Bento-a-go-go

There's something wrong with my brain. As a kid I could read music, even hum out an unfamiliar tune while scanning the notes, but put an instrument in my hand and it sounded like I was choking a cat.

My experience with bento is the same way. My efforts to put it in a box, as in how it is supposed to be served looks like this:

It's like a train wreck. Not in the I-can't-stop-looking-at-it way, but in that it looks like it was actually hit by a train.Yet if I try it on a plate, it looks much better:

See, pretty!

The plated pics are my bentoish experiments for my daughter who has a PB&J addiction so pronounced it needs an intervention. To keep me from going barking mad making the same food all the time, I amuse myself with different ways to present it. The flower plate is PB&J, string cheese and strawberries. The sandwich pieces were cut with Ateco round and oval cutters.

Bento comes from Asian culture and is, very basically, an attractive way to present a variety of foods within a container. There is some AMAZ-ing bento out there. But that's the pinnacle, not the every day. Regular bento is food served at a restaurant in a pretty lacquered box or a parent using odds and ends in their baby girl's lunch. To get started making bento for kids, there are some great sites devoted to it.

Since I haven't displayed natural talent at assembling bento in a box, I now feel I have to do it and will be obsessing on figuring it out.The latest experiment looks alright:

The hearts are just wheat bread made with a cookie cutter from Michaels but you'd think it was filet mignon the way my daughter reacted. When hubby saw it, he said it made him smile. That's what food's all about, isn't it?

- DK