Totoro Bento

6/22/2011- Stuffed Shell Bento

2011-06-22T11:38:00.007-04:00

Ha! I am back! This time I had a legitimate excuse for not posting: a move! We're now in upstate NY and HB has a new job. (I have my same job, just now over the phone/internet. It's funny; in a previous post, I called it a temporary gig. It has definitely transitioned into a more permanent one!)

It's been a long time since I have posted or bentoed or both. A move will do that. I also work from home now, so there was less incentive to bento. BUT! I decided that packing myself a bento lunch is a great way (as I've said many times before, blah, blah, blah) to do something nice for me. And I like taking pictures and having things to post, so there.

Here is my (very small) lunch for today:
Contents of bento: Stuffed pasta shell, strawberry, 2 Ratatouille skewers, salad, tiny tomato. Side car (bowl?) of Cadbury Roast Almond Chocolate Pieces.
(Not Pictured) a piece of nice bread from Red Hen Baking Company in Burlington (soooooo delicious. And organic!)

Sorry about the terrible picture. I took it with my phone. HB has stolen my camera for work. Maybe I will find myself a new camera, so we don't have to pass my ancient one back and forth.

2-8-2011 Pasta, Fake Meatballs, Sandwiches

2011-02-08T12:35:00.006-05:00

A hearty set of lunch for myself today. I started the day with some more snow shoveling. We got about 4 inches between tonight and this afternoon. That's actually *nothing* compared with what we have had in the past. Ah, growing up in Virginia gives you such a different perspective on snow. For example, we shoveled the 4 inches, instead of busting out the snow blower. That's how you know it's not a big deal.

Anyways, I digress.
Contents of bento: pasta, fake meatball, celery leaves for garnish on the smaller bottom tier, clementine, dried cranberries, more fake meatballs, celery sticks and a dried peach under the meatballs to fill the space. Sauce in a side car.

A close-up of this part:

I actually ended up putting the sauce into my smallest side car. The container pictured was way too big, in my opinion.

This lunch is in my awesome and cute elph box that I got when I graduated from my master's program. However, it's pretty tiny and when it's packed more loosely like this, not really enough lunch. At least not during winter when there's lots of snow shoveling to do.

I decided a second, snack-sort of bento was in order.

Contents of bento: Three tiny sandwiches, garnished with celery leaf and flower pick. The sandwich fillings are (from top down) peanut butter and homemade grape jelly, provolone with dried apricots, and local Nantucket creamery cheese with olive hummus. They are sitting in little paper cups with sea life on them that I got from my contest SWAG.

Those paper cups are seriously awesome. They keep things dry because they are plastic coated. They're also very cute: you can almost see the one in the elph box. It has penguins on it :D

Everything was delicious. Packing the sauce in a separate container and dipping, rather than just keeping everything in one dish was a great way to ensure the pasta stayed al dente. I also didn't feel the need to heat anything up. Very efficient.

2/7/2011- green noodles bento

2011-02-07T13:02:00.004-05:00

Actually, the stuff in the noodles is green. The noodles are white rice noodles. I am super-pleased with how this bento came out. Not particularly decorated, but definitely a real "bento's" bento. Lots of colors, lots of little things, and an asiany main dish.

I started with the leftovers from dinner: rice noodles with baby bok choy, edamame, shiitake and white mushrooms, turnips, onions, cashews, garlic, celery--a pretty simple south-east-asian-type stir fry.

Then I had to hunt around to fill the other tier. I decided that I wanted a big portion of stir-fry, so that went in the larger top tier. HB and I chipped up and shoveled the HUGE amount of ice that was in the driveway yesterday. Yuck. So today, something substantial and protein-rich for my aching body.

Contents of bento: Asainy stir fry on right, local awesome cheese in the yellow silicon cup, a dried cranberry, some pecans, sugar snap peas, and a whole row of baby tomatoes.

But what to go in the other spots?

Some clementine segments and a spicy fake chikin wing-a-ling with a carrot heart. awww. I also put in a flower pick to eat the tomatoes with--I think it sort of looks like a flower with a sugar snap pea leaf/stem.

Everything was delicious at room temperature, even though I made this bento last night after dinner and it spent the night in the refrigerator. I was thinking about it: my bentos are made usually 15-20 hours before I eat them, not exactly the fresh experience that someone would get from a bento made at 7am and eaten at noon.

What do I lose by making them ahead? Probably some textural things. My noodles were a little dried out, not bad. The wing-a-ling's breading was also not crispy. It wasn't mooshy either, but the texture was a little diminished. My carrots and cheese were also a little dried out, again, not badly so.

For me, however, what I gain by making them ahead more than makes up for these minor losses. I can make them the night before, thereby streamlining my morning. I can also put leftovers directly into my bento box, saving an intermediate dish. My food only gets heated once, rather than twice (if one were packing leftovers). And I can also cool everything down all the way before refrigerating--which means I don't have to worry too much about food safety.

