I know I’ve mentioned before how I’ve recently gotten into bento making, inspired in large part by the justbento website and also Maki’s wonderful Just Bento Cookbook.  While browsing her site about a week ago I discovered a bento contest held by Bento & Co, and I decided I just had to enter.

The theme was pasta.  You had to use some sort of pasta in your enter, but it had to be Italian and not Japanese pasta (so no soba, udon, etc.)

While I’ve made quite a few bentos before, I actually have never made a pasta bento, but I knew I wanted to focus more on the visual aspect of my bento than on taste.  So I sat and pondered pasta, what kind of pasta should I use, what would I make out of it, yadayadayada, when a bout of inspiration(cue the tiny lightbulb) hit.  I decided to make a bento featuring spaghetti noodles based on Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night.” Continue reading →