3/17/2010- More Chickpeas and Asparagus for Spring

We've been eating asparagus right now. It's in season and just so lovely and green-tasting. My favorite way to do it is in a baking dish in a relatively hot oven (400-425°), drizzled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or with a little sesame oil and soy sauce. Deeeeelicious.

Contents of Bento: Spanish lemony chickpeas, with mixed rices underneath; asparagus broiled in the oven with sesame oil and soy sauce; a new cucumber radish shallot salad; blood orange sections and a lady apple.

I was pleased with the little carrot heart decor- also hand cut, like the bento dinner I did a few days ago. I showed this box to HB for his opinion and he said, "how are you going to get the lid on?" Well, I had arrayed the orange pieces and the asparagus this way for artistic flair. A lot of the bento blogs I read use this technique for pictures. But to answer his question, I tucked the ends of the asparagus around, put the lady apple on its side at one end and the orange sections in the other. I suppose I could have taken a picture with it that way, but it just seemed a little more aesthetic to photograph it like this.

3/16/2010- Orange Bento

This bento was so overwhelmingly orange, I just had to put a little piece of broccoli in it to give it some green.

Contents of Bento: winter squash, cooked in the oven, mixed with a little molasses and salt; mixed white and brown rices; those Spanish lemon chickpeas. Carrot and broccoli decor over everything.

I'm really pleased with how the carrot flowers came out, don't they look great! Also a quarter for scale. This is by far my smallest box, holds only 407ml and is really shallow. But it's glass, which means the whole thing can go in the microwave, and when it's packed full like this, is a surprising amount of food. This is the last bento from the bento-rama of a few days ago.

3/14/2010- Onigiri and Cucumber- also playing with scale

So here are some attempts to measure or provide a scale for my bentos. You'll see why I used the quarter. The only ruler I have is a metal one and the flash caught it something fierce. The leaflet tight box is about 7" on the longest side.



Here's a picture next to a quarter:


And finally just a close-up shot of the box. Without scale it could be really huge, but it's definitely not. The leaflet tight box is the largest box I have. It holds 500ml and has the largest footprint.
Contents of Bento: Frozen sour cherries, 2 small pieces of BBQ chikn wing-a-ling pizza with flying carrot garnish, awesome cucumber radish and shallot salad, onigiri (made with 2:1 brown to white rices) some are filled with umeshiso paste, decorated with red bell pepper and carrot flowers.

I actually ate this on a Sunday. I had it in the fridge and it was the quickest lunch available, but also very tasty. The onigiri had gotten a little hard by this point, which was a shame, but considering that they had been made several days earlier and just languished in the fridge, it was not surprising. Since this didn't get transported anywhere, everything stayed put.

3/12/2010- Onigiri and Assorted Okazu

This is the first of the bento-rama bentos (from my spree yesterday evening). I'm really excited, because I took "process" pictures while I was making this. One of the first things I want to show off is what I use as a mini-steamer. It goes to show you, you don't need a fancy Japanese one.

Here is the bottom part: a small, round bowl from Target. Broccoli and purple cabbage with about a teaspoon of the vinegar-based dressing I used in the cucumber salad from yesterday. Quarter is for scale.

And the top part, another bowl from Target, this one is larger and slightly flower-shaped. It's so perfect for bento-sized steaming. I just make sure that there's a little liquid in the with whatever I'm steaming and stick it in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds. And it looks so cute! Like a little mushroom/flower thing!

Bottom layer: onigiri with umeshiso paste inside, red pepper on top. Roasted asparagus, baby carrot, cut to add some lift to what's going on top of them.

The final thing! (Onigiri and asparagus and carrot from the previous picture) + 3 Okazu: vinegar-steamed broccoli with red cabbage, saffron/lemon Spanish chickpeas, soy-roasted portabello mushrooms with carrot flowers. Also, a cup of frozen sour cherries.

You can see the quarter peaking out there for scale. This box is also the one that I took pictures of while holding it in this posting, so long ago. It's pretty small, only holds 450 ml, if my memory serves me correctly.

I had a lot of fun with this bento, I actually made little portions for it, instead of just using little bits of what's in the fridge already. The asparagus and mushrooms were roasted with a little olive oil and salt in the toaster oven. When the asparagus was pretty and bright green, I took it out, and poured a little soy sauce over the mushrooms. Then they got turned once and cooked until brown and the soy sauce was all glaze-y.

It was also fun to use my little onigiri press. It makes the process soooooo easy. The only complaint I have is that it's hard to fill tiny ones, but I prefer tiny onigiri to the bigger ones because I can eat them in one bite without stuffing my face like a chipmunk. Also, I usually use 2:1 white to brown for my rice blend and I have to say that having more brown rice makes for less cohesive onigiri. What price fiber...

By lunchtime, though, everything was still great. Delicious and great and filling. I'm not totally sure how much rice 6 mini onigiri is in cups. Maybe I should measure that. Anyways, I was nice and full after lunch. Hooray!

3/11/2010- Bento Dinner and Bento-rama

I went on a glut of bento-making and made up 3 bentos all at once. This is because I made onigiri-appropriate rice (2 parts short-grain brown, 1 part white sushi rice) and I wanted to take advantage of that. Those will be posted as I eat them, but I also made up a bento-sort-of-dinner for HB. Sometimes he works late in the evenings, so I made a pretty, bento-inspired spread for him when he came home tired.

Contents of...bowl: Spanish Saffron/Lemon chickpeas, under white and brown mixed rices, decorated with carrot.

