Bunny Bento

Today’s post is in honor of Lolly’s Big Time Bunny Week that has been running all week over on her blog, LollyChops. I’ve been having so much fun reading about her projects that I decided we needed some bunnies over here at the Fuji cottage.
I decided to make Squirrel a bunny bento as a special snack yesterday. I pulled out all the necessary ingredients and got to work.
First, I added a few drops of green food coloring to some flaked coconut, mixing it up until it was tinted green, and then let it sit to dry.
Then, I cut up an apple (I used a gala apple) and made some apple bunnies, and then set them aside in some ice water so that their ears would curl up a bit. (To try your hand at these, see this tutorial here.)
While I was waiting for the apple bunny ears to curl, I cut out flowers out of a piece of provolone cheese using a tiny flower shaped cutter.
Then it was time to start putting the bento together. First I arranged my coconut grass in the box.
Then I pulled the apple bunnies out of their bath, dried them off with a paper towel, and nestled them down in the coconut grass.
Next I decided that the bento needed another piece of fruit to jazz things up. I thought about adding raisins, but quickly decided against it. They just looked a little bit too much like bunny poo to be appetizing . . . .
I settled on red grapes instead . . . they can be eggs, rocks, whatever you want them to be!
Finally, I added the cheese flowers to complete the bento.
The best part? Giving Squirrel her bento at snack time.
She was excited to unpack it, and it got gobbled up quickly!

There are many variations of this bento that you could make. For example, you could use green rice instead of coconut (just add a few drops of food coloring to the water when cooking your rice), or a green pudding. Instead of cheese flowers, you could do carrot flowers.

Did you know that in Japan they say it is the rabbit in the moon, not the man in the moon like we say here? They say that if you look at the moon, you can see a rabbit pounding mochi.

Image from <3yen

To hear a Japanese children’s song about the rabbit on the moon, click here.