I'm back! Did ya miss me? ;)

I apologize for the little hiatus on the blog, but I have been sick - caught something at the AnimeNext convention. It started with a tickle in my throat on Sunday at the end of the convention and by Monday I had the sore throat and my ears hurt - then the chest congestion, then the sinuses, then Saturday I woke up with my eyes sealed shut and gooey (yuck!). That was enough to finally send my butt to the Dr.

I am slowly improving on the antibiotics and am trying to get back into the swing of things - in the meantime, I have two bento for Rob and one Kat packed the week of the convention that I didn't get a chance to post with all the preparations and I, of course, have to tell you how the bento workshop went :)

Rob's bento:

June 9 --

Top Tier: Pitted cherries, snow peas, baby carrot sticks, blueberries, macaroni salad w/ carrot and green onion flowers and black sesame seed 'ground'

Bottom Tier: Mixed Spring Greens w/ grape tomatoes, radish slices and carrot flowers, car shaped boiled egg and asian fruit jelly

June 10 --

Top Tier: Mixed spring greens, carrot flowers, ham and swiss pinwheels and pumpkin shaped boiled egg

Bottom Tier: Pitted cherries, Blueberries, Macaroni Salad w/ carrot & cilantro flowers

And Kat's bento:

June 10 --

Top Tier: Kamaboko, Cherries, kiwi, blueberries and tamagoyaki - a little broccoli filler

Bottom Tier: Radish, baby carrots, onigiri


Once again, we forgot to take pictures during the workshop :o It gets so hectic doing a workshop, this time with 37 people, that we didn't even think about it until we were done cleaning up and were on our way back to the hotel room :(

I did the eggs in the egg mold the night before and we ran to Shoprite and got the rest of the produce the afternoon before. I had bought a hotplate so that I could do the eggs in the hotel room, which was a real pain - the water did not want to boil and the eggs were horrible to peel - it was impossible not to tear off pieces of egg while trying to peel them, no matter how carefully we tried :( On the second batch, Rob thought to use a carefully placed hand towel over the pot and we were able to get a good boil going. Even though every boiled egg tutorial will tell you not to place the eggs into already boiling water, we did it anyway. And although the eggs cracked a bit while boiling, they came out great and were a breeze to peel :) Batch 3 was more like batch 1 but not quite as bad as we tried putting the eggs in and then covering - the water just took too long to reach a boil, so for batch 4 we made sure to do them as we did on batch 2 and again they were much easier to peel. I was just happy when all 4 dozen were done (minus the unusable eggs - we needed to have 40)

We were lucky enough to have plenty of time for setup and having the sign-up sheet ahead of time made things so much easier this year - and we learned a few things yet again to change for next year to make it even smoother :)


Kat gave her presentation while Rob and I put out plates of produce etc. on the tables and rice as soon as the rice cookers were done - we put the hot rice into plastic disposable bowls and put a bowl to about every 4-5 people - and then we got to packing bento! We handed out various ingredients and gave a few quick tutorials on things like making a grape tomato rose as everyone was packing the food into their bentos.

Everyone made onigiri in the mini mold each received and each received an egg inside the egg mold to keep, along with their bento box, bag, some picks etc. We even drew names for prizes - we were originally going to vote for the best, but since not all the eggs came out great, I felt that would be unfair...

They all seemed happy and the only question we had at the end when we asked was "Why are you so awesome?" - That, of course, made my day :)

I would have preferred to post about it while everything was fresh in my mind, but that just wasn't going to happen while I was so sick.... Hopefully the bento posts will get back on track!

Happy Bento-ing!