Totoro’s Pirate Crew

Yesterday I inaugurated my new Bento Box. Remember that last week I wrote that Mon Bento had kindly offered me one of their cute Bento Boxes? The Box is pink and white and so lovely! I’m very impressed with its quality and shape but most important: their boxes are microwaveable and dishwasher proof. Well for me, that doesn’t really count because I have no dishwasher and no microwave and I never heat my Obento up but I think that for many people this boxes are a big convenince. The box is also very well finished and compact. Thank you again Mon Bento for sending me this pretty Bento Box! :ballerina:

The initial idea for the composition of this Obento was a forest full of little different-colored Totoro but naturally it came out quite different from what I imagined.. After an attempt to color the rice with a Japanese food coloring based on Furikake that miserably failed I took action by using a pretty strong Swiss colorant that almost worked too good. Normally I don’t use food colorant but for what I had in mind it was just indispensable. Miscalculating the volume of the new box I formed Totoro that were way to big for this box so in the end there was only place for five.

As you may noticed it’s not the usual cute Totoro Obento you can see on many wonderful Bento sites but rather a wry smiling and suspicious-looking pirate crew. (The small one in the right corner is even a vampire..) I don’t know how and when it started to look so wacky but it probably was when Silvankun started to help me out .. muahahaharhar I’m being mean :ghihi:

Anyway, you think you have seen worse? Well wait until you see the upper part.. With Halloween being so close and the alienating, radioactive-looking pirate Totoro I decided to make the whole Obento look freaky. As soon as we finished cutting out those cranky smiles out of seaweed we knew that this wasn’t going to be the usual cute Obento and decided to make a pirate crew out of it. As you may or may not see the inspiration was clearly One Piece. The yellow Totoro with a tortilla hat and a scar under his eye is supposed to be Ruffy. :nope:

The upper part features Brook the skeleton with a treasure and some other weird guys.

Is Silvankun’s influence noticeable? :tongue:

I’ve rarely seen an Obento with such contrastive colors.. The upper part has very natural and has autumanl colors while the Totoro part is fancy with strong colors. To be honest, I don’t think that I’m going to use food coloring for an Obento ever again.. It’s just so not my style! But it sure was fun doing this Bento with Silvankun! The Bento is still in the fridge and I don’t know if I have the guts to bite in one of those green or red Totoro but I’m sure that Silvankun will :wink:

To read about the ingredients and see more wacky pictures of Totoro’s Pirate Crew, read on!

Ingredients: rice, Nori, Edamame, Shiitake, lamb’s lettuce, mais, carrot, Inari, shrimps, chicken nuggets, cheese, winter cherry and black & white sesame.
So you see it’s a big potpourri of everything. I’m totally in love with the winter cherries! (also called Chinese or Japanese lantern) I can’t wait to feature them in a more traditional and calmer Obento :sprout: