Super Cute Picnic Bento

I was in the mood of making something very festive today and hence the various colourful characters: a yellow chick, an orange bear, a green frog, a pink piggy, a brown seal and a mutated (^-^) cow-piggy. I tried to colour the rice with natural food colourings: turmeric for the yellow chick, chili sauce for the orange bear (you can substitute this with tomato sauce too), soy sauce for the brown seal and spinach for the green frog (or you can use mashed edamame too). Unfortunately I had to use pink food colouring to colour the piggy because I simply had no idea how to get a pink hue with natural ingredients. I know a lot of bento makers use sakura denbu to colour the rice pink, but if you do a further research, you will find out that commercial sakura denbu has got added red food colouring as well. To be very honest, I am not fanatic about not consuming food colourings, it's quite hard to avoid anyway since food colourings are regrettably added in almost all commercial food products, especially in sweets and instant sauces or mixes. Think of smarties, coloured marshmallows, those instant soups from Maggi (and other brands) etc. I think it's okay to consume it as long as we do not exaggerate. I know there are people who are absolutely against adding food colouring to the food or dessert they cook or bake, and bash people who do, but they comfortably eat commercial food products which contain food colouring (and often in large quantity too). Hmmm, how pointless...! Don't you think that sometimes people who try to be politically correct (even in the kitchen) most of the time are often quite foolish?

Oh well, let's move on to a more exciting topic: dumplings :)!! Most of my faithful blog readers should know that I adore dumplings and before my blog recently evolves into a bento blog ;), I mostly posted about dim sum, rice and noodles recipes. So, my bento creations could actually never be complete without adding some of my homemade dumplings in them...! I should probably one day also make a dim sum bento: a bento box simply filled with different types of dumplings, yum...:)!

I made those dumplings above this morning. This time I didn't make the wrappers myself to save time. If you want to make the wrappers yourself, please check my previous dim sum recipes, such as the Kuotie recipe or the Boiled Jiao Zi recipe. The dumplings I made this morning are extremely easy to make with very simple ingredients - totally yummy too...!!

Pork and Green Onions Dumplings

• 25 - 30 dumpling wrappers
• 250 gram ground pork
• 1 cup chopped green onions
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
• White pepper and sugar to taste

Mix all ingredients (except the dumpling wrappers) and then fill around 1 teaspoon of the meat mixture into a dumpling wrapper. Close and pleat the wrapper. Repeat this process to the other wrappers.

I steamed my dumplings but you can also pan fry, deep fry or boil the dumplings. It's entirely your choice!

Bento Box 1: Cute animals onigiri filled with prawn tempura, Japanese rolled omelette/tamagoyaki, 2 slices of kiwi, grapes, strawberries, blueberries and red currant.

Bento Box 2: baked chicken wings, cucumber slices, Parmesan crispy chicken, steamed pork and green onions dumplings, blanched broccoli and carrots, tamagoyaki, cherry tomato, piggy quail egg and red currant.

These two bento boxes are not only good for a picnic, but also for a movie night. A good alternative for the usual crisps or popcorns :)!