Slightly Squashed Bear Bento

Bears are a popular theme in bentos, probably because they are easy to recognize and easy to make - just eyes, nose, and ears, and they can be done any number of ways. For today's bento I had bought some butter rolls at the local Japanese bakery, Yamasaki, and decided to make a bear face from it. 

You could make any type of sandwich and apply the same decorations. Mike's is a ham and cheese with lettuce/mayo/mustard sandwich. I used a mini circle sandwich cutter to make the two ears out of cheese, and then I used the flower cutter to make the nose, but just sliced off two of the "petals." I don't have a lot of cookie cutters in my repertoire so I have to get creative. I cut a triangle piece of nori for the nose. For the eyes, I used two slices of string cheese and punched some eyes from nori using one of my face punches. Originally I had just laid the cheese face on top of the bun, but then I ended up cutting into the top layer of the bun and really sticking the cheese into it, to make it more secure. You could do it either way. The ears are actually laid inside the sandwich.

This morning when I pulled out the sandwich, he was a little squashed from being in the bento overnight, but still pretty cute:

I had also prepped the fruit last night, so this morning all I did was throw in pistachios, then mix sunflower seeds with chocolate covered sunflower seeds, and put a little chocolate on top for dessert. Lots of protein, lots of fiber. Yummy lunch!

Tip: If you prepped eyes/noses/ears for a few sandwiches and put them in a baggie in the fridge, you could make sandwiches for a week in a few minutes a day. I also had the lettuce cut, washed and stored in a tupperware. It lasts for a week if there's a sprinkle of water in there for humidity. Food for thought! 

REVIEW: Mike ate everything except the pistachios and some of the sunflower seeds. Pistachios two days this week was boring, apparently. :) Also, sometimes there can be too much food in these larger bento boxes, but then the smaller one looks too small! Tough to gauge, but I think I'll figure it out as we go along. Fruit fills you up, but then digests quickly, so it's a little bit of a balancing act.