Updates soon~

I've been very remiss in updating this month. December has been ridiculously busy for a variety of reasons. I have a little time this coming week though, so I have some bentos to put up. I also got my little mama a bento box and some bento stuff for Christmas, so I'll be taking pictures of that, too.

Hurray! Now all 4 of you who read my blog will have something new to read...

12/1/2009- Kale stirfry bento

More leftovers from Thanksgiving. I seriously think I may be eating cranberry sauce until 2010. Sigh. I should just bake it into a pie or something....

Contents of bento: kale, quick sauteed with seasoned pecans and dried cranberries, carrots, cranberry sauce, small slice of butternut squash lasagna.

I removed the lasagna tray and microwaved it briefly for added tastiness.

The kale was actually chopped into little pieces, instead of how I often do it in ribbons. Ribbons are much harder to eat out of a bento box, I discovered.

11/30/2009- Leftover Sushi Bento

After thanksgiving gluttony, we needed something a little lighter. HB and I went out to dinner with his folks for delicious Japanese food and here is my bento filled with leftovers.

Contents of Bento: Leftover sushi from Soya- Shiitake maki, kimchee roll, cucumber maki and vegetarian maki (on its side). On the other side, one veg. gyoza, some takuan, Japanese pickled carrots, onions, and fresh shredded daikon (mostly obscured on the upper right.) Also red peppers, two fishes of soy sauce, and one of sirracha (since I don't have any wasabi at home, sirracha makes a nice substitute. Side car with a finger of shortbread from HB's mum. Man, she makes amazing shortbread.

The gyoza was from home (Trader Joe's frozen). I just stuck it in the box frozen and zapped it about 15 seconds in the microwave at work. That seems to work pretty darn well, especially for my lazy self.

NOTE ABOUT THE CONTEST: sadly, I did not win. But it was an honor to be selected as a finalist (one of three finalists out of about 50 entries...) So, hurray for the bentoblogosphere!

Bento Contest

I'm the finalist in a bento box contest!

If you like, feel free to vote (you don't have to vote for mine, of course, but you could...)

Here is my original posting:
(The contest is for a colorful, 4 container, flat, square bento box. To win the contest, you had to say what you'd fill each section with.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would fill it with Thanksgiving leftovers from our vegetarian feast.

Purple- Butternut Squash Lasagna
Green- Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes with apricots and sour dried cherries
Red- Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie with Red Pepper cut out fall leaf
Yellow- Sauteed Brussels sprouts with red wine, onions, pine nuts, paprika (and whatever other things my hubby puts in them...)

I don't really cook with recipes, but I can give you the gist of what is in the Lasagna and Shepherd's Pie. My mom made the Tzimmes, which is basically a Jewish vegetable dish cooked over low heat. It was also sprinkled with chopped walnuts. A nice contrast to the green container. :D
My hubby does the brussels sprouts every year and just makes it up as he goes along. I do know he always starts with onion and garlic in olive oil over high heat and deglazes the pan with red wine. I'm not sure what else was in them this year, but they were savory, pan-roasted, and delicious.

Butternut Squash Lasagna-
Cook Lasagna noodles, roast butternut squash. Combine Squash with garlic powder, salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and a little cream. Layer with noodles and provolone cheese. When you reach the top layer, prepare a cream sauce with a roux base (I always caramelize onion and garlic in the butter). Crumble dried sage into the butter as well. Then add flour, then milk in small amounts. Pour over lasagna. Top with more cheese and bake in 350 oven until bubbly and golden brown. This was a big hit with everyone who ate with us. (18 people this year! a new record in our tiny house....)

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie-
Prepare mashed potatoes in your favorite way (mine have roasted garlic and yogurt in them). Sautee one onion and 3 cloves of garlic in olive oil and butter until dark brown. Deglaze pan with sherry. Add 2 kinds of finely chopped mushrooms with a pinch of salt (white button and crimini) and cook until all the water has come out of them. Deglaze the pan again with sherry if you need to. Add 2 bags of Morningstar farms crumbles (fake ground beef). Cook down. Add powdered rosemary, worchestershire sauce, pickapepper sauce, and thyme. Add finely chopped carrot and turnip and continue to cook until carrot and turnip are slightly soft. Mix mashed potatoes with shredded cheddar cheese. Put fake meat mixture in casserole and top with the potatoes. Bake in a 350 oven until bubbly and the potatoes get a little golden (this actually takes a long time and I gave up before the potatoes started to color.) It was still delicious. And this kind of thing tastes better as leftovers--perfect for bento!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, yeah. Vote!

11/28/09- Post Thanksgiving Bento

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

It's all about my favorite things: family, friends, eating and drinking too much... And every year we get together with most everyone from our families. This year we had 18--a new record in our tiny townhouse. The menu is vegetarian, with the option for people to bring something that is a meat dish if they want. This is the first time in a few years that someone made a turkey breast. We had a lovely time and I was actually not very stressed out this year. Probably because I didn't try to cook 1-million things like in previous years. Needless to say, my lunch of leftovers was all vegetarian, including the two delicious main dishes I made.

Contents of Bento- Top Right: spinach and romaine salad with radishes and feta cheese, Bottom Right: Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes (with onion, apricot, and dried plums)--made by my little mama; and Sauteed Kale (with onion, lemon, and pine nuts)--made by me. Left-hand side: Vegetarian shepherd's pie and butternut squash lasagna. Red pepper strips on the top. In the ziplock on the left is an apple cranberry strudel, made by HB's mum.

