Panda Bento

Meet Pandi :)

Pandi was a present to me when I was 7, and as all imaginative 7 year olds are I gave him a very creative name, obviously =p Pandi has been with me through thick and thin, through when I was 10 years old and playing dens behind the sofa to coming to New York with me and being a lucky charm for my exams. So I'm dedicating this post to you Pandi! (You talk to your pet dog. I talk to my teddy bear. Same thing really, except mine doesn't come and sniff my bum. I think of that as a good thing :)

Pandi did not seem very happy when I asked him to pose with his doppelganger, Pandi The Rice Ball.

I made sure to give the rice ball version of my panda an ample supply of bamboo, and also some features of his woodland habitat.

A.k.a breadsticks and broccoli :)

M'afraid I didn't take any photos of the bento-making process, but I'll list the steps. But don't worry, I spent quite some time daydreaming in lectures today and during that time drew a diagram of the rice balls you need to cut in order to make the panda shape :)

Recipe for panda bento

You will need:

• Rice
• Sushi nori seaweed
• Dried spaghetti
• Clingfilm
• Scissors
• Various vegetables and fruit

Steps:

1. Boil the rice, and whilst still hot shape the rice into balls as shown above. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for a few hours until it's set in this shape.
2. Place some lettuce leaves in the bento box, or whatever vegetables you want.
3. Cut the nori into shape.
4. Put the rice balls in, using a piece of spaghetti to spear the ears onto the head (the spaghetti will have gone soft by lunchtime so will be edible!) and place nori on top of the rice.
5. Anything else should be pretty self explanatory I hope!

This box is courtesy of the lovely people at CasaBento again. I went for the 'retro hearts' this time, thinking it would be perfect for Valentine's Day. It's very sturdy and quite pretty, but I didn't have time to make a bento until last weekend :( But you don't need a special day to say 'I love you' to that special someone anyway, do you? ;)

Oh, I almost forgot! Recently, two pandas 'Tian Tian' (meaning sky) and 'Yang Guang' (meaning sunlight) moved into Edingburgh Zoo. Which leads to me to share with you one of my favourite photos of all time:

Maybe that's how they got there? :p

I hope you all have a great Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday (I'm not really sure of the order :S) and are all stuffed on pancakes and lemon and sugar and nutella and the such! And please don't be silly and give up chocolate for Lent! My advice, give up something random like aubergines... no one eats aubergines anyway.