Bento tip #1

Ever had a bento and thought " This could do with some thick sauce"?

Not that you would use the word thick in that sentence but I meant it to cover sauces including, but not restricted to,
• tomato ketchup
•BBQ sauce
• brown sauce

That's all well and good but when you have tiny, cute little sauce bottles shaped like bears and pandas it's near impossible to get thick sauces in and out of said cutesy bottles.
Never again!
All you need to do is mix a tiny bit of water with the sauce and et voila you can now use it!!

Homemade frugal furikake

Here it is!
My homemade, frugal furikake. I checked on eBay and the cheapest pot of furikake was about £5/£6 with delivery, this cost £2.56. I was slightly worried as I'm not a huge fan of salmon and recently I have gone off nori too but I have to admit this tastes pretty good!!

Now for the tutorial!!

What you need:
• salmon ( I used smoked salmon trimmings, 90p from Tesco for 120g)
• sesame seeds ( I used half a cup but I would suggest a slightly smaller amount)
•Nori seaweed ( You only need half a sheet!)

What to do:
• Put the salmon in a nonstick pan and pour in half a cup of water, put on medium heat with the lid on until salmon is cooked and water has evaporated. ( you can use mirin etc for more flavour )
• Once cooked remove salmon from heat and begin flaking with forks/chopsticks/hands. Put the pan back onto the heat and cook until the flakes are as dry as you'd like, being careful not to burn. ( dryer flakes will keep longer ) Put salmon into a bowl or similar container.
• Wipe pan dry and pour in half a cup ( less may be better) of sesame seeds, cook on low heat until fragrant and slightly browned. Pour into container with salmon.
• Take half a sheet of nori and cut into 1 inch strips, lay all strips on top of each other and cut into very think strips, you can give a quick dry fry in the pan with some spices for more flavour.
• Now mix all ingredients in a bowl and store in an airtight container. Should keep for at least a week with dryer flakes keeping for longer sometimes upto two weeks.

I hope you enjoy and please let me know if you make a batch and maybe share a picture too!

DIY bento picks / cupcake toppers

Here are some of the bento picks I have made by hand :)


And here is a quick video on how to make them yourself :
how to video

Marbled egg tutorial

A great way to spice up an Easter bento ( or even just the boiled eggs for breakfast on Easter) are these marbled, brightly coloured eggs! Now I know some people will see these and be horrified at the amount of synthetic dyes used, but unless you want to you don’t need to use food dye. I used water from red cabbage! So here are the steps!
•cook egg to own standards but must be boiled to work!
• crack shell all the way around egg but DO NOT REMOVE :)
• use whatever kind of dye you wish (natural/synthetic), I find the best thing to do is put the egg in a cup and use the dye to cover the egg.
• leave in the fridge for at least an hour, I left mine over night for this bright colour :)
• if putting into a bento you can either leave the egg as is, put in a mold and make a marbled bunny or cut into slices :)