Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Halloween Bento Boxes

 We needed packed lunches today, and I thought I would surprise the kids with Halloween themed lunches. They loved them!

In case you are interested in what everything is made of:
The ghosts are onigiri, made by squishing sushi rice into a cookie cutter to mold it into a ghost shape. I put the cookie cutter on a plate to do this, and frequently dip my fingers into a bowl of water to keep the rice from sticking too bad. After carefully removing the cookie cutter, the rice onigiri can be gently picked up and placed into the bento box. The eyes and mouth are made from black olives (since my son gave me grief about using nori), which I cut with a piece of drinking straw that I squeezed slightly to give it an oval shape. I then placed them in the general area of the face and used a toothpick to get them just where I wanted and push them into the rice.

Surrounding the ghosts are just some seasoned black beans and a bit of broccoli. I was trying to make it look like grass and the night sky, and I was not super happy with how it turned out, but it is only lunch after all.
The pumpkins are clementine oranges that I cut jack-o-lantern faces into. I had seen this idea before and was looking forward to trying it. It was really quite fun this morning before the kids got up, and the smell started off my morning nicely. You just poke an outline of the shapes that you want to cut out with a toothpick. Then, drag the toothpick around the outline like a knife, connecting all of the holes you poked. Finally, pry the shape out and scrape the pith away as much as you can, again using the toothpick. I made two faces on opposite sides of the oranges, and then sliced the orange in half so that I could fit them in the bento boxes. I added some of my leaf picks into them to make them look slightly more pumpkin-ish.

Surrounding the pumpkins is just plain blueberries.




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