busy wonderful week and Bento workshop
March 4, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...) Tags: makkurokurosuke, mini-totoro, totoro
6 comments
Oh where do I start…
The short version of the story is, I’ve been super busy and so many wonderful things happened!
Here’s the long version.
This past week, I had visitors from Japan at work for the online card game I work for. They were in NYC from Monday through Thursday. I’m the only Japanese English speaker in my team, so that means I was interpreting them from 10 AM to… whenever we finished working/our meeting/business dinner everyday. It wasn’t too bad this time though. When they visited us two years ago, we all stayed at the office until 2:00 AM!
They left on Friday morning as a huge snow storm hit NYC. I usually wouldn’t mind snow, but the problem was I had to get to Boston Friday night to teach a bento workshop at Wellesley college on Saturday. Yes! Me, teaching a workshop! O_O I’m so clumsy and not very skilled (no, really), I would never have done this on my own but this is a very special case. My boyfriend’s sister is a Jewett Gallery Director & Applied Arts Coordinator at Wellesley college, and she encouraged me to do this workshop.
My boyfriend and I headed to Boston on Friday night, and we were worried about the snow situation in Boston. But to our surprise, it didn’t snow at all in Boston on Friday. His sister got most of the food, tools and appliances ready, all we had to do was show up.
We had the workshop in the kitchen in one the dorms on campus, and this kitchen was gigantic! We cleaned the kitchen, laid out some tools and waited. The workshop was from 1:00~4:00, and around 12:50, a couple of people showed up. I was told that 20 people had signed up, but sometimes the students bail out at the last minute, so I was just relieved that at least someone showed up. Then around 12:55, 15~16 people came into the room. By 1:00, 21 students were in the kitchen. We even had an extra person!
The way we did it was I’d demonstrate first and say “Now you do this!” then they’d work on their bento, and when they were about to be done, I’d do another demonstration. I don’t think I explained anything, actually. I just showed them how.
I doodled this before the workshop and gave it to each student. A sketch always helps!
Three hours flew by and everyone started finishing the bento. Between each demonstration, I was too busy getting ready for the next demonstration and didn’t get to see students’ bento too much. (Yes, I’m a horrible workshop teacher. T_T) I was completely speechless when I saw their bento in the end. They were all really well done and absolutely adorable! It was the first kyaraben they made for most of them. Actually, my Totoro had huge rabbit-like ears, and didn’t look very good. If you put mine next to any of the bento they made, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one was mine. I really wish I could’ve talked to everyone more. That’s the only thing I regret.
This was mine. Look at how HUGE his ears are! Oh and I even forgot to put his mouth.
The radishes we got came in various sizes, and I picked the biggest one! Great for a demonstration, but it didn't fit in my bento, so I ate it there.
I can’t describe how awesome their bento looked with my poor vocabulary, I’ll post the amazing creations by the students here.
I’d like to thank Clara for organizing this workshop and everyone who participated! And also my boyfriend for cooking asparagus wrapped with bacon for 21 people!
Oh and the bento workshop wasn’t the only wonderful thing… More wonderful things to be posted, but I think I’m going to do a how-to next, especially since I’ve been very lazy on posting actual food related stuff.
Go check out more pictures of bento on Jewett Gallery’s flickr page.
Also you can read the blog post (written by Clara) about the bento workshop.
Bento #74: Oruchuban Ebichu
February 23, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - anime Tags: heart shape, oruchuban ebichu
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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.
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.
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 #71: Monkey Magic from Ouendan
January 29, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game Tags: Monkey Magic, Ouendan
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My boyfriend owns many DS games, and usually once he plays, he moves onto a new game. But there’s one game he still plays once in a while, and that’s “Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!” (“Elite Beat Agents” in the U.S.)
Bento #71: Monkey Magic from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!
Created and eaten on: 1/25/2010
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Bento #70: Babar
January 27, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - american Tags: Babar
4 comments
I usually sleep in on Saturday morning. When I get up, I watch “qubo.” Qubo is programming for kids. We don’t have cable TV, so there’s not much choice, but I do like a couple of shows that are on qubo on Saturday morning. This one is a favorite of ours.
Bento #70: Babar
Created and eaten on: 1/23/2010
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Bento #69: Nekobus #3
January 19, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...) Tags: makkurokurosuke, nekobus, studio ghibli, totoro
6 comments
Hooray! I finally made the first kyaraben of this year!
I wanted to make it a lot sooner, but I just couldn’t come up with an idea. I thought of making a different/easier bento but I really wanted the first kyaraben to be “new year themed.” I was worried about not finishing it on time since I was so out of touch, so I made it on our day-off.
Bento #69: Neko bus #3
Created and eaten on: 1/18/2010
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non-bento #21: kagami-”onigiri” Totoro
January 7, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: rice ball, studio ghibli, totoro
3 comments
For those who have missed my previous post… Kagami-mochi is a decoration for the New Year in Japan. It’s made with 2~3 round rice cakes stacked on top of each other. Traditionally, you break it and eat it on the second Saturday or Sunday of January. I wanted to make some easy non-bento food on January 1st. It was really nothing special but I thought I’d just post some more pictures of this anyway.
Non-bento #21: Kagami-”onigiri” Totoro
Created and eaten on: 1/1/2010
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Happy Happy New Year!
January 1, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else, bento blog (all) Tags: soba, studio ghibli, totoro
1 comment so far
We didn’t go out on New year’s eve. We stayed home and I cooked “toshikoshi soba,” and we just watched the ball drop on TV. “Toshikoshi-soba” means “the end of the year soba noodle.” In Japan, people eat soba at night before the year’s over. Any soba eaten on the night of December 31st is “toshikoshi-soba.” What kind of soba you’ll eat depends on your family tradition, where you’re from, etc… For us, I just cooked soba and ate it with a little bit of scallions, kamaboko (fish cake), carrot and enoki.
Our toshikoshi soba 2009!
And to start off 2010, I made this for my boyfriend’s brunch! It’s not very special, but since we make rice balls for brunch almost every weekend, I thought I’d play with it a little this morning. I’ll do a post about this later, but here’s a picture.
It’s “kagami-mochi” Totoro! Well, it’s not mochi (rice cake), but I decided to stack them on top of each other like “kagami-mochi.”
Just like my any other Totoro, they’re made with rice mixed with black sesame seed and seaweed powder, stuffed with tarako (cod roe), and the chibi-Totoro is made with a quail egg.
Kagami-mochi is a decoration for the New Year in Japan. It’s made with 2~3 round rice cakes stacked on top of each other. Traditionally, you break it and eat it on the second Saturday or Sunday of January. But my grandma wasn’t that strict about when we broke the kagami-mochi though. I remember her beating the crap out of a kagami-mochi with the back of a knife because mochi gets rock hard after being displayed for a couple of days. (A lot of time, people use a mallet or hammer to break it.) Most of kagami-mochi sold in a store is shrink-wrapped now so it will never get too hard or moldy. We stopped by at Sunrise mart (a local Japanese grocery store) the other day and got ourselves a “kagami-mochi.”
This year is the year of tiger, so it came with a cute little tiger figure.
Have a happy new year, everyone!
新年明けましておめでとうございます。
今年もどうぞよろしくお願いいたします。
アンナ
