Hello Salad Kitty!

This salad bento features home-grown sprouts, carrot flowers, white radish bundled into the carrot flower cutout rings, a babybel cheese with the flower cutout, walnuts, plum vinegar bunny, cucumber pickle, sesame tofu, and Andy the Axe-Murderer (hard boiled egg).

I don't know why making a simple friendly egg face always gets me this type of scary result.

This furoshiki with little rabbits frolicking or staring at the moon is my favorite. Why do rabbits frolic in the moonlight on so many Japanese art works? Is there a rabbit mythology?

There's a "moon viewing festival" in Japan and there's a rabbit on the moon:

"O-tsukimi:

The festival of 'O-tsukimi' is the moon viewing festival based on the Japanese Folk Tale of 'The rabbit in the Moon'. From this Folk Tale the Japanese people have believed since long ago, that rabbits lived on the moon. Even today in Japan, the moon is pictured with the scene of a rabbit or rabbits making mochi (pounded rice cakes).

During this time the moon has a special name 'Chuushuu-no-meigetsu' which in English means 'the picturesque moon of mid-autumn'. This moon occurs during July, August and September in Japan on the lunar calendar. During the months of September and October, the weather in Japan is clear with few clouds and the moon is all the more beautiful, perfect for 'Otsukimi'.

The Japanese people celebrate 'O-tsukimi' by making 'Moon viewing rice balls' and collecting 'Aki-no-nan' which are the typical flowering grasses of autumn. These are bush clover, pampas grass, arrowroot, fringed pink, patrinia palmata, agueweed and Chinese bellflower. After the rice balls are made, and the 'Aki-no-nan' collected, they are offered to the gods to pray for a good harvest on their crops for a year.

The story of 'The rabbit in the Moon' is a story about the Old-Man-of-the-Moon who one day looked down into a big forest on Earth and saw three friends sitting together around a fire. These three were a rabbit, a monkey and a fox. On deciding to find out which of the three is the kindest, he goes down to Earth and changes himself into a beggar. He asks the three friends to help him and that he is very hungry, on hearing this they all run of to find him some food. The monkey brought back a lot of fruit to the man and the fox brought back a big fish. However, the rabbit is unable to find any food for the man, and so asks the monkey to gather some firewood and the fox to build a big fire with the wood. Once the fire was burning very brightly, the rabbit explained to the beggar that he didn't have anything to give him, so he will put himself in the fire and when he is cooked the beggar could eat him. Just before the rabbit jumped into the fire the beggar turned back into the Old-Man-of-the-Moon and told the rabbit that he was very kind, and that he shouldn't do anything to harm himself. Because he decides that the rabbit is the kindest of the three, he takes him back to the moon to live with him.

That is why the Japanese people believe that if they look carefully at the moon when it is shining brightly, they can see the rabbit there, where the old man put him so very long ago."


(This info comes from Latrobe University Australia's website, from what looks to be a student project on Japanese folk tales. Thanks Elisha Brooks and yay for student mythology projects!!)



So maybe these little bunnies are celebrating Otsukimi!



Or maybe they're just happy that It's Friday!! YAAAAY!!

Bento Cowgirl

Jan's bento this a.m. is wrapped in my favorite 'furoshiki' which is really just a bandanna he gave me for my birthday a few years ago; it depicts a typical session of me riding one of my nice quiet horses. :)

His bento is:

Carrot-lime slaw (yummm), egg salad cup, grape tomatoes, and Savoy cabbage sauteed with sesame oil, a green onion, and some shreds of red pickled ginger; then hoisin sesame pork, a nice fresh umeboshi onigiri made late last night, chocolate oatmeal bite and marshmallow Peep.

Yeehah!!

MexiBento and Furoshiki

Jan gets: soy'meat' burrito roll slices with cream cheese, black beans, cottage cheese, and salsa; salad from last night's dinner salad with a little olive oil container and a slice of lime to squeeze over it, baked tortilla strips.

Today's bento being in the larger container which has no 'belt', I used a furoshiki to tie it together - so the pretty cloth is actually doing a functional job instead of being just decorative! Two jobs because it is holding a Cadbury cream egg also!!





This furoshiki (is that singular or plural??) came with instructions; Japanese people use these pretty cloth squares for gift wrap, lunch wrap, other presentation modes, shopping bags, purses, book bags, everything. And they are reused, gifted along, they live a life of their own. How much better than our endless throwaways and plastic bags! How did our culture get on this wasteful path?

Tuesday Bento: Arrgh Maties!

Jan has tuna-tofu-miso burgers from JustBento's recipe page. In the same container, wasabi mayonnaise and a key lime half. Then: mixed seaweed salad from the Asian store in Madison (yummm!), an umeboshi onigiri from Sunday evening's batch, along with a little soy bottle; carrots and snow peas with a baby cheese; and little chocolate 'mushroom' cookies with M&M's.

My bento has most of the same stuff but arranged differently:


I wish I'd bought a case of the little mushroom-shaped cookies! They are not only cute, but they have the right proportion of chocolate to cookie: about 2:1.:)

These onigiri are the best batch I've made so far. The salty plums give them a snap and the rice was just right for molding together. I had meant for this batch to last all week but some pirate is raiding the supply. Nervously looking sideways for someone to blame.

And yesterday I found a new place to burn excess money: www.furoshiki.com. Great history of the furoshiki (cloth wrap for bento, a gift, or anything else you want to wrap nicely in a pretty cloth) and of course a wide range of gorgeous furoshiki for sale. Care and tying methods also explained on the 'about' page. I ordered one called 'Rabbit Moon'. The image of a rabbit staring at the moon must have some significance because it turns up on so many Japanese things. To me it just stirs vaguely sad and lonely feelings but also makes me want to buy it...strange.