Thursday, September 24, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

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.

Friday, September 18, 2009

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.

Friday, September 11, 2009

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!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

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.)

Friday, September 4, 2009

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.




Thursday, September 3, 2009

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!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Inaugural Posting

To-to-ro, To-to-ro...To-to-ro, To-to-ro...

I've had that little ditty from My Neighbor Totoro stuck in my head for a whole day now. My father-in-law just returned from a business trip to Japan and brought me a TOTORO BENTO BOX (!!) all of my very own. After reading many, many bento blogs, I have ventured into starting mine own.

I've been bentoing for the summer (it was a summer research project of sorts about Japanese food culture) and kind of got hooked on it. I had been using a small Glasslock container for my bentos, which works ok. I felt kind of strongly about not using a plastic one, due to strange chemical things, but I love my new Totoro bento box, even if it is plastic. As far as I can tell, it's made of ABS, which is pretty stable stuff. But as I don't read Japanese, the bottom of the box could say any number of things...

Not for Use with Food
Contents Under Pressure, aim away from face
Limit, 10 Snakes

...or whatever else warning labels always say. More likely it says something like, "For use in microwave--do not put in dishwasher"

So, I have this great, new bento and am compelled to document my use of it (to fully accentuate its awesomeness). During my summer experiment I made 35 bentos, including 3 that were picnic-sized ones for kayaking expeditions. I only took pictures of some of them, but I will retroactively post those in subsequent postings. I have read enough bento blogs to know that pictures are crucial.

Another motivation for starting this blog was because I occasionally troll the internet for new bento blogs to read. I have a hard time finding new ones (since my obsessive researching led me to the majority of easily findable ones) so I thought I would create my own. Totoro Bento is the name of this blog because that's a search phrase I use a lot.