Goldfish Bento

Bento #108

I packed bento for Kimberly on Tuesday and Wednesday, but didn't have enough time to take pictures of the one on Tuesday. Couldn't load up Wednesday's bento cos it's in the other laptop left in my office, so this is Thursday's bento.

It's a goldfish bento.





I wanted to do this goldfish thing a long time ago but didn't have the opportunity to fix it. Whenever I am minded to, the quail eggs are either out of stock or they are not sold at the stores I went to. That's also probably why quail eggs chickies are never prominent in my bento posts. Ha ha.

Finally got some quail eggs the other day and decide to fix this bento.

I fried some noodles again my breakfast and hubby's breakfast. I thought Kimberly can try noodle for her bento that day and decided to top the goldfish quail eggs on top of it.

As some of you may have noticed, kyaraben bento is probably just a 5 to 15 minutes extension of a normal bento, depending on how much details you put onto it.




Mostly, all you have to do is fix a character on top of the whole food, or on top of a portion of the bento box; be it ham based, weiner based, kamaboko based, vegetable based, egg based. Whichever food you can make character out of, really !

In this case, it's quail eggs.

Simple, right?

Instead of plain quail eggs and plain round carrots, just use a heart shaped cutter and cut out the fins. Then cut out a similar shape in carrot and replace it over the eggs to make the fin.

Cut another heart from a carrot circle in a bigger size and place it behind the quail eggs for the tails. Secure the fish's tails with foodpicks.

Add nori eyes and hey presto, you got goldfish. It's really fast work if you use a cutter and worth the extra 5 minutes considering the effect it has on my otherwise visually lacking bento.

This is my first attempt, so the sides off the goldfish's fins are kind of thin and stretchy. You may want to place the cutter over a thicker part off egg white instead. I didn't realise that egg whites on the side I cut was that thin.

Kimberly's fried noodle was topped with snap peas bits. Since I ran out of lettuce, I lined the noodles with slices of zucchini.



Kimberly had liked the mandarin oranges that I packed for her the day before, and she asked for it again. I added a slice of cucumber and a Hello Kitty print carrot on top of the orange because I had already done the nori eyes and mouth as ornamental touches on the orange the day before. The carrot was going to be a fish shaped carrot but she asked for a Hello Kitty print.

Added cherries on the side cos it's the only other fruit I have in my fridge right now.

By the way, if you are going to be packing mandarin for your kid's bento box, it pays to ask the grocer where the mandarin oranges are from. My fruit grocer told me not to get those from the province, if I am not mistaken, pronounced in Cantonese as "Har Moon". Apparently there are some issues with the mandarin oranges over there. Hope that helps.

It's Friday again, and weekend is around the corner. Will try to post Friday's bento soon.

Meanwhile, have a great weekend, all !! And Happy Bentou-ing !!