Bento tips and ideas

I am sure that, like me, all of you have meet some kids in your life. And if you have, you know how picky they are with their food. My friend's sister always complains how boring the school lunch is ( which is not entirely false), or how her mother makes the same sandwiches over, and over again. But there are some fun ways you could make meal time fun, whether you are doing it for someone else or just for, well, yourself. This creative way of serving food is called a bento. A bento is a Japanese lunch box, and they get very creative when it comes to lunch. The meals taste just as tasty as they look from the outside. Here are some ideas on how to make your lunch more pleasant,a nd most importantly fun: 1. If you are making a sandwich, try using different shapes instead of the standard square. ( I think cookie cutters will work for this, if not, you can cut out the shapes with a knife.) 2. Use lots of colors!!! Try adding fruits and veggies, besides being healthy, they make a colorful addition to any meal. 3. If you are planning on making rice, use natural dyes like spinach and carrot juice to add color to it. 4. You can also use fruits,veggies,and candy to make different shapes. For example: jelly beans (eyes), sea weed (you can cut out almost anything you want with this), olives (good for eyes and ears), tomatoes (cheeks), mushrooms, etc. (These are just examples i thought of now, there's much more you can do with these ingredients.) 5. Make sure you pack everything tightly so you can fit many items, but to achieve this you MUST be neat!!! 6. Make sure enjoy your bento after all the hard work you did! ^_^ Hope I helped everybody!!! ^_^ If you have any questions, comments, or requests please leave them below. I would gladly look over them!

Hello again! I thought it would be a good idea to put up a recipe for dangos so that everyone can have some! Here is what you will need: Ingredients: 1. 150 ml. of water ( 2 or 3 cups) 2. 100 g. of Mochiko/shiratamako 3. 100 g. of Joshinko (rice flour) 4. 2 teaspoons of sugar 5. Some bamboo skewers 6. water(4tbsp.), soy sauce(1tbsp.), mirin(1 tbsp.), and sugar(5tbsp.) Procedure: 1. Mix Joshinko and Mochiko in a container. 2. Add the water and mix until the dough is hard enough. (The textute is described as squeezing an earlobe. You can mix with your hand or spoon, it doesn't really matter.) 3. Divide the dough into smaller pieces. ( This recipe is meant for 24 dangos.) 4. Fill a pot with water and boil. Then, place the dangos in the bowl. 5. After about 10-25 minutes, remove the dangos from the pot and place them into cold water. 6. Place dangos on the skewers nad grill for about 5 minutes. 7. Place water, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a pot. ( add water and corn starch and thicken the liquid.) 8. Put the sauce on top of dangos and place them on a plate. Your dangos are ready for consumption! ENJOY THIS VERY SPECIAL AND DELICIOUS TREAT! ^_^

So everyone, as you can see, i really like dangos. For those of you who don't know, dangos are dumplings (in Japanese). I really love the anime from where it's from, so, i really love dangos too. Yes, this is weird, but I'm a dango fan!! :)