VOTE FOR ME - Javapot's Bento Challenge

This was my entry for Javapot's very interesting Bento Challenge - a self-descriptive bento for myself. I found this tough and scratched my head for 2 weeks before the dateline forced me into action. Nothing like a burst of adrenaline to get the creative juices flowing.

The bottom tier consisted of my all time favourite food, nasi lemak, which I moulded into a face, with sambal in the middle. I added nori details to represent yours truly. The hairstyle is something that I have been sporting my whole life, with bangs, to cover my wide forehead *_*.

Japanese and Korean food are my other favourites, represented by inarizushi topped with ebbiko and seaweed, and kimchi. Also can't live without meat, and wasn't impressed that I couldn't fit in more than 1 piece of chicken into this small box. This was how the bento looked like without embellishments.

Unfortunately I am currently trying to lose post baby weight - the question "how many months pregnant are you?" by complete strangers is getting to me!!! I am now more likely to be eating salad for lunch, as depicted in the top tier. The salad consisted of lettuce, red / yellow cherry tomatoes, raw carrots and pine nuts (another fav). Would have added capsicum if I had planned better and restocked the fridge. For the dressing, I used Sesame Seed dressing from Jusco, which was recommended by Bentopet. Thanks! It's super yummy.

Being a SAHM, my whole life revolves around my 3 kids, which I blogged about here. Hence this bento couldn't be complete without their presence. The three figures were cut out of fishcake (for faces, arms and wings). I hope everyone noticed that I even varied the sizes of the figures to match their real life sizes. I added some colour with kanikama (imitation crabstick) for the girls' dresses and eggsheet for the the boy's shirt. Fortunately, I called them angels. I had initially wanted to call them little monkeys, but didn't want to be 3lilmonkeys myself... hehe ..... otherwise would have ended up figuring how to make monkeys for this bento.

I also added some fun pasta shapes, with three types of flower pastas, and three figures, 1 boy and 2 girls, again for the 3 kiddos. Those who had been frequenting my blog would know that I'm a 'collector' of fun pasta. In fact, in my cupboard now, I have about 20 packs of pasta sourced from as far as Australia and USA. I admit to going a bit crazy there *_*. But am still buying whenever I come across new pasta shapes *incorrigible grin*.

The time taken to complete this bento is about 1 hour. I usually take 15 - 30 minutes, but for the purpose of this challenge, of course had to put in more effort and time *_*. The pasta was an afterthought, as was frying up the egg sheet for the boy's shirt, all adding to the prep time.

Thanks Heaps, Javapot, for organising this fun challenge and including me in the event. And everybody else, please go vote for me (No. 11) now at this link. Polls closes at 5pm (Malaysian time) on Wednesday, 22 April 2009. Thanks!!

And you can view all the other very beautiful shortlisted bentos here. Happy Bento-ing!!!