If I had to make a bento lunch in the traditional, morning-of, Japanese style, I think I wouldn't. I think that bentos, certain kinds of bentos particularly, can be very successfully made the night before. If anyone out there (does any one read my blog? oh well, maybe someday some one will...:D) thinks that bento-ing is not for them because they are not a morning person, it's just not true. :D

2/3/2011- Potato Monster Bento

2011-02-04T12:17:00.004-05:00

Potato Monster! I think he looks pretty fierce.

Contents of bento: Potato half decorated with cheese, olives, carrot, snap pea, and celery leaves, on a bed of salsa. Side car of carrots, tomatoes, celery, snap peas, and a little silicone cup of hummus.

I heated the monster up for maximum tasty-ness.

Here is a close up:

I am pleased to say that the side car was well-packed enough that it did not shift around at all. :D

PS: I went back and counted. As of today, I have 66 bentos that I have made posted on this blog. For almost 2 years, that is not bad.

2/2/2011- Happy Groundhog Day

2011-02-02T12:59:00.003-05:00

Apparently in one of the communities where they traditionally view the ground hog, they had the unfortunate happenstance of having their ground hog die of old age a little while ago. They couldn't find a replacement, so they are using a stuffed one this year. No foolin', read about it here: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/01/groundhog_day_2011_in_eastern.html

All's I gotta say is that's pretty sad. I know it's hard to find a groundhog; but a stuffed one??

Anyways, my bento today has nothing to do with groundhogs and everything to do with leftovers.

Contents of bento: chili mac with chips and cheese, a small stripe of salsa, delicious refried cumin-and chili canellini beans. And a snap pea flower garnish.

Our area right now is covered in snow and ice several feet thick. (Several feet of snow, the ice is pretty thin, all things considered.) So, more flower-garnishes are in order, I think.

First Bento Post of the New Year! (Bento from 2/1/2011

2011-02-01T08:49:00.005-05:00

This is also post #100. That doesn't represent 100 bentos, but it's close. (I haven't had time to go back and count. I guess I should.)

A couple of months ago I made a grand pronouncement that I would post once a week. And then....NOTHING. Bluh. I have been making a lot of excuses for not posting, for not bentoing, etc. And I have decided to just free myself from the guilt-burden of feeling like I have to have a world-class bento blog. I'm going to take pictures of my bento lunches when I make them, even if that is not very often, and I'm not going to feel bad that they're simple or plain or whatever. SO THERE!

Basically, I was reminded that bento-making used to be a hobby of mine when I got a nice letter from C (remember from the summer?). She asked what I had been bentoing lately. The answer: nothing. I still take my lunch and it's usually in little containers, but there have been very few bento principles there. The other prong of the goad that has started me back on this track is that I have made a lot of excuses for why I don't bento now: I'm busy, our kitchen isn't set up right, blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is that last spring, during a terribly chaotic time in our lives, I was able to pack a bento at least once a week while finishing up my master's degree and working full time. No more whining!

I have a new bento-gear item: tiny spoons! My friend JP who lives in the UK brought me a whole bunch of teaspoons for Christmas and one of them fits into the lid of my bento box. Sweet!

the distance shot

and the close up.

My bento for yesterday.

Contents of bento: pizza pieces in the upper tier, garnished with a snap pea and food pick flower. Mixed greens, more snap peas, a silicon cup of pecans and cranberries. The mooosh is pureed pumpkin with maple, salt, and pepper. Mmmmmm adult baby food.

Aside from the fact that the pizza was too moist (and kind of gooshy by lunch) it was a tasty bento.

11/16/2010- Hot soup at Work Bento- also some longer musings

2010-11-16T12:15:00.007-05:00

Sometimes I like to have hot soup at work. One of the ways I do it is by making my own asiany rice stick or bean thread soup. Yes, I am aware that you can buy such things premade--just add hot water--really really cheaply. That's not the point.

When I make my own, I can put what I want into it. And it's fresher, less salt, and I just feel pretty smart making something like this up.

Here is what it looks like when I take it to work:
On the left is a small bowl of chopped carrots, dried-sweet Thai radish, a little onion, and snap peas. It has about a tablespoon of shoyu poured over it. The middle bowl has cut-up bean thread noodles, a vegetarian boullion cube, a secret blend of spices, and finely cut dried shiitake mushrooms. The sidecar has tamari almonds. This and an apple is a great lunch for me.

Here's a close-up of the vegetable bowl from the side. I layer it because it's easier, but it also looks pretty.

I keep the vegetables separate because I almost always make up my lunch the night before. This guarantees the noodles don't get over cooked or fall apart.

Then, at lunch, I'll pour hot water over the soup, microwave the vegetables for a little bit, then dump them in (with shoyu) and let it sit until it's cooked.

Here's what it looks like when it's in the process of cooking:
The mushrooms float to the top. And by the time it's cooked, it's cool enough to eat. Very efficient.

So, this isn't exactly a bento, per se, but I wanted to post it because it's a great way to think about hot soup and making your own, homemade equivalents to store-bought things. And that's really the way I roll (my bento-philosophy, if you will).

