No.25 'I love you' bento

Today I had some pink rice left over in the fridge from the piggy bento, so I wanted to use that up. I split it into two portions and wrapped it in cling film while I thought of what to make out of it. As it turns out, I ended up making two more heart shapes (like the piggy faces). It's a bit late for Valentine's day, but this is a bento of love! A message of love from me to the children and also "I love you bento!" from them to their lunch. I hand cut the letters from nori and surrounded the hearts with mini sticks of carrot, cucumber and cheese. I'm disappointed by the lack of colour in the fruit layer, which has pineapple and cantaloup melon. It should be tasty anyway!

A bit about my day. I can usually recognise and name the bits of nature my children point at and question, but I'm not infallible. In my efforts to improve my knowledge of birds, plants and everything else I have started to teach myself, one bird and plant at a time, from reference books that our good walking friend has kindly donated to us. Over the weekend, I picked up details about Nuthatches and decided to look out for them this week. Our friend will often point out a Nuthatch song as we walk, but I haven't managed to memorize their little tune and have never knowingly seen the bird.

On our walk home from school today we were under some low trees when I heard a single bird singing in the upper branches. "Ooo! Might be a Nuthatch!" I thought, and luckily for me I managed to wait long enough for the bird to come into sight. It wasn't a Nuthatch, it was our old friend the Chaffinch (mentioned in earlier blog post as one of our all time favourites). The children and I imitated the song a few times as we carried on our walk, but that wasn't such a good idea. By the time we got to our front door, we had distorted whatever the original bird song had been into a horrible three-voiced bing-bing-doodle-iddle-aggle ump! ump! accompanied by my son's impromptu jazz hands and jigging legs. Ah well.