I first saw this monkey design in one of my Japanese cake decoration book, the author was Mari Miyazawa. The name is not familiar, but if you’re a bento lover you probably knew her site, www.e-obento.com. I really inspired by her bento and cake decoration works, they’re all amazing and very creative, with great attention to details. The amazing thing is that she can make a living by making bento and food decoration, which I hope that I can follow her foot-step someday.

Back to the monkey, the original design is using a burger bun for the head, but I wanted to make smaller head so I prepared a dinner roll instead. The ears were made with a half slice of ham (each) folded to make ear shape. The face was from a slice of cheese cut with a big bottle cap. The ‘W’ shape was cut with a heart shape cookie cutter (just the top half part). The monkey’s tongue was from a smoked beef cut with a big straw. And the eyes were slice of black olive, cut into half.

I knew the final result would look great since I already saw it, but I really amazed about the simplicity of the whole design but yet we can also feel the complexity of it. Hmmm, I just feel like I’m writing an art review like when I was in my art class back in college. Better back to the bento talk.

So after the monkey was finished, I put it into a bento box, added corn, broccoli chunks, a quail egg, a cherry tomato, and a mini orange with an elephant food pick.  We can eat the whole mini orange (yes, the skin also edible, but not the seeds) but it taste bad, the normal mandarin orange or California orange are way much tastier, I just bought them because they looked cute and will look good to be put inside bento boxes.

I have made several designs, so this is the easiest one to make. A beef burger (we can’t see the meat but it’s at the back of the bread ) with cheese, a half mandarin orange, a quail egg, two cherry tomatoes; all made into pumpkin jacks. All facial details were nori, cut with scissors, the smaller the pieces the harder to cut but I managed to do that somehow after many failed cut.

I used broccoli chunks and flower sausages to fill up the extra spaces. Like always, the longest part was cutting the nori while it only took two minutes to put the whole thing into the box.

Speaking of Halloween, we never celebrate it or do something special for it. I knew Halloween tradition only from the American movies I watched, I think it will be fun having kids wearing Halloween costumes doing trick or treat in the neighborhood. But nowadays we have these Halloween parties during October weeks at night clubs and other places, I guess it’s just another reason from the owners to attract customers to their places; I think it’s the same like those Christmas sales, Easter sales, Mother’s Day sales, Back to School sales, etc. etc. Some schools (like Jojo’s school) also are having their Halloween party, next week I must prepare Harry Potter theme costume for Jojo to wear, sigh … I only wish that they informed us sooner so I can make better preparation. I guess the wizard hat is easy to make, but I really need some help for the robe.

The burger meat was made with ground beef, bread, onion, and some seasoning. The double onigiri on top and bottom of the burger meat and the burger meat also was shaped with the cylinder rice mold so they’re in the same size. To called it grilled onigiri was a bit incorrect since I didn’t grill them but just put them on a low heated frying pan without cooking oil at all. The result was really good, it had great smell and the frying process added more flavor to it.

For the bento box arrangement, I put the burger first, then the meatball and cherry tomato, then corn and peas to be the based for the quail bunny ears. The bunny face was made with pea for the nose, pea skin cut with emoticon vegetables cutter for those eyes and mouth, and carrot cut with straw for the cheeks.

Again I didn’t have good idea for the other box, I just put a half mandarin orange and arrange some vegetables in tidy fashion.