I took the two non-salad trays out to nuke in the microwave for a few seconds. Everything was delicious. The two main-dishes are always better a few days after; what is it about casseroles that they age well?

Needless to say, our fridge is STILL filled with food. I feel like we'll be eating out of it for a looooooong time.

The Bear of Salt is Dead- Long Live The Bear of Salt!

The Bear of Salt has served me well, but he is sadly no longer whole.

As I hope you can see in this picture, his little neck is broken, which means he leaks salt all over my lunch bag.

Tragedy.

A moment of silence for The Bear of Salt, please.

The Bear of Salt is Dead!

*--------------*

Long Live the Bear of Salt!
Just like the British Monarchy, the job has to be filled and life goes on. Please welcome the new Bear of Salt.

Actually, his coloring matches the salt a little better, but I shouldn't speak ill of the dead...

11/19/2009- Japanese Stuff (sort of) Bento

This is my first foray into speed bento-ing. And as you can see, the results are not very pretty. They were tasty, though, so I don't really care that much.

Contents of Bento: The last of the onigiri made a week ago, three slices of takuan, one pickled onion, slice of tomato buried under crispy, seasoned Korean seaweed stuff. Two gyoza and a small jar of soy sauce/rice vinegar. Because the onigiri on the left were plain, I added two dabs of umeshiso paste.

This was actually a really tasty bento. Considering I made it up in 3 minutes as I was dashing to work, I am especially impressed. I would have been happier if it had more color. Or arrangement. Miraculously, the crispy seaweed stayed crispy. Obviously the Koreans have a magic technique for making this stuff. The seaweed and takuan were both H-mart purchases. I was thrilled to find takuan in not a giant-sized bag (that I would never eat up). The gyoza were from Trader Joe's and I just put them in the box frozen. I think they would have been ok to eat, but I did take them out and nuke them for 30 sec. when I went to eat my lunch.

I think I will have to make something like this again, but perhaps with more prettiness involved. I'm pretty sure that the Korean seaweed will not stay crisp in a box overnight, but that's ok too.

Retro-posted from 11/12/2009- Spicy Beans Bento

Contents of Bento: Spicy Beans, mixed brown and white short-grain rice topped with umeshiso paste, frozen cherries, cherry tomatoes, one prune, carrot sticks, two pieces of cheddar cheese.

This bento was made up the night before, with the rice going in straight from the rice cooker into the box. I have to say that Japanese rice holds up MUCH better in a bento than basmati does. So maybe that's the key to having edible (not hard, dry, flavorless...bleeeehhhhh) rice. I actually had to eat this bento at home. I left work early because of lots of stormy weather, but I was so excited about eating it that I didn't make myself a hot lunch when I got home. It was worth it.

The Spicy Beans are mostly chickpeas and black beans. HB, ever the wit, said, "isn't that basically chili?" But no, it has no chili powder in it, so it is technically not chili. (Even though it does have all of the other ingredients for chili....)

Onigiri Post- new stuff!

Among the things that I got at H-Mart earlier this month was a sweet onigiri mold. I used it to make a whole bunch of the little guys the last time I made rice. This rice is mixed short-grain brown with short-grain Japanese white rice. The ones on the right-hand-side are all filled with umeshiso paste, which is deeeeelicious. Umeshiso paste is very sour and salty tasting.

I needed a place to put all the little guys, so I thought of my totoro bento box. I trust the seal on it much more than I do on regular tupperware.

The onigiri were a SNAP to make. Seriously, so easy. And they held up well and stayed edible (though not at peak awesomeness) for a whole week. I'm totally converted. I also like the fact that the press makes such small ones. I like tiny foods better. :D

11/11/2009- New Bento Box and Pupusa Bento

Last weekend I was in Alexandria and while I was in Northern VA I took the opportunity to go and hunt up some awesome stuff at Super H Mart in Fairfax. This Korean grocery store carries all kinds of awesome international foods AND bento boxes. So, of course, I got a new bento box. Now I have three. Which is how it begins...

Leaflet Tight Box: came with a little green bag. Awwww, how cute! It is 500ml and has three lift out trays. One holds 175ml and the other two hold 80ml each, so with the trays it's a good size for me for lunch.

And here's the inaugural lunch I packed for it:
Contents of Bento: Pupusas with Zucchini and delicious cabbage salad with tomato sauce from South of the Border. In the big compartment: pineapple slice and frozen sour cherries, sungold cherry tomatoes (the LAST of the season), baby carrots, green olives, a prune, and a purple carrot cut up and stacked all pretty under the prune. The little side car has some hummus in it for the carrots.

Everything was delicious. The pupusas are not very good at room temperature, but I was too lazy to pick out all the little pieces and reheat. Eaten with the cabbage it was alright. Even though the box got tilted around a little bit, the pupusas did not get wet. There was some vinegar from the cabbage salad under the two containers when I washed it, but somehow it worked. The two pink cups are new from Super H Mart as well, they are heart shaped. I think they're going to be really awesome since they fit so nicely into corners. I also picked up a tube of Umeshiso paste so I will have umeboshi in my future!

