Yummy Kawaii Bento Book Review

Last week, I received a copy of Yummy Kawaii Bento by Li Ming Lee, the creator of the Bento Monsters blog. This beautiful hardcover book is filled with adorable lunch creations, bento making techniques, tutorials, and recipes.

I have long admired the skill and creativity with which Ming packs lunches for her two boys. Her lunches are amazing and look like small works of art. If you have not visited www.bentomonsters.com, you should head over there to see Ming's lunches. I was so excited to open this book and see how easy it was to follow the step-by-step tutorials to re-create some of these lunches. My son and I looked through the book to decide which lunch we should try and create. He requested the Hot Dog Bread on page 186. Oh my goodness, have you ever seen a hot dog look so cute?

 

The tutorial calls for making your own bread dough to form the dog. I had to prepare this lunch the night before my son took it to school because it took more time than I usually have in the morning for making lunches. It was well worth the extra time. There were eleven separate pictures to go with the tutorial. That made it easy to make this little cute dog in the lunch I packed. My son thought it was adorable. When I make lunches for my son, they are often themed around a story we are reading. I had to make up a little story to go with this hot dog bread lunch. My lunch has a lettuce doggy bed for the sleeping hot dog bread, carrot sticks for playing fetch, a blueberry water bowl, yogurt raisins water, and a cheese stick bone.

The next lunch, I re-created from Yummy Kawaii Bento, was the Snail Sandwich. It took about ten minutes to pack this lunch and it turned out so cute! Again, the easy to follow directions made fixing this lunch a breeze.

The third lunch I wanted to make from this book was the Baby Bear lunch. It has been quite a while since I attempted to make an onigiri lunch. The little bear in Ming's lunch was so cute that I had to try to make it. I also wanted to make the Pork Carrot Patties from the recipe section of the book. Both the Baby Bear and the Pork Carrot Patties recipe were easy to follow.

 

Here is the lunch I made. It includes a baby bear onigiri (rice ball), lettuce, tomato, broccoli, plum slices, and Pork Carrot Patties. My son loved the Pork Carrot Patties.

I am looking forward to using Yummy Kawaii Bento to add some interesting flavors and characters to my son's lunches. You can purchase your own copy of Yummy Kawaii Bento on Amazon.com.