Funny Cake Pictures. Food. Edible Cartoons - Face Food Bento Boxes. The Japanese bento box, or lunch box, dates back hundreds of years in Japanese history.
The contemporary bento box has been influenced by pop culture elements such as movies, TV shows and manga. The bento box is "Comprised of food crafted into visually creative, appealing and recognizable forms, and are as much about planning and preparation as nutrition," says markbattypublisher.com "What better way to make children eat than to turn their midday meals into cartoon characters and video games?
" Indeed, rice, tofu, fish cakes, hot dogs, seaweed are skillfully turned into the likeness of Cinderella, Pikachu, Daraemon, Super Mario, Piglet, Pokemon, Snow white, Spiderman etc, etc. bringing not just visually pleasing food to the children but healthy meals and snacks to go into their bento box. Face Food by Christopher D Salyers is a book that not only tells about but includes array of images of these pop culture infected bento boxes. Mom's Cartoon Character Bento Boxes For Son's Lunch. This is a series of lunches from mother Heather Sitarzewski, who makes her son a different (predominately Disney cartoon) character bento box every day (often with unusual food combinations).
Me? I ate school lunch. Plus handfuls of gravel on the playground. I'm special! I'm not sure how old her son is, but you know there DOES come a time in every boy's life when he doesn't want a Beauty and the Beast bento box for lunch anymore. Hit the jump for some of my favorites, but check out Heather's Tumblr for over 100 more.
Kyaraben" Kyaraben. Kyaraben or charaben, a shortened form of character bento, is a style of elaborately arranged bento which features food decorated to look like people, characters from popular media, animals, and plants.
Japanese homemakers often spend considerable time devising their children’s meals including their boxed lunches.Originally, a decorated bento was intended to arouse interest from children in their food and to encourage a wider range of eating habits. It has now evolved to the point where national contests are held, from which kyaraben artists can gain fame and become invited seminar speakers and authors on the subject. Source: wiki. Kyaraben (charaben) how-to links for all skill levels. Whenever I post about kyaraban/charaben (cute bentos) from Japan, there are often comments bemoaning the lack of how-tos on those kyaraben sites.
There are how-tos out there, but in many cases you need to read Japanese to follow them. But here are some links to how-tos with a lot of photos that you could follow along even without understanding the accompanying Japanese text. Beginner level All About has a couple of articles about using common household items to cut out pieces for bento. How to use bottle caps, medicine cups (the kind that come with cough syrup or Nyquil) and straws to cut out parts from cheese and make simple onigiri from the parts; also a bear shaped onigiri how-to. Beginner-intermediate Youchien-net, a site for parents of kindergarten age children, has several kyaraben tutorials for beginner to intermediate levels with step-by-step photos. Intermediate-advanced Very easy to make, though I had a bit of trouble with the eyes (made of cheese and nori). Advanced. Lunch With Spongebob.