Retro posted from 10/20/2009-Vegetable Okazu

If my memory serves me correctly, I tried to make this bento as authentic as possible. Except for the fact that I made it the night before and stuck it in the fridge. I may be to the point of mania where I take pictures of my lunch, but I'm not yet at the point where I get up 2 hours early in the morning to make it up.


Contents of bento: rice, with thawed frozen sour cherry in the middle (no, I did not yet locate umeboshi plums....) cucumber frame. On the right side, it's hard to see, but there is more cucumber, a little blue silicon cup of frozen blueberries and sour cherries, and 2 wing-a-lings. On the bottom is the vegetable okazu I made up from scratch--a simple sautee. It has in it all five colors (woo!): onion (white), purple cabbage, red pepper, celery (which I'm counting as green) and corn (yellow). Hurray! I think it also had some pickapepper sauce on it. I also packed a babybel cheese, as you can see.

I think the rice in this one was put into the box straight from the rice cooker. I also think that the cucumber may have kept it moist. But really, I have no real idea if I solved the problem of dry, horrible, leftover rice (which should be repurposed and fried, not stuffed into a bento to take up space and provide starch). *gets down off of soap box*

Retro posted from 10/10/2009- Eggplant, Rice, and Potatoes

Looking at the title of this posting, you'd think that I was only packing beige or white colored foods. Not so!

Contents of Bento: Rice with 2 grapes cut in half. A reused applesauce cup with sort-of-Thai eggplant dish, potato and red cabbage hash around the eggplant. A side car of little koala choco-filled cookies.

The eggplant dish is one I make pretty often. It's mostly eggplant stirfry with lots of tamarind in it, so it's more southeast asian than anything else. Sometimes I put in Thai basil or what have you. It's pretty tasty, even to people who are not fans of eggplant. I think that's because it has a lot of flavor.

Retro posted 10/8/2009- soba noodle stirfry

A discerning reader may be asking herself, "How many different times can you take the same damn leftover in a bento??" The answer, of course: until it is gone or moldy.

Contents of Bento: Plum, 2 koala choco-filled cookies, La Vache Qui Rit triangle, fresh peppers. Soba noodle stirfry with tempeh and edamame, garnished with red pepper. Look! It makes an exclamation point! That's like decoration, right?

I decided to retro post some of the pictures I had taken in October. So, more postings, less commentary, since I can't really remember the details of eating these lunches so many weeks after the fact.

HB Bento retro-posted from 10/8/2009

Wow, I was looking back at my postings for October. There's a reason why there are so few of them. I just got really tired of resizing pictures. Part of the problem is that my digital camera is kind of old, so it takes these really huge-file-size pictures. Which are silly for a blog. So I have to resize them all down to 500px. which is not a big deal, but takes a long time when you have to move the giant files around. Anyways, I digress.

This is the second HB Bento, which I don't think was ever posted.

Contents of bento: bottom container- frozen blueberries, an orange pepper stuffed with La Vache Qui Rit and one green olive, 3 slices of this frozen fried tofu stuff on top of tempeh, edamame, and soba noodle stirfry, topped with a fishy of pickapepper sauce. The tofu was purchased in the frozen section of Grand Mart (a great chain of international grocery stores in Northern VA). Top container-yellow corn chips, container of salsa, 3 koala chocolate cookies, 2 japanese bean rice cake things.

He ate everything but the bean cake things, but it was not as much of a success as the first one. Firstly, HB expressed his preference for more simple meals--less variety. And he also clued me into the fact that he can't stand La Vache Qui Rit cheese, even stuffed in a pepper. Oh well. Now I know. He was so polite about it. Part of the problem is that this box holds so much food, it's a challenge to try and fill it. Better luck next time, I guess. :D

Guest Bento- retro-posted from 10/26/2009

I mentioned in my last posting that my friend CB had started packing bento-lunch. I sent her a bento care package, with some small sauce containers and a furoshiki, because I thought she might need some cool stuff to get started. Here is her lunch from October 26th:

Contents of bento: "in case you want to know what's in my lunch- 1 cup of tomato/red pepper soup, box of salad with sesame ginger dressing (I might start putting it in one of the little containers...) and a cheese stick from TJs"

And here is what it looks like all wrapped up:


In her own words again:
"I'm not really doing pretty bentos, but everyone notices my tied up lunch complete with cutlery! I think it shows that even if you are lazy, you can still use bento elements. And there is something about having your lunch tied in a furoshiki that just makes it more like a meal rather than just crap in a box. :)"

Nicely done, CB! I don't think I could have said it better. CB uses her furoshiki as a placemat. Usually I use mine as a napkin, but that's because I'm too lazy to pack a separate napkin.

I especially like the use of regular-ol' containers to pack lunch. Though I love my Totoro bento box with a passion that will never die, I do often use other containers to pack lunch. Maybe I should take pictures of that too. Bah, there's always something I could spend more time on.

11/5/2009- Rice and Eggplant Bento

So it's been about 1-million years since I posted. Mostly because I have been too busy to take pictures, name them, and re-size them so they load nicely. But I was thinking about some stuff that my friend CB sent me, which I'm going to post next, and feeling guilty for not posting my own stuff, when I was planning on posting what someone else did.