And yes, I did cut those carrot hearts by hand. I used a knife to cut an elongated heart shape out of a baby carrot, and then cut slices to make hearts. They actually don't look that bad from this distance. They looked a little anemic close up. I have included the quarter for a sense of scale. In case you were wondering, yes, this is an enormous HB-sized portion.

The Rest of dinner: Cucumber-radish salad (with white wine vinegar, shallots, marjoram, a little lemon juice, and honey and cranberry for sweetness), two tiny pieces (in a sauce-bowl) of BBQ chikn-wing-a-ling pizza.

Actually, I'm not too sure what all I put in the dressing on the cucumber salad. I felt a little like I made it in a trance. All's I know is that it's mostly vinegar and there's no oil in it. It was also super tasty. I thought it would be a nice spring-type salad. Though I suppose cucumbers aren't in season yet...whooops.

HB was very pleased (I believe "Oh wow!" was what he actually said). I've been struggling with wanting to make him ai-bento, but not being able to make them the way he eats (large portions of one thing, not tiny portions of lots of things--which is how I eat.) So this was a good compromise. And you know, it's just nice to do something nice for your HB once and a while.

3/6/2010- Leftovers (a little of this and that) and a Pretty Salad

I decided to pack a bento last night, since I wasn't going to get any school work done. The faux-gratin potatoes I made took waaaaaay too long. (Who knew slicing 10 lbs. of potatoes by hand would take a long time??)

Contents of Bento: Faux-gratin potatoes with a flower, pasta salad, 2 silicone heart cups on a bed of steamed broccoli, filled with black bean quesadilla filling. Gratuitous carrot letters. (I meant to highlight how cool the texture of the broccoli florets looked as a background, but it just looks self-aggrandizing.)

Tiny side car of salad with carrot garnish and cranberries. Don't it look purdy?

Everything was very tasty and the pasta salad was dry enough not to bleed over. However, there was a dressing disaster. I packed a little spice jar with some salad dressing and laid it down on its side on top of everything in my little bag. Biiiiiig mistake. Lots of leaking dressing everywhere. But I'm pleased to say that I washed my bag with hand soap and it seems to be no worse for the wear. So, make sure your dressings and sauces are packed in leak-proof containers: don't do what donny don't does!

Because the faux-gratin potatoes are so darn easy to make, I'm going to include the recipe here:

1 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 c. baco-bits (which contain no actual bacon...just lots of food coloring, salt, and soy protein)
1/2 c. strong vegetable stock, or 1 bullion cube in 1/2 c. water
1 lg. container FAGE greek yogurt
1 bag of mixed shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

oh yeah, and 10 lbs. of potatoes, actually, only 5 lbs. (still a lot though!) thinly sliced. If you have a mandolin cutter, please use it and save yourself the hassle.

Mince onion and garlic and sautee in olive oil until nice and brown. De-glaze the pan with the bullion stock. We use this awesome stuff called Better than Bullion, which must have about 40% of your daily salt in each teaspoon, but MAN, is it tasty. Add in the baco-bits and cook. Add more liquid if it gets looking a little dry. Dump in the potatoes (I pre-cooked mine a little, but not enough, in the microwave). Add greek yogurt, salt and pepper to taste. Put a lid on it and let it sit over low heat while you preheat the oven to 350 (which you forgot to do before). Get out a nice, big casserole. Put a layer of cheese in the bottom, add a thick layer of potatoes, another layer of cheese, a layer of potatoes, and finish with cheese. If you have restraint, you'll have between 1/3 to 1/4 of the bag left. If not, throw away the empty bag.
Bake, covered, until the potatoes are done. Then remove the cover and bake until the cheese is browned and bubbling. Allow to cool slightly before eating so you don't burn the heck out of your mouth. This would also be great garnished with scallions or green onion.

So, it's definitely faux-gratin, since the yogurt tastes very yogurty. But it's quite addictive. I ate way too much of it last night, despite the fact that I got tired of waiting and the potatoes were not all the way cooked through. Usually I pre-cook potatoes (after they've been sliced) in the microwave to speed up the process, but I guess 5 lbs. of potatoes just take a long time to cook.

2/26/2010- Pizza Bento for Friday again

HB and I just spent a very long weekend away for my birthday. We stayed at the Vendue Inn in Charleston on the day and had a really fancy, delicious dinner at S.N.O.B. (Slightly North of Broad) which was in walking distance from our hotel. A really, really awesome trip. We also got to see AJ and US. I had never been to their home before, but it was a real treat. Yay trip! Yay birthday! Boo being home (by comparison)! and Boo School!

Friday before we left I packed another pizza-for-Friday bento.

Contents of Bento: 2 mini pizzas from Trader Joe's, plain penne as a barrier (Natural Baran!) between the pizza and the broccoli, 2 lady apples, lemon-headed septopus with carrot legs and smile, black sesame seeds for eyes. The side car is some delicious marinara sauce for the pizza, pasta, and broccoli.

The rare lemon-headed septopus is in the Octopode family, but naturally only has 7 legs rather than 8. It is shy, preferring coral reefs to the ocean floor, and has a special penchant for broccoli. Be sure to check your broccoli at the store in case there is an immature septopus hiding in the florets.

Since the penne is a natural baran, I'm also linking this to Hapa Bento's B.O.M.B. contest for March. The penne did a good job of keeping the moist broccoli off of the pizza. Everything else was delicious--I heated the sauce a little bit for max-tastiness.