No.21 'Dragons in the dandelions' bentos

No woodpeckers in the trees on our walks today, but plenty of other birds to watch as they gather nesting materials. Lots of apple blossom strewn on the ground and falling from overhead along our route to school and back. All the cherry blossoms are looking gorgeous in full bloom and the many well tended gardens filled with bright colours.

I started my bento making for today with a dendelion bento for myself. It will be submitted to Hapa Bento 's B.O.M.B (Bento of the month) which has a flower theme this time. It's a dandelion 'clock'. Here it is:

The base is sushi rice cooked in green food colouring, the stalk is spring onion and the hairs from the dandelion clock are emmental cheese. A bit of cress at the base and some lettuce underneath. For my own bentos I like things fairly simple but stylish. Our walks home for the past two days have involved lots of dandelion clocks being picked by the children and the 'puff' of hairs on them being blown about all around us. Beautiful.

This morning I discovered that our cats had eaten the sweetcorn I left out last night to defrost for the pigeon's breakfast. I know they like an old corn cob to chew on, but routing out the corn from amongst the peas in the pot and throwing the peas all over the floor was a bit much! The pigeon had to make do with dry bird seed for breakfast. He was not impressed. Another miss-hap of the morning was Batman's unfortunate jam incident. While I was picking up peas my son called out, in a most distressed tone of voice "BATMAN IS IN THE JAM!". I went through to find that his little Lego Batman was face down in the jam on a slice of toast. It looked as if he had given up on Tuesday all together, or perhaps he's just very fond of jam?

The children enjoyed their 'Rainy Day, Sunny day' bentos today, particularly the element of surprise in which one they might have when they opened their boxes at lunch. For tomorrow I have decided to go with a surprise again, but this time the same bento for both of them. Dragons! Well, hopefully they look like dragons... with big, fierce radish eyes that GLARE (and are yummy).

What's in it? Sushi rice cooked with one drop of green food colouring (amazing colour from just one drop, really) forms the dragons, which I shaped using cling film. They have carved radish eyes, as mentioned. Little cucumber skin arrows to make a scaly nose and emmental cheese for teeth and nostrils. The few greens added to the box with the dragons are cress, spring onion and the cucumber centres.