Enough. Now a very boring bento:

Contents: Rice with ground, toasted white sesame and black sesame seed; Eggplant stir fry, a small piece of gingerbread pudding in the blue cup, one prune, a triangle of La Vache Qui Rit with carrots underneath.
I also brought some miso soup, so that I can have something warm. It has started getting chilly here and as usual in the fall, I have a hard time making sure I'm wearing enough layers when I got out of the house. I feel like it's too warm in the mornings for a coat, but that's probably not true.

The rice was fresh from the rice cooker when it went into the box. Sadly, not the best texture at lunchtime. Not the worst, either, but I think I need to consult some of of the gurus in the bentoblogosphere to see if I can find some advice. I don't think it's the box, because the amazing Totoro Bento Box is pretty air/water tight....

10/7/2009-Soba noodle stirfry- with Japanese bean treat

I was up in Northern Virginia last weekend (otherwise known as the Land of International Grocery Stores). Anyways, I picked up some stuff I'd wanted, but was unable to find umeboshi (to be honest, I didn't really search). But I did get some interesting things, which I will be taking for bento lunches and eating in general.

Contents of bento: plum, mini-pepper stuffed with garlic and herb La Vache Qui Rit, frozen sour cherries. Carrot sticks; soba noodle stirfry; plain, reheated rice topped with broccoli; and a Japanese bean pastry thing. Also:

A "suit case" full of furikake. This kind is pretty simple: sesame, seaweed, salt. But it still tastes a little weird to me. I wish I had included something to show the scale of the "suit case." It's actually a little pill case, about 1" x 2" x 1/4". Sometimes I can fit it inside the bento, even, but I didn't want the furikake to get soggy.

Everything was tasty except for the reheated rice. Bleh. Man, I really need to quit putting old rice in a bento. It's already hard and dry and even though I reconstituted this stuff in the microwave the night before (with a little water) it was still dry and horrible when I ate it. Oh well, live and learn. It might also be the grain. I haven't tried it with the shorter-grained Japanese rice. Needless to say, the furikake did not improve the taste of the terrible, dry rice. Oh well.

The Japanese bean pastry thing was a little strange. I guess I was expecting more like a mochi bean cake, but the outsides of this thing are like styrofoam (actually, EXACTLY like those little ice cream cones? You know, the "cake" ones?). The insides are not red bean, but fruit-flavored bean goo. I'm not doing a great job "selling" them, but they are actually pretty tasty.

10/3/2009- Potatoes and Broccoli pasta

I made this bento to eat on Saturday at work, with the expectation of taking my box with me when we went out of town straight from work. I like to wash out the container at work, so then I can put leftovers directly into it, should the need arise. It's worked out pretty nicely so far.

Contents of bento: plum, frozen sour cherries, a mini pepper stuffed with the solids of black bean soup. On the right side, breakfasty potatoes, steamed broccoli, and a deliciously oily pasta made with broccoli slaw and other stuff. It's garnished with pepper rings and a piece of Parmesan.

The cherries thawed nicely by lunch time and were a tasty addition. They were picked last summer and have been living in our freezer for a loooooong time. I decided I need to start getting on the train of eating them up. Nothing leaked and everything was tasty, yay!

10/1/2009-Soba Noodle Stir-fry and HB bento

This posting is a kind of exciting posting because it features pictures from the first photographed HB-Bento! Woo! The very first bento I made for myself (long, long, ago) was accompanied by the very first HB-Bento (i.e., the first bento for HB). Well this posting contains the illustrious SECOND HB-Bento (the first one to be photographed). Back when I started I thought it was a little weird that people take pictures of their lunches. But then I got into reading bento blogs. Man, are those pictures key.

Contents of my bento: plum, 2 mini-peppers stuffed with garlic and herb La Vache Qui Rit; soba noodles stirfried with edamame, sweet-soy simmered tempeh, and topped with broccoli and turnip.

I simmered the tempeh with some kombu and dried black fungus (mmmmmm fungus) in soysauce, mirin, and a little rice vinegar. I also added in a big spoonful of brown sugar. Deeee-licious.

The whole reason why HB got a bento today too was because I bought him this swank new bento box. It's a tiffin-style container from World Market. And it's dishwasher safe, which I have tested out. Mostly, though, it holds a lot of food and doesn't look plastic or girly, which means there are more places he can take it. It also looks like it would hold up to some beating, which is also crucial.

Tiffin! Metal (stainless steel), Indian bento-style container. This one has two compartments and it snaps together nicely. It's pretty waterproof, though I haven't really tried testing the limits of that. The outer surface of the compartments has this nice dimpled pattern in the metal. It's really quite an attractive item. Purchased from World Market for the low, low price of $10.

And here it is filled with foods.

Contents of HB bento: on left, mini-pepper stuffed with La Vache Qui Rit (garlic and herb), some baby carrots, a plum, 2 toothpics of edamame, packet of miso soup, and a silicon baking cup filled with homemade spicy, salty cashews (I do them on the stove top with curry powder, salt, and cayenne). On the right, soba noodle stir fry (same as I got, just in a huge, HB-sized portion).

A closer view of the bottom container.

I did pack this the night before and stuck it in the fridge, as is my wont.

The verdict was very positive. Hooray! And he said he didn't mind the container, so I think there will be more HB bentos in the future. Excellent. The term that I found in this book I got from the library (The Food of Japan: Authentic Recipes from the Land of the Rising Sun, by Takayuki Kosaki and Walter Wagner) is aisai bento, or loving wife's lunch. Essentially, it's the lunch that a wife packs for her man, which may or may not embarrass him in its decorativeness. The book is, to my estimation, so-so. But it does have some nice narrative in the beginning about different areas they cover in Japanese cuisine.

