Bento Picnic, and Onigiri (rice balls)

Japanese Bento (or bento boxes, as we sometimes say redundantly, since I think "bento" means "lunch box") are some of the cutest things ever. I know there has been a bit of an upsurge in the idea of cute, compartmentalized bento here in the U.S., and people come up with the cutest things! We looked at so many darling ideas:

Onigiri bunnies

Baymax

Panda bears

Tons of other cute things

A few more ideas 

At our Sushi Party we tried making the Baymax one and he turned out really cute. We just made him out of the sushi rice, though I read that onigiri don't always have the vinegar flavoring added. 

But…for our day learning about bento, I wasn't really interested in making too many time-intensive work-of-art lunches; mostly I wanted to make a few components and let the kids assemble their own in a bento-ish way.

It was Memorial Day, so Sam was home and we cooked a bunch of things for a bento picnic! We made onigiri (rice balls) and rolled them in sesame seeds and other seasonings, and potstickers and sauce (from Costco), and cheese squares and nuts and salad and strawberries and hard-boiled eggs and a few other things. A nice hodge-podge of a lunch. :)

I had these and these silicon cupcake holders to use to compartmentalize our boxes.

We also had these and these little food picks, which the children loved SO much.

Here are their lovely bento creations:

It was a great picnic. Everyone loved having their own self-contained, personalized lunches. They want to do bento picnics every time from now on! (I don't know…it is harder in some ways to assemble each lunch separately instead of just bringing a big vat of something and sharing it. But then, it is nice to have everyone's pre-portioned out, too.)

It was a beautiful, hot, cloudy day. Later than night we had a bit of rain, but the weather was perfect while we were picnicking. We loved it!