More bento

I'm going to have to stop posting these here. Hmmm... Maybe I'll put them on my accountability forum... or just post them once a week. LOL One salad and sandwich and one box of snacks, including peanut butter and apple.

My first bento

Bento is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. It can be very elaborate and aesthetically pleasing and it is considered an essential skill of a Japanese housewife to be able to prepare an appealing boxed lunch. Of course, like anything, we Americans massacre the concept, however, I shall call this a bento because I like the word better than lunchbox.
Above: An unpeeled carrot with the ends cut off, then sliced in half (the health is in the peel, apparently). Radishes, green pepper slices, tomato-basil chips, nuts, an individual serving of pears, a mini-box of raisins, wheat crackers with cheese in the green container, a beef sandwich and two caramel rice bites.

Below: Chef's Salad with low fat dressing in a snack bag. I think I'll buy those little jewelry zip bags at the craft store for this. They are a better size. There's no way I'm going to get around to washing the nifty containers sold for bento sauces, so I'm aiming for less-dangerous and disposable...yeah.

This is breakfast, lunch, and snack, which is why two boxes. I told DH not to get used to this yet because it's a lot of work (and he needs to remember to bring back the boxes...) but I hope making this into "art" instead of a "chore" will benefit his health and his appetite.

Thanks to my cousin, Hanna, for the visual inspiration in Friday Five.

Oh Look! Clay!

Whilst purchasing books for the kids' school, I also found something for myself... "How to Make Clay Characters" by Maureen Carlson. This is my first attempt to follow her instructions.

I think next time I'll make the head first and fit the body to it. Also, I'm noticing multiple other flaws. LOL Next time it will be better looking, I hope! However, I'm obviously proud enough of this accomplishment to post it here, so... *shrug*

Pancake Art

I usually make only one or two items per child on shaped pancake days. This time it was one, but I tried to make them better than usual. Princess was out with Daddy for supper. (The rest of the pancakes were boring and round.)

Pixie's Puppy
(I do think this turned out better than any other pancake shape I've ever made)

Munchkin's Tank

The secret of successful blogging...

It will take time to process...

all the fun we had on our anniversary getaway. DH asked me what my favorite part was, and I still don't know. Perhaps my favorite was just the relaxing time together as we wandered from one activity to the next.

EconoLodge at the Dells is a good hotel, by the way. They aren't super-expensive and you can get a whirlpool room, which is essential if you're going to hike all over creation. We looked at the pricey b&b-style places and decided we wanted to spend more on having fun than on the cool decor and ambiance of a room.

We went to the Rick Wilcox Magic Show. Rick had great stage-presence. Arrogance annoys me, and there wasn't any. For a successful magician, he presented himself in a humble and humorous manner. His terminology made sure the audience knew everything was illusion, but they made the illusions seem very real. The fact that he works with his wife made the whole show even better.

And DH was called up on stage to test the bars for the climbing through the jail window trick. (He says you can't see the audience from the stage.) He inspected the bars, but not the frame Rick placed them in ... hmmm ... something fishy going on there? In all, an excellent experience. I highly recommend it, especially for families with kids.

I have some pictures from our kayaking experience. We went down a narrow inlet and enjoyed a calm float. Once out on the lake, however, there were too many people and speedboats and such. If I'm going to kayak again, it will be "in nature" not on a water-playground.



We toured a winery and did a wine-tasting, confirming that I do not like wine which I've always thought might be the case. Too many thermometers straight from a jar of alcohol when I was a child--ick! The wine might be good if not for the alcohol flavor overshadowing everything else.

We allowed ourselves to be trapped by Ripley's Believe it or Not and examined the very strange collection, including a mummified head of a murderer, which is just gross.

We hunted for a candy store that would sell us fudge in amounts smaller than 1/2 pound, which is too much to eat at one time and too much to carry around in a pocket to eat later. Eventually I found a place that had put out fudge scrapings for sampling and contented myself with a smidgen of a taste. Chocolate caramel (sold in reasonable portions) is yummy, however! And DH was kind enough to spend unreasonable amounts of cash on iced coffee for my consumption.

