A fairly cute bento

I haven’t really been going out lately, and the advantage of this is that I’ve been able to devote a fair amount of effort to my bento. 

For today’s effort, I wanted it to be cute, but I had limited ingredients – I am running out of stuff. I get most of my groceries delivered and the next delivery is tomorrow, so I am trying to use what I have and not buy anything extra. So, this is mostly composed of odds and ends I had in the fridge or freezer.

Top layer:

• A bed of shredded savoy cabbage, tossed in rice vinegar and black pepper
• Chicken marinated in hoisin sauce. I used biscuit cutters to cut the chicken into Tigger and Piglet faces

Bottom layer:

• Pink, bear-shaped onigiri, filled with carrot furikake. To make the rice pink, I added chopped beetroot to the pan before I put it on to boil. While warm it looked orange, but by the next morning it was a cute pink.
• Sliced broccoli stalk simmered in water and soy, with a few chilli flakes. I used to throw broccoli stalks away until a friend of mine recoiled in horror when he saw me doing it. They taste pretty nice!
• Beetroot salad – staple feature of my bentos!! 
• Tofu flowers with little rabbit faces cut into them – I used my sando stamps from Bento & Co for this

I had some of the elements, such as the pink rice and tofu flowers, left over from the weekend, so this bento didn’t take me any longer than usual to make. I just had to simmer the veg and cook the chicken.