamaboko out of the bowl, washed it and cut it for his tears. For their eyes and Hatty’s mouth I cut seaweed.
Maybe I soaked kamaboko in purple cabbage juice too long. His tears were close to purple.
When I finished the bento I realized that the whole bento was a little too green. So I used a star shaped cutter to cut out cheese, carrot and broccoli stem and sprinkled them around the bento.
Yeah, I cheated and used a cutter.
I actually woke up late on the day I made this bento, but because I had sauteed renkon, cube-hamburg and hard boiled egg already cooked the night before, I was able to finish it. I still wished I could’ve put more colors or different variations of green though. Supposedly there will be tons of characters (customizable!) so I don’t think I’ll ever run out of characters to make a bento of. =D
I don’t usually post videos on my blog but I’ll make an exception for this. (No Golden Whale in this trailer. Check out the channel of the Behemoth on youtube more trailers!)
Hatty:
- rice ball/cube with cooked roe inside, seaweed, kamaboko
- rice, fake crab meat, scallion, ham, seaweed, cheese (for his hat)
Golden Whale:
- rice, egg yolk, seaweed, cheese
Meat cube:
- ground beef, onion, egg, bread
Stars:
- cheese, broccoli stem, carrot
Other food:
- asparagus wrapped with bacon
- broccoli
- snowpeas
- renkon
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
non-bento #22: Laputa robot fossil toast
February 9, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - non bento Tags: Laputa robot, studio ghibli
6 comments
Just like any other kyaraben/bento makers, I have some Japanese kyaraben sites bookmarked. I don’t check those sites too often, but I saw a great idea on this one site the other day and I had to try it for myself.
Non-bento #22: Laputa robot fossil toast
Created and eaten on: 1/24/2010
The site owner, Chibubu-san, makes cute yet delicious kyaraben with very simple ingredients. The site is in Japanese (she has a translating tool on the right top corner), but there are many pictures on the site so I don’t think you need detailed instructions.
Chibubu-san’s E-Obento site ->http://www.e-obento.com
This one was called “fossil toast.” You put a slice of cheese on top of a piece of toast, and cut sausage to make bone structures of something. When you toast it, the cheese around the sausage will melt and it makes it look like a fossil! When I saw the page, it reminded me of Laputa robot in the very first scene when Sheeta sees Laputa robot in Muska’s fortress.
Not much to explain for this one. I just cut up sausage for the robot, placed it on the cheese, and put it in the toaster. This one isn’t complicated but is more about how patient and anal you are.
I made a mistake by not bringing the sliced cheese to the room temperature before toasting. It didn’t melt the way I wanted on the first try… So I lowered the heat, put it back in the toaster and waited for a bit. And the cheese finally started to bubble!
I realized it later that one of his breast plates had fallen off... But I think it made it look more like a real fossil.
Of course, the thinly sliced wheat bread got burned around the edge… but my boyfriend said that it was just crispier than the other part.
Aside from the little burning, I was pretty happy that it really did look like Laputa robot fossil!
After we took pictures of regular fossil Laputa robot toast, I sprinkled powdered seaweed so that it’d look like he was covered with moss.
If you’re using a single slice of cheese like I did, you might find it hard to cut a sausage into small pieces, but you can definitely use a bigger bread and more cheese. I think ham is easier to handle than sausage, but I think sausage will give it more “fossil” look.
This may not be the healthiest snack, but you get to enjoy fossil hunting AND eat it too!
Laputa robot:
- sausage
Other food:
- toast, cheese
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.
setsubun & eho-maki
February 7, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else add a comment
Not a bento blog, but I wanted to do this quick post before I do another bento blog since it’s kind of a seasonal thing. (I should’ve done this a couple of days ago, but I’ve been busy playing a video game lately… )
Last week I made Setsubun Totoro bento for Setsubun to scare off evil spirits. On the night of February 3rd, we got roasted soybeans to throw and I made Eho-maki (a type of sushi roll) for dinner.
I got these roasted soybeans in a fake wooden box ("masu") for Setsubun.
It came with a small Oni mask. His hair was trees with "eco" (as in ecological) written on it, his beard was leaves, and he's got a recycling logo for his nose. Definitely not the scary oni I remember... Who would want to throw beans at such an environmentally friendly oni??
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Bento #72: Setsubun Totoro
February 3, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...) Tags: makkurokurosuke, oni, setsubun, studio ghibli, totoro
4 comments
Today, February 3rd, is the day of Setsubun in Japan. It’s the day to drive away evil spirits, which means to throw roasted soybeans at Oni (evil creature/ogres from Japanese myths). In almost all kindergartens and schools, students make an Oni mask for Setsubun, so that kids can take the mask home, have someone wear it, and throw soybeans at them.
“Roasted soybeans are thrown either out the door or at a member of the family wearing an Oni (demon or ogre) mask, while the throwers chant “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!”. The words roughly translate to “Demons out! Luck in!” (wikipedia)”… bizarre, isn’t it?
Bento #72: Setsubun Totoro
Created and eaten on: 2/2/2010
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bento boxes
February 2, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else 2 comments
A couple of people have asked me in their comments about the bento box that I use, so I asked my boyfriend to snap some pictures of my bento boxes.
If you’ve seen my bento, you may have noticed that I use the same bento box all the time. It’s actually a takeout container from our favorite restaurant. When I made the first bento, I was at my boyfriend’s house, but we weren’t living together and I didn’t have my bento boxes at his house. We used to order takeout a little more often than we do now, and we had so many same containers. He’s been using the same type of container for his lunch even before we started going out.
My boyfriend's bento box on the left, My Totoro bento box (for a special occasion) on the right. *CD is for a size comparison.
Click to continue reading "bento boxes"
