Baby Pooh Bears Bento

I received my new wooden bento box which I ordered online from CasaBento a few days ago. It looks gorgeous and traditionally elegant...! The only drawback is that it is not dishwasher-safe. But truth be told, I don't really mind that it's not dishwasher-safe. It only takes less than one minute to wash it by hands...

Since I love this new bento box so much, of course I need to make a bento meal just for the sake of using this new box ;). I had some leftover yellow-tinted quail eggs from two days ago (I thought about using them for the Easter Parade Bento, but the basket got too full before I could do anything with the quail eggs), and somehow Winnie the Pooh came to mind, even though I am not a fan of this character. I do like the classic Winnie the Pooh illustrated by E.H. Shepard though.

If you own a nori punch for making characters with quail eggs, making my version of Winnie the Pooh would be quite effortless. I have got quite some requests from my blog readers that I should include a tutorial to my bento posts, so today I will attempt to show you how to make the pooh bear in the tutorial below. Apologies in advance if it's not that clear. I still need to get used to doing a tutorial...!

TUTORIAL

HOW TO MAKE BABY POOH BEAR USING QUAIL EGGS

What You Need

You can colour the hard-boild quail eggs by soaking them in yellow-tinted water. Dilute turmeric / curry powder in warm water and soak the eggs until they turn yellow. You can make the eggs rounder by slightly pinching them with your fingers.

STEP 1 - The Happy Faces

Use a nori punch to make eyes, nose and mouth out of nori paper.

STEP 2 - The EARS

Use a fat drinking straw to cut an oval (by slightly pinching the straw) out of the cheese for the Pooh Bear's ears. Cut the oval in half.



Use a knife to make a slit at the top of the quail egg. With tweezers tuck the cheese ears into the slit.

STEP 3 - The Nose

Use the same straw to cut a circle out of cheese to make the nose.

Use the straw to cut out the edges of the cheese-circle to make a small oval nose.

STEP 4 - The FUN Part: Applying Facial Features

Attach the nori eyebrows, nori eyes, nori/cheese nose and nori mouth to the egg. I didn't use anything to stick these facial features to the egg, but in case they didn't stick well, use a dab of mayonnaise as 'glue'.

Please welcome The Egg Pops...:D)

Yellow Pooh Bear
Dab on rosy ketchup/chili sauce cheeks with a toothpick.

White Pooh Bear
In case you don't want to tint your quail eggs.

The Pooh Bears Trio

Bento Box 1: Rice topped with toasted black sesame seeds, ham flowers and cucumber leaves, 2 pieces of edamame, Baby Pooh eggs, lettuce, 2 slices of tomato, a piece of broccoli and a piece of strawberry.

Bento Box 2: Easy Mapo Tofu, a few slices of cucumber, tomato and carrot, 2 rolls of ham, half a quail egg and a few pieces of edamame.


Easy Mapo Tofu

• 100 grams tofu, cut into little cubes
• 100 grams minced pork
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 - 3 tablepoons hot bean sauce
• 2 - 3 tablespoons Szechuan chili oil with fried pork (see picture below)
• A pinch of sugar

My secret ingredient for beautiful Szechuan dishes...:D)!

Stir-fry all ingredients until cooked. That's it. Super simple. And super tasty! I used to make the elaborate version of Mapo Tofu, which was also very good, but this speedy version really can compete with the original!