9/30/2009- Artichoke pasta

A really simple bento today. Basically just three things, which is not usually how I pack them. I was feeling a little uninspired. Though, I suppose, just inspired enough not to take a tupperware.

Contents of bento: on left side, steamed broccoli and red pepper strips. On the right side, artichoke, tapenade, and pesto penne with three strips of Parmesan cheese on top.

Not much else to say about it, really. Though this pasta was dry enough not to have the sauce suctioned over around the lid. Hooray!

9/29/2009- Tapenade roll ups and broccoli bento

This bento is basically my answer to "oh no! what ever will I take for lunch?!" It's a problem, especially when there are not a lot of leftovers in the fridge.

Contents of bento: on left side, large bed of steamed broccoli, a small pepper stuffed with potato quesadilla filling, garnished with pepper rings. On right side, 4 tapenade and goat cheese roll-ups made with spinach tortillas. Also garnished with red pepper. The side car holds salsa for the broccoli. (or whatever else I wanted to eat in it.)

Everything was tasty, though I can see how you want to make sure that rollups have very dry fillings. These had gotten a little moist by lunch time. I took the picture in our break room at work, hence the dim lighting.

9/24/2009- Salsa roll-up bento

I actually made my lunch this morning before work, which I definitely don't normally do. I have no idea how long it took, but it felt like "too long."

Contents of Bento: whole wheat tortilla roll-ups with Mexican cheese blend and some tomato/artichoke tapenade, heated to melt the cheese; corn tires (three), two prunes, carrots and red pepper over steamed broccoli and shredded lettuce. The two little side cars have plain yogurt and salsa. The larger one has some corn chips and the ends of the whole wheat tortilla, chipified in the toaster oven.

The thing that makes me the most irritated about packing my lunch in the morning is waiting for it to cool down before I clip the lid on. Needless to say, I did not wait quite long enough and there was a little leakage. But I'm ok with a little leakage. Everything was tasty and plenty of food for me to eat. That's the magic of a tightly packed bento box: there's so much more there than it looks like. The roll-ups actually stayed rolled and didn't leak everywhere. Hurray, two days in a row with no leaking!

9/23/2009- Left over sushi bento

Tuesday night I decided to get a handle on my reading for school. So, after work, I went straight to a Hyashi (a local Japanese restaurant) and had sushi and lots of green tea. And finished 40 pages of reading. uuggghhhhh.

I didn't finish all of my vegetarian sushi, so I just shoveled the leftovers into my bento box from lunch. I had Oshinko, Cucumber, and one piece of Avocado. It didn't end up taking much room, so I had to fill in the box with other stuff for lunch on Wednesday.
Contents of Bento: Sushi on the left, with red pepper accents, carrots (under the celery), two corn tires, two prunes, a stalk of steamed broccoli, and some salad with bell peppers and pine nuts under the baybel cheese. The cheese has a cut out leaf (more fall!) which I put in the box, on top of the corn tires. On the left of the sushi are two fishes, one of soy sauce, the other of sirracha (since I didn't have any wasabi at home). The little jar has homemade vinaigrette with a 1/2 tsp of peanut butter in it.

The attempt at peanut vinaigrette didn't really work, but I still make tasty dressing, so it doesn't really matter. And since it was packed separately from the salad, no muss no fuss. This box was so tightly packed, nothing moved at all, which was really nice for a change. The sirracha was also a tasty substitute for wasabi.

The sushi was a little unusual. The Oshinko and Avocado was sort of tear-drop shaped like this: I've made sushi that looks like that too, but usually it's because I've messed something up. Anyways, it made a nice presentation on the plate, to have the standard shapes and the tear-drop ones.

9/22/2009- Pesto Pasta and Mini Pizza bento

I usually pride myself on making homemade food, but I've noticed that lots of my bentos have had "convenience" items in them this month. Little hors d'oeuvres just make such nice bento additions. If I take homemade leftovers, often I just put them in a tupperware and don't bother to make up a bento. That's also because I love my Totoro bento box and don't want it to get stained with tomato or tumeric (which feature prominently in the cooking in our house). I know the solution is to use my glasslock box. But, meh, the Totoro one just has such awesome dimensions. The taller sides make it much easier to pack things in it.

So here's another bento that uses some convenience food. Tiny pizzas from Trader Joe's! Man, they're just so CUTE, how could I resist?

Contents of bento: Pesto pasta (storebought pesto, sorry) with kalamata olives, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese. Left side: A little spinach salad on the top, two sweet corn tires, two mini pizzas separated from the corn with a baking cup folded in half. The side car at the top has a molasses cookie cut in the shape of a maple leaf, in honor of the first day of fall :D

So, you think I would have learned my lesson a few short days ago, with the pasta salad debacle. My bento got kind of jostled around a little bit and I guess the pesto oil got siphoned along the rubber grommet...again. It was all along the edge and flowing down the side by the pizza. Bah! Oh well, nothing ruined. Corn tires are fun to eat. And I love my new tiny side car. (I have three, they came with four, but I sent one to a friend.) They are 40ml, polypropylene, and completely watertight. I got them from here: this ebay store with bento stuff . They shipped out pretty fast, and were packaged with all the original Japanese packaging. Totally awesome.

