Vegetarian "Riceapple" & "Grapeplant" Bento

This week's theme at the BentoChallenge LiveJournal Community was "Vegetarian" as this month is Vegetarian Awareness Month (which I was not aware of)! I found this week's challenge to truly be a challenge, as I am a gleeful carnivore. (A funny quote I read once by someone I've forgotten goes, "I didn't get to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables".) Jokes aside, I do respect vegetarians and went through a (short but memorable) vegetarian period myself. 

Anyway, back to the bento. I pondered about what to make and what design would be suitable. In the end, YH struck upon a great idea of grapes being turned into an eggplant. The "grapeplant" is made out of seedless black grapes, with a green apple stem, on a background of green apple cubes.

For the main part of the lunch, I finally decided on a Thai food theme, and made vegetarian pineapple fried rice (with mushrooms instead of seafood) and red curry tofu cakes with beans (instead of the more common thai fish cakes). I covered the fried rice with extra pineapple, and cut out pieces of cucumber for the top of the "riceapple". There's also a thai-style dressing (not pictured) to pour over the cucumber and tofu cakes (which have been crumbled at the top to form the background for design purposes). 

Click here for the Vegetarian Pineapple Fried Rice recipe

A basic fried rice recipe is here.

The thai-style dressing is here (previously used for my pineapple salsa).