For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Here's another great kiddie bento, from Bento Corner. The little girl is made of tomatoes, kamaboko (fish cake), and quail egg with nori details. The rabbit is kamaboko with nori details. Both lay on a bed of rice. On the side is lotus root, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, yam cake and burdock root.

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Today's bento comes from Reiko's Bento Lab on Los Dragonnes' Flickr photostream. Miffy the Bunny is made from white rice with a nori mouth and black bean eyes. She sits atop a bed of red pepper and onion sauce covering a layer of curried mackarel fried rice. On the side are fish cakes and olives, and a salad of green potatoes and star-cut carrots.

Who could resist seeing a couple of adorable bunny pancakes on their plate of Easter morning? Best of all, these little guys take no longer to prepare than ordinary pancakes - which is to say that they take about 5 minutes from start to plate. I used this recipe for buttermilk pancakes and, instead of dropping the batter into one large round, I used a smaller spoon to "pour" the batter into shape. Bunnies are a fairly simple shape, so there is no need for a mold to form them. I used chocolate chips to make eyes and noses, but fruit slices would work just as well. If you do want chocolate chips and three isn't enough for you, you could always try adding a few chocolate chips into the batter. And, of course, serve with maple syrup!

As if eating Cadbury eggs, chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps in the same day wasn't excessive enough, a blog called Asteroid has a step-by-step guide to making a turducken-style creation that combines all three of these Easter sweets. It begins by making incisions in several peeps and stuffing mini Cadbury eggs inside. The newly fortified marshmallow critters are then stuffed into a hollow chocolate bunny whose base has been removed (above). The whole deal then gets sealed up again; chocolate welding is optional, apparently. Take that, giant Cadbury egg.

[Photo: Asteroid]

I miss the Cadbury bunny. This isn't the first time I've mentioned him, but I will repeat that the persuasive and adorable clucking bunny is one of the factors that made me want to purchase Cadbury Creme Eggs. How can you resist a treat that comes from the Easter Bunny, after all? It is even more difficult when you are an impressionable child and the cute bunny is offering you chocolate. This is an example of good food advertising (in all its retro glory), with a likable icon and a simple, tasty presentation of the product - a stark contrast to some of the disturbingly creepy ads that companies are using to promote their products nowadays.

The full commercial is after the jump.

 Peeps and grocery-store chocolate candies are all well and good, but the end of Lent calls for something of a splurge. Fortunately, the purveyors of fine chocolate and other goodies are more than happy to oblige the impulse to celebrate the season. Here at Slashfood, we are happy to indulge whenever the opportunity arises, but these luxury Easter chocolates are really ideal for a special occasion.

1. Harry and David may not be the "go-to" chocolatier for some, but their Chocolate Praline Eggs are somehow shaped inside a colorful, real eggshell and need to be broken out before eating. A half dozen eggs are $29.99.
2. Robert L. Strohecker's Assorted Rabbits are chocolate bunnies designed to have three different flavors of filling inside different parts of the rabbit: toasted almond ears, an almond butter crunch head, and a caramel pecan body. Available in both milk and dark chocolate, this is one bunny you won’t get bored with. They are $30.95 a pair.
3. Neiman Marcus' Chocolate Easter Bunny is hand poured, hand decorated and hand wrapped. At nearly 5-pounds, it is one very big, but festive, bunny. Use it as a centerpiece, then serve it for dessert. Each bunny is $99.

 

I can sort-of understand the $99 chocolate bunny for sale on the Neiman Marcus special occasion desserts website. Though I'm not completely sure what "semi-solid" means, the bunny is 19-inches high and weighs almost 5 pounds. And $35 for egg-shaped chocolate chicks is not entirely unreasonable because they have been painstakingly hand-decorated with colored chocolate. I have to draw the line on exorbitantly priced desserts somewhere, though, and the set of three chocolate eggs filled with marshmallows, graham cracker and caramel does not seem worth the $80 price tag, especially considering the additional $17 shipping fee. The most unreasonable dessert is a six-inch square cheesecake, wrapped in chocolate "paper" to look like a present, that retails for $190 plus $27 for shipping. Did I mention that the cake only serves 6 people?