9/17/2009-Gyoza bento

The other night I made delicious Japanese-styled foods for my housemate and I for dinner. We had gyoza, some store sushi and seaweed salad, miso soup, annnd sauces and some broccoli and bell peppers (raw). I think that was all. It was tasty and light. The gyoza were the frozen vegetarian ones from Trader Joe's and I steamed them in my mini bamboo steamer. It's the first time I've used it, but MAN, is it great! I can just put it over a little sauce pan with a cup or two of water and go. I have a large size one, too, but it's kind of a pain to use.

Contents of Bento: Gyoza, celery, and carrot sticks on the right side. Garnished with some red bell pepper. Rice on the left with green grapes on top. Other stuff (clockwise) steamed broccoli, 2 prunes, mini baybel cheese, hummus stuffed pepper.

In the past when I've done stuffed peppers, I've been able to find mini peppers. This is just the end of a skinny pepper from the farmer's market. The little jar has gyoza sauce (rice vinegar and soy). I put it in a glass jar because it was the left over dipping sauce from the night before and had some gyoza oil in it. (Which I wanted to avoid getting stuck in my little fishes). And of course, the Bear of Salt appears to be looking over to the right, possibly to keep watch for marauders. This picture was actually taken at my desk at work, right before I ate everything. The rice had been leftover in the fridge for a while and I didn't reheat it or anything "to restore texture" so it was hard and crunchy. :( Other than that, everything was quite tasty.

9/15/2009-Spaghetti Bento, retroactively posted

This bento was made at my folks' house on Monday night. My best friend from high school was over and she watched me prepare it. I believe her comment was: "You do this every day? That's way too fiddly for me." Kinda funny, since my bentos are really plain compared to how some people do them.

Bento Contents: lightly sauced spaghetti (to keep it from sticking together) on the right, made into little bite-size nests, garnished with olive slices; apple rabbits; carrot sticks (under the apple rabbits); a light La Vache Qui Rit French Onion cheese wedge; some kind of spicy delicious cooked green beans in a metal cupcake cup; half of an oatmeal cookie in the red silicon cup.
A container of apple sauce on the side.

The cheese was actually better than I remembered it being. I really liked it when I was a little kid and then went through a stage where I thought the texture was like creamy plastic. But I guess I've grown out of that. The french onion flavor was really nice. I ate it with the carrots. The spaghetti was actually edible with chopsticks, which is an excellent success. I also put some lettuce around the beans before transport (which didn't look particularly great, hence, no picture) and I'm pleased to say the tomatoey oil in them stayed put.

9/11/2009- Pasta salad bento

I learned an important lesson about leakage today. Oh man. Here's the pic after I packed it last night:

Contents of bento: Homemade pasta salad on the left: steamed broccoli, shells, red pepper, and some homemade garlic dressing that's been kicking around the fridge, topped with some shaved parmesan.
On the right: carrot sticks, green grapes, two Morningstar farms buffalo wing-a-lings (my name, not theirs) in a decorated paper cup, one prune under the red silicon cup which has a piece of oat-cookie-bar thing in it. There's a lettuce leaf underneath everything, which I hoped would prevent any leakage.

Now for the lesson on leakage. I mixed up the pasta salad last night and all was well. I knew it would be kind of juicy, so I spooned it out of the bowl, sort of draining it. I should have made a better effort. I don't know what happened, exactly, but it leaked under the middle barrier, it leaked up into the lid, which suctioned it over lots of other stuff on the right side. The only consolation I can give myself is that at least I put the oat bar in a silicon cup. It was untouched. And the rest wasn't really a big deal to have some dressing on. The wing-a-lings were especially good with it. When I make them to pack in a bento, I stick them in the toaster oven until they're dried out and crispy. There's no way to keep them from absorbing some moisture in the box, so I like to dry them out as much as possible. I'm really into them. As far as fake meat goes, I'm don't cook with it much, but things like this make great bento items. I also use those wing-a-lings in a great homemade pizza thing, which I may post about the next time I make it.

I'm also glad that the Totoro Bento Box didn't leak into my lunch box, so I suppose it's water-tight-ness is a good thing. Next time, I think a slotted spoon. Or maybe packing up the dressing separately. I ate the dressing soaked leaf, too. Hah.

6/10/2009- Onigiri and other stuff bento

So the other night when I made the thai-basil sort of eggplant dish, I made Japanese short grain rice to go with it. And I made a few onigiri, using the plastic wrap method, which I stuck in the fridge. I have made them by hand before, too, which is fun and painful (a little bit), but since I wasn't going to use them the next day, I thought I would use the plastic wrap method so they'd be prepped to not dry out. Two days later, here they are in my lunch, with a strange assortment of some other things. I left the onigiri wrapped in their plastic when I packed up my Totoro box, so they wouldn't lose any moisture into the box (no soggy cheese).

Contents of Bento: two plain onigiri on left; baybel cheese with heart cut-out (the heart ontop of the onigiri is the wax from it); under the cheese is celery and carrot; also celery and carrot at the bottom of the box.
In the middle is some leftover orzo salad from going out dinner the other night, with pine nuts and red pepper added, garnished with basil, in a red silicon cup. It needed some serious help, it was quite bland.
The blue silicon cup has 3 artichoke hearts and two olives; under that is one prune. I lined the bigger compartment with a lettuce leaf.

