WOOOO!! It's finally the month of the spookies! My favorite month of the year, where the internet explodes with creativity in all areas - food, crafts, decor, makeup, costume, performances! SUPER EXCITING!!
For a few years, I was really into Halloween makeup. The main reason I wanted to transform myself to go out with my friends was to disguise myself as one of the the scare staff at the places we went to scare ourselves silly. You know, those places you pay to enter and queue for hours for jump scares and then when it's finally your turn, you scream your head off and run out without remembering what really happened inside. Many times the scare staff hesitated when they saw me, to process whether I was their colleague just checking on things in dark tunnels. That moment of hesitation was often enough to knock some nerve back into my soul, even though I really had my eyes opened 2mm.
Those crazy years are behind us as friends got married, some have kids, and Halloween scare fests have taken a back seat for family time. Nobody has got the time and patience to wait two hours for each haunted mansion anymore!
Also, my skin suffered from a bad facial incident and it never really recovered; it's become ultra sensitive and prone to outbreaks from all sorts of allergens. I have two loves - one is bento-making (newfound!), the other is transformative makeup.
I guess they're similar in certain ways. Both include making things from scratch, with a result that is completely different from the beginning, require a lot of time and patience to execute, and
Food is obviously the safer route since I can work on it in my pyjamas, with no negative effects on my skin. I never knew playing with food could be so fun and interesting!
I wanted to kick off Halloween with something colorful, so here's an Elmo, Oscar, Cookie Monster lunch box!
Ingredients
- Rice
- Beet powder
- Organic barley grass powder
- Organic Butterfly Pea Flower Powder
- Blue Spirulina Powder
- Nori
- Carrot
- Cheese
- Brown egg sheet
- Black sesame seeds
How To Make Elmo Bento
I think Elmo is the most popular here of the trio. He's appeared in countless talkshows and motion pictures and his merchandise is the most sellable.
So here's a tutorial on how to make Elmo in his Halloween skeleton costume, which by the way is modeled after an Elmo merchandise.
- Mix rice with organic beet root powder. I was amazed how red beet powder could make rice look. You do have to use quite a bit of powder to achieve this bright red though. I used about 1/2 tsp of beet powder in 1/4 tsp water to make a paste. The quality of the beet powder will also affect the degree of vibrancy.
- Only Elmo's head and hands need to be red, so his torso and arms can be of any color. You may use left over blue from Cookie Monster, green from Oscar, or just plain white.
- Mold Elmo's torso, arms, and red hands with cling film.
- Wrap nori around the torso and arms, and wrap cling film over to let nori adhere to rice.
- Using a precision knife, cut thin strips from cheese to form Elmo's bones.
- Unwrap the cling films and place cut cheese on Elmo as his skeleton.
- Wrap two white rice balls in cling film for Elmo's sclera. Punch or cut out two circles from nori for his pupils.
- Give Elmo a big happy smile by cutting out the shape from nori
- Slightly press a bubble tea straw to form an oval shape and cut out an oval from boiled carrot for the nose.
- Make a Halloween flag out of washi tape and toothpick and have Elmo hold it.
I had initially planned on only making Elmo for this bento, showing fully his Halloween skeleton costume, but I thought full black would make the bento look quite dark. So I decided to make his friends to add more color to the bento. Good decision coz this lunch box ended up looking very colorful! 😀
How To Make Oscar The Grouch Bento
Did you know Oscar the Grouch was originally yellow? That clashed with Big Bird, so they made him orange, and then eventually settled on green. I like him green.
Because I didn't include The Count in this lunchbox, I turned Oscar into a vampire instead hoho.
To make Oscar The Grouch,
- Mix rice with Organic Barley Grass Powder. You can also use spinach powder or matcha powder, whatever floats your boat, but I think it's a little too wasteful to use culinary grade matcha powder here.
- Mold green Oscar's head with cling film.
- Make a brown egg sheet and cut out his bushy brows with scissors
- Lay rice on cling wrap and cut out two circles using a piping nozzle, or anything round, for Oscar's sclera. Nori for the pupils.
- Cut out his mouth from nori and place triangular-shaped cheese as his fangs on each side
- To make the vampire's cape, cut cheese in an upturned triangle and wrap with nori. To make it stand out further (because I placed tamagoyaki near Oscar), place a of cheese under the nori cape.
How To Make Cookie Monster Bento
As a chocolate chip cookie lover, I couldn't not include Cookie Monster in this Halloween lunchbox!
Unlike Elmo who refers to himself in the third person "Elmo loves babies!", this blue furred googly-eyed monster speaks with simple diction "ME WANT COOKIE!". Cookie Monster has a voracious appetite for cookies, most notably chocolate chip cookies, and chomps them down leaving crumbs everywhere. Sometimes I think the mess he leaves behind is more than the cookies he actually devours.
To make Cookie Monster,
- Mix rice with Organic Butterfly Pea Flower Powder and Blue Spirulina Powder.
- Mold Cookie Monster's blue head and hand with cling film.
- Make him a superhero mask using nori.
- Wrap two white rice balls in cling film for Cookie Monster's sclera. Punch or cut out two circles from nori for his pupils.
- Give Cookie Monster a big happy smile by cutting the shape out from nori.
- Using the same brown egg sheet from Oscar's bushy brows, use the piping nozzle to cut out several brown cookies. Place them in Cookie Monster's hand. Sprinkle black sesame seeds on top to look like chocolate chips.
Side Dishes
- Tamagoyaki
- Sautéed shiitake mushrooms
- Home made chicken patties
- Kale
- Carrots, cubed
- Carrot, sliced, stamped with pumpkin mold
- Beets, cubed
- Broccoli
Tools
- Tweezers
- Scissors
- Precision knife
- Piping nozzle
- Straw
- Metal bento box
- Cat bento pick
- Ghost bento pick
Who's Your Favorite Sesame Street Character?
My favorite character, however, is The Count. He doesn't appear in every Sesame Street episode, but when he does, oh my, how excited I would be! That spooky castle, the rumbling thunder, flash of lightning, cobwebs and spiders, candles that are never lit - the entire set is so different from the bright and cheery colors of Sesame Street.
And don't you find The Count's accent irresistibly sexy? Not only is that Eastern European accent charming, the way he pronounces his V's as W's makes him stand out from the rest. As a young child, having yet been exposed to a wide range of accents, The Count was a mysterious and interesting character to me. I'll admit that despite all my interest in The Count's segment, I felt a little scared with all that darkness, bats flying and green spot light. Maybe that's why the whole thing did it for me - I couldn't understand the complex emotions running through me. Lol.
I didn't include The Count simply because I didn't want to dress him up other than in his own clothes and that would kind of defeat the dressing up of Elmo, Oscar and Cookie Monster in this bento presentation. Maybe I'll give him an exclusive lunch box soon. I don't know, it's still early Halloween days! 😛
Thanks for reading and pin it if you enjoyed it! 😀
