Jack O' Lantern

I found a pumpkin cutter in my bento supplies and it fit the carrots perfectly, so I went with it. Pippy desired a sauce of some kind, so we went with hoisin sauce.

Her friends at school don't believe that I get up and cook in the morning, but that I just heat things in the microwave. That isn't entirely untrue, sometimes I do use leftovers or a frozen convenience food that is heated in the microwave. More often though I actually do the cooking first thing in the morning, as I did today. What makes it easier is that she likes most of her vegetables raw, so I don't always have to cook those.

She ate yesterday's bento right up. I didn't ask her about the broccoli that I had tossed with some mirin and a touch of salt, but judging from the empty box, my guess is that she liked it. Her only complaint was that there wasn't enough dumpling sauce. Apparently it has a much lighter flavor than soy. I don't see it, but I don't have to eat it.

On the bottom is Pippy's favorite thing, rice, covered with hoisin because the little bottles don't have enough for her, plus it is thick and I don't have an appropriate bottle. On the top I cut out some pumpkin shapes with carrots and daikon pickles. The front one has a little face that I punched out of nori with a nori punch. Next to that is some chicken thigh strips that were sauteed and then simmered in some hoisin. I found some snow peas that were in excellent condition, so I put those in there too. What you don't see is the figs I placed under the carrots for height.

While I am by no means adept at making bentos, I am getting better with the packing of them as I go along.  It helps that I now have boxes with bands, whereas last year her box didn't have one. Towards the end I started using a thick rubber band though.