You may ask, why is there a big, honking space in the top right corner? Well, it was waiting for one of those mushroom "meatballs" from Trader Joe's to cool down from the toaster oven.

Voila! Finished bento.

Well, sort of. I needed some serious sauces, since most everything was dry. So, I brought some of my containers:

Sauce bottles!

The two fishes have soy sauce in them. The panda bear is filled with Balsamic vinegar (for the artichokes and meatball) and the tan bear is The Bear of Salt. He always has salt in him. :D I love these little sauce bottles, they're such a boon to bento packing. All the sauce bottles were just jammed into the box wherever they would fit (not very pretty) so there's no picture of the whole thing as it looked like when I went to eat it.

Everything was tasty, including two-day old onigiri. The pasta salad stayed in its cup and there was no leakage. Hurray!

Amazing Bentospiration

So, I don't want to be one of those blogs that only cross-posts other people's postings. (Too meta for me.) But, my friend sent me a link to this awesome yuppie solution to expressing your love for someone with a bento box. Oh. My. Sainted. Aunts. This is amazing stuff. It makes what I do with bentos look like crayon scrawls next to Dutch Masters (or something). Whew.

6/9/09 Bento- pizza, fruit, and veg

Left over pizza for this bento :D but I felt like it needed something else...


What's in the bento, you ask?? It's a mystery!!




Mystery solved! It's fruits and vegetables....
Contents of this bento: small plum, carrots, celery under the carrots, green grapes. And a small jar of carmelized onion, basil yogurt dip.

This jar makes me soooo happy. It was a tiny jar of Bonne Maman jam (like 2 tablespoons) that HB and I got from this awesome bed and breakfast we stayed in for our anniversary. The owner was so gracious and welcoming and I was really excited about getting a tiny jar. However, my glasslock box is too shallow for it. But the new, awesome Totoro Bento Box fits it perfectly! Success! So now I can carry dip and other things that I might want in slightly larger amounts than in a tiny sauce bottle. Or chunky sauces! I see lots of salsa in my future....
Now, I wonder if it will fit with the lid on... must find out.

Also, don't the pictures look awesome? I took them right before I ate, so there was all this natural light coming in through the window of the lunch room at work. Usually I take a picture at night, right after I make them, which is why the flash usually looks so terrible.

9/10/09 Bento- asian eggplant

So this is an angled shot of my bento from Tuesday. Really simple.
Contents of bento: asian eggplant (a sort of thai-basil kind of dish) on the left, rice on the right, garnished with red pepper and a basil leaf. I'm not sure what the garnish is supposed to look like, except some color breaking up the white of the rice. :D

Here is a picture of the whole thing, with totoro lid arrayed nicely.



The side car container also has a small plum in it. I also packed some green grapes. Those of you who know about bentos will notice that I did not use correct bento proportions on this box. There is more like 1/3 rice, and 2/3 other stuff. That's because 1 cup of rice is a serving, so that's what I put in. I thought it was just about the right amount. Everything was very tasty and I usually find my stir-fries good cold. (Though, to be honest, it was cooked too long to be a true stir-fry, but I'm not sure what else to call it.)

Totoro Bento Lunch

Finally, I have packed my new totoro bento box with a lunch. Yay! There was a minor crisis when I couldn't find my digital camera tonight. I ended up using HB's, which was a challenge because the LCD view screen is totally broken. So, not the most professional of photos, but I figure, something is better than nothing.

Firstly, a shot of the way cute box. (Yes, I am holding it up to the wall)

Cute Totoro (regular size) with a sho totoro over his shoulder. Also soot sprites and leaves.

As you can see, it snaps shut on either side and is completely waterproof (at least as far as my "fill-with-water-and-shake-it-up" testing went.) Inside there is one movable divider thing. What I really like about the box is that the lid is slightly higher than the level of the box, so any decorations or round things won't get squished. My glasslock box kinda presses things down, which can be a bummer if I'm feeling "decoratey."

For lunch, I made some fried rice with vegetables and pinapple. Something a little special (rather than just leftovers, like I usually do.) I put the fried rice out on a plate to cool. I sometimes will set hot food on a plate or a small rack over a freezer pack. Or, if it's small enough, I stick it in the freezer itself to bring it down to room temperature.

fried rice cooling

And now, the final bento box!

Bento contents: Fried rice in larger compartment on left hand side, carrot and pepper flower, sirracha sauce decoration; small plum in smaller side of compartment, piece of oat bar cookie in a pretty mini cupcake liner, with miso soup packet under neath.

At the bottom of the box (packed outside) is the miso paste.

I was almost done and I thought the fried rice needed a little more color. The peace sign was the response when I asked HB what I should put on it. So there you go. Peaceful rice. I also tried to squish the cupcake liner into a star shape, for more flair. It sort of worked...

Here's what it looks all wrapped up:

My furoshiki is a cloth napkin and I tucked the miso paste in the top with the chopsticks, as you can see.

So! I had a little of the fried rice that didn't fit in the box and it was very tasty, so I anticipate it being good tomorrow, too. For now, I leave you with another one of the Totoro goodies my father-in-law brought back, a little plush Totoro playing his ocarina. When you press his tummy, he makes this hooting sound that repeats three times. He's sitting on my desk lamp to inspire me when I do school work (or blog updates....)

