Thursday, June 24, 2010

6/15/2010- Dinner Bento

Another swag bento :D

This one requires some input from my darling reading public (which I have just found out might be slightly larger than I had thought! Woo!)

This image is without flash.

This image is with flash.

Which do you prefer?

Contents of bento: Salad with pretty cut outs of cucumber and mozzarella cheese, burrito filling and spanish rice with pepper jack cheese and tortilla cut-out stars, tortilla strips with melted cheese and a King Strawberry obscuring a piece of pineapple.

You can tell the strawberry is a king because of the crown. And also his HUGE size. Seriously, a monster berry.

This is packed in a new box, a blue French Sheep box. The top says something in French that I can't remember at the moment. The top holds 380ml and the bottom 290ml for a whopping total of 670ml. This is pretty big for me. So I made sure to put salad in the bottom section. This box comes with nice little chopsticks that fit in the lid and is just a nice set. I like it!

The lunch was pretty good too.

6/15/2010- Breakfast Bento!

The first bento from swag! Also, new background...

This is a 480ml box that I will now call "Putifresh Trees." They're not really trees--they're bunches of grapes. But they look like trees to me. Meh.

Contents of bento: Fruits! canteloupe slices cut with flower cutters, strawberry, pineapple (in a paper cup); awesome tomato-headed sauce container filled with BBQ, a silicon baking cup with granola, leftover Red Potato Pizza* cut into pieces.

You can see the quarter for scale, perhaps. This box is pretty tall, but fits the sauce bottle perfectly. Something you may not know is that I don't eat ketchup. I had to refill too many little bottles of it when I worked in food service, so it really turned me off to it. But I do like BBQ sauce and I will put it on most things potato (NOT mashed, however). It is delicious on the red potato pizza.

A good bento, everything was tasty at room temperature. It is hard to eat granola with chopsticks, however.

*Red Potato Pizza is a particular specialty of NE CT where I now live. It is made with white sauce, red potato slices, cheddar cheese, and topped with either bacon or broccoli or both (mine here has just broccoli). It is really quite good, especially with BBQ. :D

SWAG!

Ok, so we live in CT now, and I was bound and determined to make some bento with my new swag so that I could post something in celebration of winning the contest. But our temporary kitchen is not really conducive to bento-ing. I will need to think about my plan of attack for it....

I began by laying out everything I got in the awesome box of great stuff:
Despite the bizarrely "artfully" alignment of the picture (I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking...I think I was just trying to get everything in the image....) Behold, my SWAG!--lots of boxes, picks, shapers, baran, all kinds of amazing stuffs.

But what is really crazy is when you realize that it pretty much DOUBLES the amount of bento things I own. I mean. Really. Double. So, storage is kind of an issue, but it's ok. I put out all of my other stuff into the array, so the awesomeness of my bento collection can be seen...

the only thing missing from this image is my metal tiffin box for HB. Somehow it got left on a chair. But you can see that I now have quite the array of bento supplies!

As I make lunches with them, I will post the sizes of the new boxes. I'm a little intimidated by the yellow onigiri bento--I think I might be able to pack a sandwich in it without too much trouble. :D I'm not sure how to keep it closed; the top section doesn't fit all that tightly onto the bottom....:shrug: I guess I need to play with it.

Retro-posting from our last week in VA

This was a bento I made at S&A's house our last week in VA. Tasty, nondescript, but a bento picture!
Contents of bento: fried rice with decor, sliced strawberry, and mini-babybel cheese.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Retro-posted from 5/27/2010- Peanut curry and rice

A really simple bento:

Contents of bento: peanut curry with all kinds of vegetables (none of which are visible), basil, rice (mixed white and brown) and some steamed carrots cut-out with the veggie cutters I also got in celebration of being done with my Masters.

The carrots were steamed and then had a little soy sauce put on them. Really simple. The whole thing went in the microwave. Not too bad. Not very fancy, but that's ok.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Retro-posted from 5/25/2010- onigiri and okazu

Heh, I know the title for this posting is a little silly..."rice balls and stuff" might be one translation. Anyways, just a simple bento for lunch.

Contents of bento: onigiri (I think these had Indian Garlic Pickle in them), lettuce, okazu with vegetables and quorn in some kind of thick, sweet, soy sauce, carrots, sweet simmered black beans, and frozen cherries (which defrosted by lunchtime).

I think the lettuce was there to add some color.

Retro-posted from 5/22/2010- a Bento Picnic!

HB and I decided to have a picnic and I thought to bring my new bento box (and a box for HB) since I had just packed it. We ended up sharing the contents of both boxes. Together with a blanket and a big container of homemade mint iced tea, it was a great lunch. A good way to celebrate a lovely warm day.

This is my inaugural bento for the ELPH box!
Contents of Bento:
lid: cashews and a piece of chocolate fudge. Top tier: okazu with vegetables and quorn pieces in a sweet soy type sauce, sweet black beans (simmered with brown sugar and soy sauce), lettuce, carrot cutouts. Bottom tier: mixed white and brown short grain rices and SUPER CUTE CARROT ELEPHANT! Look! He has a heart coming out of his widdle trunk.

Here is a detail of my awesome charben attempt:
Can you tell I'm just so pleased with myself?

Here is HB's box, which is very plain looking. We shared the decor from the Elph box set.
Contents of bento: Carrots, hummus with red pepper, and onigiri on a bed of lettuce. The onigiri are stuffed some with Branston Pickle (mmmmm, I got addicted to this stuff when I lived in England) and some with Indian Garlic Pickle. For some reason, American food is not really served with relishes or pickles or things like in other countries. I mean, we have ketchup (ugh) or a dill spear, but it's really a different kettle of fish. Stuff like Branston Pickle or Indian pickles (I also like mango pickle) take time to prepare and are just jam-packed with flavor. They both made fairly decent onigiri filling, obviously not very Japanese-tasting, though.

We also had another side car
with more cashews and chocolate fudge. I think we also had a little bowl with some fresh (overripe) mango goo in it.

All in all, a great picnic, with lots of tasty, tasty foods.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Back from Silence!

So, yes, this blog has been VERY quiet for a little while. Mostly because HB and I were in the process of moving 100s of miles away. We are now settled (or as settled as we're going to be for a little while...) and I've got some posting to catch up on!

Here is my darling ELPH box that I got as a present for myself when I finished my Masters degree. Yay for tiny elephants!

And here's what it looks like all spread outs:


And with the lids on:


It came with a tiny fork and I also got some cute ELPH chopsticks in a keen little case to go with:

In case you can't tell, the lid says: "Wow, there are so many mushrooms" which is hilarious and cute.

For CB who likes scale...
ELPH box and quarter

and

ELPH box with ruler. As you can see, it's pretty little. I think it's around 450 ml for both sections.

My inaugural bento meal in this box will be the next post. Woo!