My first bento meal

So my fascination with bento began after a conversation about polenta, I suggested maybe we can make some cute little shapes that my son could possibly feed himself with.(he was only 8 months old at this point)

I remembered about the bento sites I have been looking at, so decided to get a 'starter' kit from Neat To Eat. There are heaps of other places around that sell bento items but I wanted to get something then and there, so ordered a few things and waited. 

Much to my surprise they arrived 2 days later!! Yippee! At the time most of what I ordered wasn't suitable for an 8 month old so I decided to make him some boiled eggs for lunch, as well as some cute little polenta shapes.

First off the eggs: I got these 2 egg moulds, a fish and car.

Having never made these before I was a bit unsure on how they would go. I boiled the eggs, peeled them while hot (THAT was difficult!) and placed them into the moulds. So far so good! I squished them down and placed them into a bowl of cold water for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes was up I opened them with caution, not knowing if I opened it too fast they would break. Success!! A fish and a car shaped egg!! That is just SO cool!! My son will love these when he is older! But for now I have to cut them into smaller pieces, but that's OK, at least they worked!

Next step was the polenta. I had cooked and cooled it earlier this morning so it would be ready for his lunch. I only added vegetable stock to it as I thought I would try plain polenta and see if he likes it. (I was also going to fry up the rest for us adults to go with dinner tonight!).

All I had to do was cut out shapes. For this I had bought some little shape cutters - though any cookie cutters would work. I got these ones because they were little quite little, and at the time my son hadn't handled large pieces of food in the past, these would be absolutely perfect. Plus they are tiny and cute which I like! :) I figured I would just do a few shapes to start with to see how they work. I chose the smaller of the shapes and started stamping away at the thinner part of the polenta.

This also worked really well, the polenta did get stuck in there but a simple poking tool fixed that problem and I pushed them out easily. I made a small handful of shapes and put them on the plate ready to go.

Well, that's all done so it is time for lunch! I put the cut up egg onto the plate with the polenta. It was a decent lunch.

Woo-hoo! He loved it! First of all he grabbed a piece of egg and put it in his mouth. He wasn't quite sure of it but after a few chews he realised it is food, and he went in for more. The polenta got squished between his fingers for most of the lunch, but he did eat a lot of it too. In the end I think he ate roughly 3/4 of his lunch which I was super impressed with. He also didn't choke on ANY of it which was a major win in my books. He also enjoyed the bland-ness of the egg and polenta, which is great. I think I will add more flavour next time but it was great to know he liked it as it was.

After doing this meal I realised I may very well have a new obsession, and now,  6 months on I am absolutely loving making fun food!