"Be productive! Hoo-hooo-hoooooooo!"

Update: Everything was delicious! There was no bleed-through of the rice under the little divider and my peace sign was still intact. Success! I love the sweet taste that pineapple gives fried rice; I had forgotten about that. I think this is also the first fried rice bento I've made, definitely good as a standard.

6/12/09 Bento- veg gyoza

The last of the four previously photographed bentos. I'm going to need to start packing a bento lunch again so I can get some more photos. It's kind of disappointing I only took four pictures. Some of them were really cute...

Bento contents, in glasslock: Four vegetable gyoza (steamed in the microwave--fast and not too bad for texture); three stuffed mini peppers-orange and red, with parsley and scallion hummus;
steamed broccoli; cucumber and strawberry gap fillers; and two dark chocolate covered cashews in a foil piece at the bottom.
Not pictured: two fishes filled with soy/rice vinegar for the gyoza (they just didn't fit in the box).

The gyoza are from Trader Joe's. I have, in the past, fry/steamed frozen gyoza, but this time I just microwave-steamed them. They were a little stuck together, but tasted fine. I would also like to note that it's bad luck to serve them in groups of even numbers, five is the standard serving. (I did read this somewhere, that five was a lucky number for gyoza, but I can't seem to find a link/reference.) But four were what fit, so that's what I used. I would like to note that nothing terrible befell me that day, at least as far as I can remember!

The foil under the cashews was to prevent the chocolate coating from getting soggy. It only worked somewhat. They were a little damp, but still tasty.

Bento on NPR

Talk of the Nation's Blog of the Nation has a posting on Bento lunches.

Enjoy!

6/10/09 Bento- mushroom meatball

Number three, also in my glasslock container. Man, I do love that thing, though it is seriously heavy. I can't imagine how much heavier the larger ones are...

Bento contents: in a layer on the bottom on the left side, baby carrots and cucumber sticks;
red silicon baking cup with regular and red pepper hummus on top;
steamed broccoli in the middle with a sliced strawberry as garnish;
on the right-hand side, in a foil cupcake liner three mushroom "meatballs", one olive, and three pieces of cheddar cheese;
fishy of BBQ sauce at the top.
Not pictured: 1/2 whole wheat pita bread in plastic bag.

The foil cupcake liner had a piece of paper towel in the bottom to absorb moisture. I drained the olive before hand so it didn't get messy (of course, it was also on the paper towel). To put the foil in, I just flattened it and mashed it in the end to fit. Seemed to work pretty well. I ended up making a mini "meatball" sandwich in the toaster oven, and if I were to do that again, the cheese should be in smaller pieces.

I also had a tough time manipulating baby carrots and cucumber sticks into the hummus with chopsticks. I have a nice pair of chopsticks that I keep in my lunch bag and I do like eating with them. (I think it's probably because it's such a fiddly thing...I like fiddly.) But I think the baby carrots are almost too big to grasp and dip.

The little fishy container is from a great online store called www.from-japan-with-love.com. I ordered a couple of things from them, including the bear container in previous postings. The service was prompt and my order form was packed in this pretty, Japanese foil envelope. Lovely! For those of us who don't live near San Fran, finding Japanese bento things at a reasonable price is difficult. (I can only give my father-in-law so many requests when he's traveling before I feel like I'm taking advantage.)

6/9/09 Bento- asiany noodles

My second photographed bento of my summer project:

Bento contents, left to right: bean thread noodles with sesame oil and rice vinegar,
mini pepper stuffed with scallion and parsley hummus,
sesame tofu and eggplant stirfry with fresh edamame and marinaded shiitake mushrooms over top (in a metal cupcake liner to keep it separated from the noodles),
steamed broccoli, and cucumber slices.
The green package at the top is miso for miso soup.

A great bento, the noodles got a little dry, because the oil and vinegar drained all the way to the bottom. The stirfry did also not stay separated, but leaked out. Fortunately, all the flavors were harmonious, so it wasn't a big deal. The mini pepper with hummus was totally awesome, but I have learned to keep bentos with hummus chilled, otherwise the hummus gets a little zippy. Food safety, anyone?

6/8/09 Bento- Curry

As promised, I am retro-posting my previous bentos. I looked around on all the places I keep such things and I only have 4 pictures of the 35 I made this summer. Boo! Well, at least 4 is better than none.

This bento is from June 8th and featured leftover Indian food made by my housemate the night before. I packed it after dinner and stuck it in the fridge overnight (my favorite way to speed-bento in the morning).

Contents of bento: brown rice with strawberry garnish, Turnip and Greens curry, Indian garlic pickle in blue silicon baking cup, and the little bear is filled with yogurt. This is in my 400ml Glasslock container.

Side dish: dal in a Ziplock twist container.

I took out the strawberry, bear, and garlic pickle and popped it in the microwave to heat a little bit. Everything was great, but the bear was a devil to clean. The bottle has little shoulders which trap viscous liquids. I think yogurt is better served in a different container. I also noticed that the silicon baking cup absorbed some of the intense odor of the garlic pickle. Several washings and letting it air out solved that problem. The silicon baking cups are from Wilton and are a great boon to having little side dishes all separated out.