It's now the height of summer (at least here in the Northern hemisphere), which means outdoor bentos and picnics! Chicken wings are great finger food, but you can make them even more convenient, not to mention cute, by turning them into chicken lollipops, also known as cherrystone chicken or chicken cherries. Back in the day I used to hang around a chef who used to work in a hotel restaurant in the '80s, where he had to turn out hundreds of these little things for banquets. He could whip them out by the dozens in mere minutes, but I take a little longer. They are a bit fiddly, but not hard to do.
In Japan, there are numerous bento contests, especially targeted at practioners of the art of charaben or kyaraben, cute character bentos. The biggest one of them all is arguably the annual charaben contest held by Sanrio, now in its 3rd year. The one rule of the Sanrio contest, not surprisingly, is that the bento entries must feature Sanrio characters.
Like the winning bento last year, it's a picnic bento, titled "It's spring! Picnic bento for everyone", and the Golden Kyarabeniste is a Ms. Harumi Sugiyama from Saitama prefecture. The bento has the following mind-boggling components:
One thing I love about the Just Bento community is how international it is. Now thanks to Momoko * Bárbara, we have Portuguese versions of our Weekly Bento and Menu Planners, in addition to the original English and German. Many thanks to Momoko * Bárbara, as well as Antje who made the forms that much easier to adapt to other languages!
If you'd like to tackle other language versions of the forms, just let me know!
* Weekly Bento Planner page
* Weekly Menu Planner page
