Bento #86: Sword & Sworcery EP

Some of you who follow me on Twitter might know this but one of my favorite iOS games is Sword & Sworcery EP (available for iOS, Steam, Mac OS and Linux!) by superbrothers. I like it so much that I made a life-size Wolfmother plush for their A/V jam. (I’m still fixing her so she’s ready for to be adopted by her creator. I’m paying for the rushed half-assed job I did… It would’ve saved me a lot of time if I made it right in the first place. Kids, don’t be like me!)

On June 21st this beautiful game made it its way into Japan with the title SUKIMUSU and just in the time for the summer solstice! To celebrate such an amazing event, I had to make a bento.

Bento #86: Sword & Sworcery EP
Created and eaten on: 6/20/2012

I’m horrible at describing games, but if you like point-and-click adventure games with beautiful sound, an amazing story and a wonderful world of pixelated art then you will LOVE this game.

The heroine “The Scythian” has a lot of similar colors in her design, which isn’t easy to make with a color palette limited by available food. So I picked the other easily recognizable (and my favorite!) characters from the game, The Wolfmother and a Worthless Sheep.

The day before:
I drew a sketch for the bento and traced the sheep and Wolfmother onto parchment paper. Then I put seaweed underneath the parchment paper and cut the shape out with an exacto knife. I erased the pencil marks and wiped the paper clean so I can use it for the cheese later. Oh parchment paper, what would I do without you?

I made chicken soboro for the ground (Check out my “How to make soboro” post for the recipe). This can be done way in the advance since you can freeze soboro.

Bento day:
I cut cheese using the parchment paper stencil, then covered the pieces so the surface wouldn’t get dry and put them in the fridge.

I washed & microwaved some broccoli, and sprinkled some “crazy salt” on it. (Crazy salt is an awesome salt with a bunch of herbs and spices in it. It’s quite popular in Japan but you can make it on your own, just Google it!) I cut hot dogs and cooked them on a pan.

Just so you know, I don’t normally cook veggies in the microwave. But for bento, you don’t want your food to have excess water. Steaming veggies is ideal but if you cook them in boiling water you’ll want to dry them well with paper towels or put them in a salad spinner. For just a couple of heads of broccoli it takes too much time and effort to do this (and you know how I’m lazy when it comes to making bento).

Next I “skinned” a red pepper with a knife and used a food cutter for the eyes of the Wolfmother and the other sparkly stuff. I rarely use food cutters, but this time I had to because I was out of straws. I also made the magic mushroom out of cheese, red pepper and carrot. The pink flower I made with kamaboko

I mixed ground black sesame seeds & salt with freshly cooked rice, then filled the top 2/3 of the box with that rice and the bottom 1/3 of it with white rice and soboro.

After that I put broccoli bushes and hot dog trees. I got the cheese from the fridge and put the seaweed on top of it. Then I sprinkled the veggie bits and sesame seeds over the bushes and ground.

Finally I put the red pepper skin for the eyes of the Wolfmother.

Lately Derek has been filming stuff with his Canon T2i and playing with Adobe Premiere CS6 which he got recently, so he decided to film me making my bento! I love the video especially with the beautiful music from Sword & Sworcery EP. But my knife work and lack of finesse make me look like a kid playing with food in the kitchen. Oh well, I hope you enjoy watching it! (All the food scrap seen in the video were later used for stir-fried vegetables for dinner. I never waste food!)

Quick bento tip for summer: It’s getting warm outside so make sure the food is completely cooled down before closing the lid on the bento box!

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

Tagged as: broccoli, capybara games, hot dog, jim guthrie, kamaboko, soboro, superbrothers, sword & sworcery ep, video