{"id":390,"date":"2009-05-05T15:33:46","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T20:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=390"},"modified":"2009-05-05T15:33:46","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T20:33:46","slug":"bento-without-the-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/05\/bento-without-the-gear\/","title":{"rendered":"Bento without the Gear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

\"A
A bento made with whatever I could scrounge in the kitchen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To make a point, I wanted to make a bento that:<\/p>\n

A)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did not use a specialty bento box.<\/p>\n

B)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only used what I had on hand in the house and,<\/p>\n

C)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did not use any specialty bento-making equipment.<\/p>\n

So, basically, I tried to make a bento based on what one can reasonably find in a kitchen.\u00a0 Cookie cutters that I’d owned 15 years were arbitrarily deemed okay, but vegetable cutters bought for bento purposes were not.\u00a0 I decided that I wouldn’t even use an Onigiri mold.<\/p>\n

The container is a 2C (550ml to those of you across the Pond) flat Rubbermaid container that I think was meant to be a sandwich container.\u00a0 This is more or less a standard volume for any Japanese bento you’ll buy.<\/p>\n

As it happened, I did not use any sort of cutters.\u00a0 This was an interesting challenge, because I’m getting low on veggies and fruits, and I wanted to make it out of stuff I ordinarily had in the house.\u00a0 I decided that for the sake of the experiment, I would not<\/em> go grocery shopping for anything, but use what I had in the kitchen.\u00a0 I really frowned over how to make the fishies when I realized that giving the impression <\/em>of fishie was plenty.\u00a0 Detail wasn’t important, only impression and contrast.<\/p>\n

So, the rice is regular rice only with blue food coloring added to the water while cooking.\u00a0 It tastes like rice.\u00a0 The fishies are grape tomatoes.\u00a0 The seaweed is lettuce, the rocks are stir-fried chicken breast and the orange things that I don’t know what they should represent are carrots.\u00a0 I added some chopped cucumber for a little more green.<\/p>\n

This is also a million times fancier than anything I ordinarily do and was still a bit off-the-cuff.\u00a0 I’ve seen seascapes that would blow your mind.\u00a0 It’s just that I didn’t want to spend more than 20 minutes on it, so this is what I did.\u00a0 But notice that with a small time investment, you can make some incredibly cute bento without spending extra money on all the “cute” stuff.\u00a0 The container was a flipping 2 cup sandwich style container, for heaven’s sake!<\/p>\n

\"The
The Furoshiki is a bandana I had lying around from the last CampCon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notice that I didn’t use anything special for the wrap, either.\u00a0 It’s just a bandana I had lying around, as well as the chopsticks I’ve had since forevah.<\/p>\n

I commented I didn’t use any specialty bento gear and my son gave me an odd look and said, “I thought your bento gear was your brain<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Why yes, I am proud of my son!\u00a0 Even if he didn’t<\/em> want this bento for his school lunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To make a point, I wanted to make a bento that: A)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did not use a specialty bento box. B)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only used what I had on hand in the house and, C)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did not use any specialty bento-making equipment. So, basically, I tried to make a bento based on what one can reasonably find in … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bento without the Gear”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bento"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}