Comic Con Bento

My daughter just left this morning to go to Comic Con in San Diego with her friends, and she asked me for a bento for the road. I looked up their logo and got super excited! I quickly envisioned how I would create it from cheese, deli meats, and nori...  ( thinking of dreamy harp  music here)...

I started with a square of monterey jack cheese, which I sized according to the size of the alphabet letters I had (that looked very much like the ones in the logo):

Then I cut strips from sheets of nori with my kitchen scissors and laid them over the cheese.

I cut the letters out of * ahem* processed american cheese...

I know, I know! It goes against the "beneficial" part of my blog... but the processed american cheese has the texture of - oh, I don't know - wet play dough? that makes it IDEAL for sticking to the nori strips : )

A toothpick always helps nudge everything into place.

Now,  how to make that cool dramatic eye?

I put paper right over the computer screen and traced it directly, then I used it as pattern pieces to cut out the  main sections I needed - the eyeball, from white cheese; the eyebrow from nori; and the eye shadow from roast beef deli meat.  I first cut a square from turkey deli meat to use as the background, since it looks like light skin color.

At this point everything was in danger of melting, since it was about 100 degrees  outside when I was making this! I put it all in the fridge for about an hour, then I cut the remaining details freehand from nori, and bits of white cheese.
( I'm sorry there are no process pics of the nori - it was just too hard to cut with one hand and try to wrestle a camera with the other!)

In the morning I lifted the cheese-concoction logo with a spatula when I packed the bento and nestled it on a bed of my daughter's favorite salad. The other compartments contain strawberries, and cheese and crackers ( real cheese, ha ha)

I used an Easy Lunch Box for this lunch since I knew it would be eaten in the car, and they are the perfect size and depth to rest easily on a  person's lap.

She also requested a Chicken BLT with Pesto Cream Cheese which is one of my recipes that will be featured in the Trader Joe's/Easy Lunch Boxes Cookbook that comes out this September ( I'm so excited!)

My son and I got much more ordinary bentos, but they were still yummy:

My son's had a Chicken BLT, along with strawberries, and gluten-free pretzels and peanut butter.

Mine also had the same sandwich along with a salad ( made from my salad bar, of course! )

Here are some things I used to make this lunch, and where to buy them: