Okay, so my charaben kind of looks like Marge Simpson’s perky younger sister. But my daughter thought she looked like Joy, and she’s the one who really counts.
We saw Inside Out last weekend; I thought that it was sweet and cute, and the littles loved it. I wanted to do a bento from the movie, and I was trying to get my daughter to give a thumbs-up for Disgust (I had a pretty sweet idea for her that involved cucumbers and green apples). My girl understandably wanted Joy, though. Her wish was my command. My wish is that I’d had a little more time to do the mouth and eye details, though, so she’d look more Pixar and less Matt Groening.
Anyway, you go with what you’ve got. I used sushi rice mixed with seasoned rice vinegar and turmeric for Joy’s skin. Some butterfly pea flower dyed rice made her hair. Fun fact: when you mix vinegar with the butterfly pea flower dyed rice, it changes the overall color into a nice deep purple. That would have been great if I’d been working on Fear (or Spyro from Skylanders), but I had to add a little blue food coloring to get things back to normal. Cut pieces of egg white sheet and nori made her face details, and slices of cucumber made her dress.
The side dishes are egg white sheets cut and rolled into flowers, fried ham, apple slivers, more sliced cucumbers, carrot sparkles, and cherry tomatoes. And if you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know that KitKats almost invariably turn up for dessert.
Happy nibbling!
~ K.
Floribento 