The twin droplets onigiri were made with my palm since I don’t think there’s a special mold for them. I made the rice ball shape first and then pull the top part to make it pointy. The pink one of course made from white rice mixed with pink furikake. The facial details were using nori and carrot (on the white droplet’s cheek) and cheese (on the pink one’s cheek). To fill the space I added some broccoli chunks and sausages.

The other container was filled with chicken karaage, a pair of chicks quail egg (nori, carrot, with food picks to make the chicks) and I also put the good-looking champagne grapes to complete the set.  I really like those grapes, it’s like they perfectly made for bento making purpose.

I could talk about games for hours but I should create another blog for it since I only want to talk about bento and cooking related stuff in this site. So I searched for Mario ghost and I sketched it on my notebook. I knew it will be quite a challenge to make the ghost exactly like in the game.

I never made a complex shape onigiri before so I must figured it out the right approach for it. I made a ball shape onigiri first for the body and then create the ghost tail and two arms separately, then I pasted them one by one into the body part. They didn’t blend well at first so I had to sculpt it more with my fingers. The shape was getting better although it’s not exactly the same as my sketch but I decided to stop tweaking the shape since I was afraid it might break. The last thing I did was push the center body part to make the mouth shape to make the onigiri more 3D like.

As for the details, the eyes were nori cut with emoticons nori cutter added with round shape cheese cut with straw. The mouth was nori cut with scissors. Those triangle fangs were cheese cut with knife. Lastly, the Rolling Stones tongue was made with ham shaped with scissors.

The funny thing about the ghost on those Mario games is while they’re big and scary, actually they’re quite coward since they only chase Mario (and friends) when Mario not facing them and the ghost will stop and shut their eyes everytime Mario is face to face with them ^_^

As for the scared mushrooms, they’re very easy to make, the key is to find cherry tomato with the right size. If we can find it, then we just need to cut the cherry tomato into half, remove the inside and put it on top of the quail. We can use toothpick or half-cooked spaghetti as toothpick replacement (if we afraid someone will accidentally eating the toothpick) to keep the mushroom head and body together.

Once the mushroom intact, we can add the details. The circle can be made using cheese or nori, which ever you’d like. Since the mushroom on Mario games is white (bright colored), I used cheese and cut them with straw. The eyes were nori cut with my trusted emoticons nori punch.

For the filling, I made some lemon chicken and covered them with lettuce to separate the fried dish with the vegetable and rice portion. I put corn to add some bright yellow into the mix, the usual broccoli chunks for green color and to fill those small gaps, and seedless grapes at the bottom part.

This was the fourth Halloween bento I’ve made these past two weeks, I really like making themed bento but I think I should stop making Halloween theme bento since I’m afraid I won’t have good ideas for next year Halloween unless tonight I’ve got another idea for a really simple Halloween theme bento.

I’ve written down the recipe on my notebook along with the teriyaki sauce recipe. We can buy bottled teriyaki sauce at most supermarkets but the local made sauce had awful taste and got this unnatural smell and the Japanese imported sauce is very expensive, so I decided to make one myself.

For the bento, I made the onigiri with red rice, but I mixed them with white rice so the result was pinkish red since 100% red rice will be very purplish and dark (almost like black/gray) and I didn’t want that color for my bento. Maybe if I someday I want to make a night theme bento, I will use full red rice.

The onigiri was made with the cylinder shape rice mold and decorated with cheese cut with the ever useful vegetables cutter. We’ve never eaten rice with cheese before I started bento making but discovered it’s  a great combination, rice flavor added with salty cheese, yum yum

As for the crab sausages, I cut the sausage from the instruction I read on one of my bento mook. I boiled the sausage but the incision didn’t expand well so I fried them and they looked awful Maybe I should used less oil and fried quicker. There’s always next time …

I planned to decorate the quail but I spent too much time decorating the apple. I saw checkered apples in some bento pictures and I really amazed by them so I wanted to try it myself. The apple on the picture was not my first time, I did practice several times when I also did rabbit apple. While it looked good, it took too much time and I won’t do it often.

I ate this together with my wife. The katsu was good, so did the teriyaki sauce (which way better than the local ready made sauce), we both liked it very much.

The lemon chicken was tasted better from the last one but I still like chicken karaage better and easier to make. The sausage king was very easy to make since I wanted a simple shape for my first trial. I only needed to cut the sausage in half  for the body and cut the other half again for the crown. The quail egg was harder to cut since the yolk could get in the way. I used toothpick to combine all the parts and put sesame seed for their eyes.

The heart shape onigiri was made using the rice mold I bought from Daisho, larger than the other rice mold I’ve been using but I couldn’t control the thickness unlike the other mold. The heart shaped cheese was made with the heart shape cookie cutter and the cherry tomato was cut with a knife, very simple.

I didn’t have any idea for the other bento box pair so since I still had lots of apples, apple rabbit again and I was really getting better making them :p. Since I didn’t have any idea at all and haven’t put vegetables, I just cut cucumber, broccoli, and add star shaped carrot in the middle to fill up the spaces, and made today lunch bento.

After I took the picture and looking at them, I realized that I didn’t like this dark blue bento box, I should have picked other colors, at least not as dark as this one. With dark bento box, the overall bento looked gloomy, not as cheerful with bright colored bento box. I should took note that from this moment on I should always buy bright colored bento box.

The lemon chicken itself was a failure since while the frying process was good, I put too much lemon juice on the fried chicken before wrapped them with nori so the taste was sour (but it still look quite delicious on the picture :p).

Again I first trial my new bento equipment, this time I used the 4 shapes rice mold, but I only using three, the heart, triangle, and star. I put the X carrot (cut from alphabet ham & vegetables cutter), tiny star cheese (from the same set of alphabet cutter), and added pink furikake. They didn’t have any meaning, I just put them to add some colors.

I saw the twin little piggy on one of my bento mook I had. Quite easy to make, just need to find the right size of carrot and then cut one fourth circle shape of cucumber for the ear parts. I used toothpick to attach the carrot to the body (quail egg) and add the usual sesame seed for their eyes.

Since I had lots of cucumber and carrot  I add them to my bento, cut them in bites size and put them on the silicon tray (of course they also new, they all new ) along with some kiwi and pear bites.