Fruity Flowers and an “off day” bento
I recently cleared up something with a friend: I do not make “pretty” bentos every day (the more elaborate ones I do about twice a week). I do make bentos every day because I have to make the kiddo lunch every day. But sometimes rather than looking like Super Mario Brothers or unicorns with rainbow fruit, they just look like this:
Some people say that’s a lot of work still but really this only took me five minutes. I use the sandwich cutter because my kiddo hates crusts and has me cut them off anyhow; the cutter just does it super fast for me. The grapes are stuck on a wooden skewer for fun and the strawberries are just stuck in the extra areas. I put little food picks for fun. Aaaaannnnd done. Five minutes because I took my time with the sandwich, what with helping small people get dressed and all. So bento doesn’t really have to take up much time.
Today’s bento, however, did take a bit of time because I’m trying out a new technique. I think one of my favorite themes in bento is flowers, just because almost anything can be a flower 🙂 I wanted to try my hand at apple carving but we had just gotten some pears in from our CSA box so I used those. I’m definitely going to be trying it with apples. My first try was just ok, I think. Not amazing, but cute enough for now. For the other flower, I used the trusted mandarin orange flower with strawberry center 🙂 This is not the main meal, as you probably guessed by all the fruit. It’s just a fruit side because the main meal was leftover pasta from last night inside a (deep, dark, hard-to-photograph-and-just-pasta-in-it-anyway) thermos.
Main (not pictured) Penne Alfredo with chicken
Sides Carved pear with a blueberry on top (held with a toothpick); clementine orange with strawberry flower; blueberries; green grapes.
Today I used:
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