Bento Update: My name is AIDEN

It seems like I haven't done a bento update in a long time. It isn't that I have been lazy, just that my schedule has been rather crazy with all the travels, occasions (Halloween) and preparing for guests arrival. My 3 year old goes to pre-school 3 times a week and I have been letting him have sandwiches in his lunchbox for at least once a week. Not that he is complaining though. He loves it when he gets to take a cheese and ham sandwich to school because that's what most of his good friends have for lunch. Talk about peer pressure!

A couple of days ago, I woke up feeling inspired to make him a good bento for school that day. But I am getting a little sick of all the teddy bear, animals and smiley face bento designs that I have been making so I thought why not try out the brand new set of alphabet cutters that I recently acquired (from a bento haven in Tokyo). I put on my quick thinking cap and came up with this idea:

A personalised bento!

Aiden has just learnt to spell his name (he knows how to identify his name for a long time but spelling it is only recently) and I thought this can reinforce it. Besides, playing with letters is always fun and this bento is a refreshing change from the usual ones that I have been doing. Don't you think so?

It didn't take me long to prepare this bento. The rice was cooked the night before and was warmed up that morning. I always prepare these meat patties in a big batch and freeze them in portions. I took 2 of these out of the freezer the night before to thaw and they were ready to be cooked that morning while the rice was being warmed up. So the total time I took to prepare this bento from warming up the rice, cooking the meat and assembling them was really just about 25 minutes.

The letters were cut from a piece of cheddar cheese and I had originally placed them on the rice before realising that they couldn't stick well. So I cut some nori in the shape of the letters and stuck the cheese letters on before sticking them onto the rice. Nori sticks well with rice and cheddar so the whole rice ball can hold together well. I think this idea turn out great as the colour of the nori served as a border framing the letters and making them pop. A little 3D effect!

My husband's grandparents are in town and staying with us at the moment. I showed them the bento and they were very impressed as they have never seen any lunchbox like this before. It was the talk of the day!
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