The Road to 200

Alrighty, it is now 1:52 AM on Friday and I am obviously tired out of my mind and starving to boot. However, I brushed my teeth to ensure that I wouldn't eat something just before going to bed. No guarantees on correct spelling and grammar in this post though.

As I mentioned yesterday, the kiddie terrors put a damper on my Thursday plans, so I had to continue my bento tonight. This one took me a lot longer than the first, mostly because the food preparation took so much time. I took three hours yesterday to cook food and today I took another three hours to complete the embellishments, bringing this gigantic mass of Sanrio lunch to six hours preparation time. Here it is!! (click it for bigger photo)



Before I start describing just how messed up in the head I am, let me just say that I'm not all that pleased with the results I got from this landmark lunchie. I had envisioned something much more vibrant in color and my favorite character, Pochacco, ended up looking the worst of the little guys. I think it still looks cute and all, but it's nowhere near the one I'd put together in my head.

There is food underneath the characters and so at the top I have oyako donburi sprinkled with chopped wheatgrass, since I had no green onions. I thought this was amusing since we watched the finale of Celebrity Apprentice last night and so much attention was given to wheatgrass, which I just so happen to be growing all over my house and at work. Too funny!! On the right side there is some vegetable yakisoba, on the bottom I have little squares of Okinawan sweet potato. People ask me about the potato all the time and to answer the inevitable question again: No, I do not dye the potato. It is naturally colored that way. On the left I have shelled edamame.


First up, to get rid of my shame early, is what is supposed to be Pochacco. I think I just picked a bad picture of him to copy and it was too small as well. He's made out of nori, pear skin (shirt), egg, and toasted sesame seeds. All the little characters sit on a d'anjou pear star. I thought afterwards that I should have dyed it yellow to add more color, but by then I had already stuck Bad Badtz and Keroppi on, so it was basically too late. *sob* Also, I had wanted to use my star shaped Whale of a Punch, but it's gone AWOL. I suspect either Baby Girl or Buddy have hidden it in a secret place and have forgotten where already. So anyway, that star is freehand!

I had previously used white cheese or d'anjou pear to make white things but finally figured out something even better! Boiled egg whites! With all the boiled eggs still sitting in the fridge, I realized that it would make the perfect white carving material. It worked out great for all the characters. I am so unhappy with Pochacco that I wasn't going to take a close-up picture of him. But then I realized that he's sitting on top of my donburi and I didn't want him to get offended and pee all over my food. He is a dog after all...


Monkichi is a rather old Sanrio character from when I was in high school. I'm not sure a lot of kids nowadays would recognize him. I made him out of hotdog skin. You can kinda see how he is slightly curled, which actually turned out good because it made him look more 3D. The lighter parts of him are hotdog as well, only the inside part is showing outwards. I forgot to make him his two cheeks, but after six hours I no longer give a crap.


Picke Bicke is another older character that you don't see around much anymore. He's a cute little mouse that should have a tail with a red ribbon on it, but it was too microscopic of an effort for me to undertake. His ears are made out of Okinawan sweet potato, his body is made out of sliced ham, and the white parts on him are boiled egg. His eyes and nose are toasted sesame seeds, which I trimmed to give them less of a pointy shape.


Chococat was nice and simple and I took us to McDonald's and made Mr. Pikko run out and grab a straw for me to cut out his eyes easily. I should have had my own straws at home, but since my children like to drink with at least 5 straws at a time, we run out pretty quick. His eyes and mouth are made out of boiled egg and nori. I used a hole puncher to make his nori pupils. His collar is boiled egg dyed yellow and his nose is a little bit of hotdog. He's quite happy to be sleeping on a bed of edamame!


For some reason, Keroppi was very difficult to photograph. I had to try 4 different angles and finally got one that didn't have too much shadow. Same as the last time I made him, his face is made out of d'anjou pear skin. This time though, his eyes are made with boiled egg instead of cheese and his shirt (tomato skin) is not striped this time. I forgot to give him cheeks too!! :(


I have saved the Badtz for last. He's such a great character and if Pochacco is my cutie pie favorite, Bad Badtz is my favorite Sanrio character with attitude. He's of course, being a rascal and sticking tongue at you, no doubt thinking several kinds of @*#& thoughts. I cut him out of nori and then put egg white eyes and tummy on top. His beak is the same as Chococat's collar, egg white dyed yellow. His tongue is made out of tomato skin and nori. He was by far my favorite to make!!

In the middle of all of them I have the Queen of them all, Hello Kitty. Her ribbon is made out of red-dyed pear. The onigiri is to eat with the donburi. I lined the whole box with lettuce to make it look a little more frilly. I still wish I'd thought early on to dye the pear stars yellow. That would have looked great! I had tried to make colored egg omelettes to wrap my food into so that I could have brightly colored sections of egg wrapped food. The egg stuff just wasn't meant to be for some reason.

For one, I was cracking the five eggs needed for the donburi and on the fifth egg, I crack it open and blood comes pouring out. I was SO disgusted and didn't feel like scooping it out. What a total waste of 5 eggs. And then, I'm preparing the omelette mix when I add in the red coloring to make it pink. What do I get? ORANGE EGG MIX! Grrrr!! I tried cooking it, but it just didn't look good. I ended up using it to wrap some string beans in. You can see a few down by Badtzmaru. I'd also wanted to use a pink bento box, but I didn't have any that were big enough for what I needed.

I had more to talk about, but right now my eyes are closing involuntarily. I hope you guys like it. Tomorrow I probably won't eat anyone except Hello Kitty. I'll line them up in the bento cover and they can watch me eat lunch.