It was hot out there!

We did more stuff, but this blog is getting long, and I'm sure you want to stop reading. In all, we had fun and spent lots of time together. A good anniversary.

A Month of Cakes - 3

This was my nephew's cake. His lighthouse is rice-krispie treats, which are lighter and (I hoped) wouldn't fall down like cake. It did, (thankfully at home) and I had to hack off the green portion of fondant and do some creative restructuring. However, fondant GOOD! I like the smooth texture it had on the house and will use it again.

You do not see the green bushes I put around the base of the tower, because that was done after transport, and the tower was carried seperately in a cup, so as to prevent a rerun of the previous collapse and an end to my sanity.

My DH is right. I need to stop baking my own cakes. This one turned out to be more of a cookie in texture. However, it did NOT split in half before we reached the party. I wish someone would make a boxed cake that would hold it's shape for carving. *grin*

 

A Month of Cakes - 2

This was Pixie's cake. It isn't particularly impressive because we decided to have the party for her on Father's Day (when everyone would already be there) the day before. So I ran to the store, picked up a bundt cake, and cut and pasted far into the night. She liked it, anyway. But next year her cake will be extra special just to make up for this monstrosity.

 

A Month of Cakes - 1

I didn't bake the cake, or the cookies that were chopped up and painted for the butterfly, but I'm now convinced that store-bought is the way to go in June, anyway. Too many cakes!!! Do you know how many birthdays our family has in June? Not telling. But I didn't make cakes for some of 'em.

Well, this one was for our neighbor's daughter. The only hard part was the butterfly, and that was just fun. If it had worked right, (meaning I could figure out how to make things stand up) then you'd be able to see the painted underside of the wings too.

 

A closeup

Well, this is the best of the flowers once they'd been stuck on the cake. My favorite got green frosting in it somehow, and several had other interesting things happen to them, like smudges during painting and construction. I will certainly have a better idea of what to expect next time. New mediums are fun to play with, but also mistakes are inevitable and I really should have made the flowers the day before... or over several days. I'm adding mint next time. This substance is the same as that in Necco candy wafers, if I remember correctly, so flavorings should simply make them better (and edible in the grown-up sense. Powdered sugar alone in concentrate is only for the brave or the extreme sweet fanatic).

Flower and basket weave

At this point the interior structure of my cake was already collapsing. *weep, moan* But this is eight hours of work before it fell apart before my eyes. MIL got to see it, held together by me pushing the two sides in with my fingers inelegantly buried in the frosting. I did a restructure for the presentation and cut off the most presentable bit of basket-weave, then plated it with a couple of the gum-paste flowers and greenery and a candle. The chocolate-chocolate-chocolate chip cake and chocolate-chocolate chip frosting tasted as they were meant to anyhow.

A Princess sort of cake. The windows, sign, pond and greenhouse were made of melted candy and the arbor and rocks are gum-paste. The logs are broken pretzel sticks. *grin* The girls begged to each have a taste of the rocks.

Family hike and mushrooms

Mom and Dad stopped by for a week last week and we went for a walk in the woods and shopping and picnics and built a shelf for the homeschool books I had stacked on the floor; but I'll just focus on the walk in the woods for tonight.

We were attempting to walk to the park on the other side of the wetlands behind our place, but never found it. We did find mushrooms, though.














Apparently, discovering the names of mushrooms isn't something one can do online. Now I have to go to the library. Aren't those cool, though?

Bad Blogger!!!! Grrr....

I had a wonderful long post written about yesterday and Blogger ate it! So now you get to see my fingernails and maybe I'll post again when I'm not all irritated. Grrr!

Celebratory nails:

Munchkin's Birthday Cake!

I found chocolate cars in the store, and the idea grew from there. *grin* Car carrier anyone?

My car cake...