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 #20 & How to make Slime Marshmallows
December 20, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog - non bento, how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Dragon Quest, marshmallow, Slime
4 comments
My company does a potluck for its Christmas party. It’s fun that you get to taste the dishes cooked by people you know. This year, one of my friends/graphic designer at the company decided to make a recipe book of everyone’s potluck food. I thought of making Totoro cream puffs, Domo-kun chocolate covered marshmallows, but I wanted to make new kyara-sweets. (Kyara-sweets mean “Character themed sweets.”)
Even though I don’t eat sweet stuff that much, I always wanted to make marshmallows. I was going to make some elaborate marshmallows, but since I had to make at least dozens of them I had to pick a simpler character. As I was looking through recipes, the one that looks like Hershey’s kisses reminded me of Slimes from Dragon Quest. (“Dragon Warrior” in English) So I decided to make Slimes! NOTE: Sorry for the quality of the pictures for the How-to. I shot them myself since I made this when my boyfriend wasn’t home. >_<
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How to make Max
October 17, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
4 comments
[How to make Max from Where the Wild Things Are] (without the crown)
- rice
- ham (or bologna, turkey, etc…)
- sliced cheddar cheese
- seaweed
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use a paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– scissors
Click to continue reading "How to make Max"
How to make Moishe
October 16, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
1 comment so far
[How to make Moishe from Where the Wild Things Are]
- rice
- ham (or bologna, turkey, etc…)
- sliced cheddar cheese
- seaweed
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use a paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– scissors
Click to continue reading "How to make Moishe"
How to make Bernard
October 15, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
1 comment so far
[How to make Bernard from Where the Wild Things Are]
- rice
- black sesame seed
- seaweed
- sliced cheese
- radish or white-ish sliced cheese or kamaboko (fish cake), or even left over hard boiled egg white from mashed potato. In other words, you can use any white food!
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use a paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– scissors
– round plastic cap
Click to continue reading "How to make Bernard"
How to make Emil
October 15, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
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[How to make Emil from Where the Wild Things Are]
- mashed yam
- seaweed
- sliced cheese
- radish or white-ish sliced cheese or kamaboko (fish cake), or even left over hard boiled egg white from mashed potato. In other words, you can use any white food!
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– round plastic cap
Click to continue reading "How to make Emil"
How to make Tzippy
October 14, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
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[How to make Tzippy from Where the Wild Things Are]
- spaghetti
- ketchup (or tomato sauce)
- ham (or bologna, turkey, etc…)
- sliced cheddar cheese
- seaweed
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use a paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– scissors
– round plastic cap
Click to continue reading "How to make Tzippy"
How to make Aaron
October 14, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
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[How to make Aaron from Where the Wild Things Are]
- spaghetti
- mashed potato
*- egg yolk
- sliced cheddar cheese
- seaweed
- radish or white-ish sliced cheese or kamaboko (fish cake), or even left over hard boiled egg white from mashed potato. In other words, you can use any white food!
– cupcake cup (I used foil cupcake cups, but if you need to microwave your food, use paper cupcake cup instead. I’ve tried it, and the paper cup handled the moisture pretty well.)
– hole punch
– straw
– scissors
– round plastic cap
*optional
Click to continue reading "How to make Aaron"
How to make Ponyo’s sisters
September 28, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: ponyo, studio ghibli
6 comments
When I made the “Ponyo bento” I made bunch of Ponyo’s sisters. It was very easy, and you can make it with only four ingredients, so I thought I’d share it with you!
[How to make Ponyo sisters]
- Ham!
- Grape tomatoes (of course, you can use regular cherry tomato, but where I live, grape tomatoes are a LOT cheaper, and for Ponyo’s sister, it looks kind of better than regular cherry tomato.)
- Sliced cheddar cheese
- Black sesame seed
– Tweezers (not necessary but it’s super useful)
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How to make sheep rice ball
August 13, 2009
Posted by AnnaTheRed in how-to (all), how-to - characters (Ghibli, video game, Wall-E) Tags: farm bento, onigiri, rice ball, sheep
12 comments
My day job, an online card game Alteil did a HUGE system update for the game about a week ago. So I’ve been online, writing emails, checking for bugs, chatting with the Japanese developers (Alteil is originally a Japanese game, my company brought it over to the U.S.) days and nights… and I just couldn’t make the time to update my blog. T_T
Anyway, I still wanted to do a how-to on something simple, so I was looking at my old bento, and decided to do this one. This is something I made for my only original bento “Farm bento.” It’s sooo easy and you don’t need too many ingredients, and with right tools, it’s even easier!
I made this bento a long time ago. The sheep are on the left side.
[How to make sheep rice ball]
- sticky rice (Any regular Japanese or Korean rice is “sticky rice”)
- ham (or cheddar cheese)
- seaweed
- *cheese
- *anything you want to put in the rice ball
– *hole punch
*optional
