Happy Little Bento PBS TV Show "Lucky Chow" Episode now streaming on YouTube!

Hello Bento Friends! The show I told you about has aired this past month on PBS stations across the U.S. and now is viewable on YouTube, in case you missed it in your area. Click below to check it out! Happy Little Bento is featured on the program "Lucky Chow" Season 2 Episode 1: Trending Japanese. We appear at 8:25 - 15:00.
Thanks for taking a look! Happy bentomaking!

PBS TV show Lucky Chow Season 2 Episode 1 preview trailer

Here is the new Season 2 Episode 1 preview trailer for the PBS TV show Lucky Chow, which will feature the Happy Little Bento family (well, 3/4 of us; me, MisterMan, and TinySprite). If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area you can catch the full episode this coming Saturday, May 13, 2017 at 9:30am on KQED. Hope you get a chance to check it out, and if you do, let me know what you think! Thanks! For other areas, please check your local PBS station listing: The show is called Lucky Chow and this is the first episode of season 2, called Japan: Food As Fetish:)

Lucky Chow Sizzle Reel Season 2 Preview

Hi Bento Friends!
Remember the time last summer when a film crew came over and filmed a bento segment with Happy Little Bento family? I blogged about the experience here.

It turns out they spent the rest of the year editing our shoot for a very interesting and varied Japanese food and cooking episode. Our bentomaking piece will be part of an upcoming episode in the second season of the PBS TV show Lucky Chow, which focuses on food and culture stories.

Here above (click on embedded video or link here) is the trailer preview for the season if you'd like to take a look. We show up at 1:23 for a few seconds (don't blink or you'll miss us)! It will air here in the bay area next month on our local PBS station KQED; you can check your local PBS listings for the scheduled airing dates in your area. :D

PBS television show Lucky Chow shoot

Top: In the midst of bentomaking demo

Bottom Left: Display of various bento boxes and tools

Bottom Right: The Lucky Chow team (and me)

We had a bit of excitement last week over here at Happy Little Bento when the team from the PBS show Lucky Chow came over to shoot a segment for an upcoming episode of their second season. This episode will focus on Japanese culture and food, so I talked with host Danielle Chang about bento, and then we assembled a couple of cute bento together while her cameraman walked around filming us. I gave behind-the-scenes camera duties to MisterMan, and he took a bunch of photos I'll share with you here. Thanks MM!

They arrived at 5pm, so I spent the afternoon setting up a display on the table and preparing food and bento supplies for us to use for our bentomaking in the kitchen. TS and I think it looks all right!

They wanted to film a greeting for the opening, so TS filled in with an impromptu performance. She really got a kick out of that.

I had to wear a microphone and transmitter so that we could walk around and talk. They decided to have us talk at the table first.

I didn't realize someone was peeking around the corner here...

The bentomaking itself was a lot of fun. I've never done a bento demo alongside someone else at the same time. It encouraged me to explain exactly what I was going to do next and clearly describe the tools and foods.

Are you ready for your close-up?

Make one, teach one! 

The whole thing took about 3 hours and we were finished with our bento just as the natural light was pretty much fading. Perfect timing. I think things went well and in fact my kids couldn't tell whose bento was whose!

The completed bento sets!

 Guess who ate the bento for dinner? ^__^

It was a lot of fun. If the editing goes well and the episode airs, I'll let you know. Thanks for taking a look at our adventures. Happy bentomaking! 

Our Cooking Channel Bento Commercials!

Cooking Channel Promo with the Happy Little Bento family (long version) a video by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Remember that interview and video shoot we did for the Cooking Channel back in the spring? Well, guess what? Our clip didn't end up on the cutting room floor after all. They ended up using it for a series of commercials that started airing a few weeks ago. If you get the Cooking Channel, you might have seen it - maybe without realizing it was us! We don't get that channel, so I had to get the DVD copy. I posted it here and on my flickr so you can see it too. After three hours of filming, bento-making, and talking, I was surprised to see a coherent 1-minute segment that made us look pretty poised and respectable. What a great editing job! I have immense respect for all the folks responsible for the work and production that goes into making an interesting and cool-looking promo. We found it amazing that it looks like a beautiful sunny day when in actuality it was around 8pm. All those hot spotlights really make a difference. I wish I had a setup that like to shoot my bentos at night and have it look like the brightest naturally sunny day ever. Also, if you have a 4-year old like mine, you know that after 3 hours of ANYthing they're usually either bouncing off the walls or having a meltdown or (yikes) both. But as you can see, my TinySprite was a perfect ANGEL. Hahahaha! (see previous comment about stellar editing job). Besides the solo 1-minute ad, there are also two other ads we're in which are comprised of two 30-second segments. Our segment is the same in both of these short versions but I've included them both so you can see the interesting other pieces (one's with a BBQ dude and the other is with a couple that runs a bowling alley restaurant). The cool thing about the Cooking Channel that makes it different from the Food Network is that it seems to focus more on the "everyday" regular person rather than celebrity chefs or reality contests. Folks like you and me. Thanks for taking a look! ^_^