Forgive me some self-centered introspection, but food is really important to me. Making my own food, from scratch, preparing food for myself and the people I love, is really a part of how I define myself as an adult. Part of how I show care for myself and others is by feeding them, from the labor of my hands.

There have been times in my life previously where I have had difficulty "feeding" myself (both in a literal and a spiritual sense). For me, paying attention to literal feeding also helps the spiritual. That's why I make bentos for myself. In many of the bento blogs I read, mothers make bentos for children, but not for themselves. They use their labor and art to send their children off into the world with a physical representation of a mother's love for her child. When I pack a special lunch for myself, I am doing the same thing for myself. Because I *am* worthy of a unique and attractive lunch.

Of course this doesn't mean I never use convenience foods or eat out or whatever, but I do feel that being mindful of what you eat and what you feed your loved ones, however you would like to define "mindful," is a valuable practice.

And that's why I bento, just in case you were wondering.

11/15/2010- Pasta Salads Bento

2010-11-15T12:36:00.004-05:00

Finally, our fridge has reached a point of maximum leftovers, so there is enough variety to pack the kind of bento I like to pack. Lots of little things. :D

Contents of Bento: Top tier- two pasta salads. The one on the left is tamari-roasted carrot and asparagus, wild rice, and mini bowties with lots of fresh ginger. I put it on some spinach leaves to prevent leakage across the barrier. This was what HB's mum made for dinner the other night. The pasta to the right is rotini with fake chicken and peppers, olives, onions, and artichokes. I made that for dinner last night. It was cooked down with some vegetable broth, a little red wine, and whatever else I felt inspired to throw in. It made a pretty good "Sunday night chicken dinner" for people who don't really eat chicken!

The bottom tier has two strips of red potato pizza with broccoli, snap peas, and a small tomato. I had to cut the bottom of the tomato off to fit it into the tier, so I shaped that slice into a sort-of heart shape, which is on the pasta above. Since the larger part of the tomato was bottomless and leaky, I put it in a silicone cup.
The side car has homemade chocolate-covered apricots. I made this great chocolate sauce (with a little southern comfort) the other night for dessert. It has also made great covering for apricots! Hooray!

I also took my little bbq sauce guy for the pizza.

The best part about this box is that it has chopsticks in the lid. It makes for very satisfying eating of portions like this. When you eat small portions with a fork, you can feel cheated (at least I sometimes do) but when you're using chopsticks, it's lots of trips to your mouth, even if it isn't a lot of food.

Well that's my real post of the week. I'm hoping that I'll be able to exceed my goal and post twice a week, but I'm going to resign myself to baby steps for the time being.

11/13/2010- Snack Bento

2010-11-15T12:34:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I will take a plain ol' container of leftovers. Most of the time, in fact. But this time, I also packed up a little snack bento that was better than nothing :D

Contents of snack bento: olives, carrot sticks, hummus. Pretty straight forward. It was actually too many carrot sticks, but that's ok. I just ate them later.

10-2010- Veggie Burger pseudo bento

2010-11-15T12:28:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I like to just take a simple lunch. This is one way to make a veggie burger and chips lunch into a bento-appropriate one.

Contents of bento: Condiments in the glasslock, blue corn chips in the small container. A frozen veggie burger is in the tinfoil, and a frozen pita bread is in the paper towel.

Everyone has their favorite ways of packing things, I like to pack frozen bread products in paper towels so they don't get soggy. I'm lucky to have a toaster oven at work, so I can just heat everything up there. I really don't like microwaved veggie burgers, they're much better when they're crispy. The burger is wrapped in tinfoil so I automatically have a little "pan" to use in the toaster oven. If you don't use the office toaster oven tray, you don't have to clean it. (And in some places I've worked, I seemed to be the only person that ever cleaned it....bluh)

Here is a detail of the condiments (which is actually the only strictly "bento" part of this lunch.)
Contents of Condiments box: lettuce, red pepper strips, tomato slice, a little silicone cup of cheddar, dill pickle slices, and a teeny-tiny container of bbq sauce. This little container originally held wasabi in a container of take-out grocery store sushi. Thanks, HB's mum, for saving stuff like this. I'm just thrilled because it actually fits in the glasslock. It's a pretty shallow box, so it's hard to find lidded containers that will work in it.

09/2010- Summer pasta bento, take 2

2010-11-15T12:24:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure when I took this for lunch. I know it was sometime in September. I apologize for the terrible quality of the picture. I know I'm not exactly an artist-photographer, but I feel that at least people can *see* the things in my pictures. This one, not so much....

Contents of Bento: mini penne with pesto and sungold tomatoes, two olives, a mini baybel cheese. The salad is spicy asian greens and spinach with a small container of homemade tomatillo salsa in the middle which will act as dressing.

In the summer I often like to use salsa as a dressing for salad greens. It adds flavor and interest, without me having to make up dressing. (We don't really use the pre-made kind). I always pack dressing separately for salad because otherwise you end up with a soggy mess. Yuck.

Back from Silence!

2010-11-15T12:20:00.003-05:00

Hey all of my now nonexistent readers. I am going to start posting again! First will be the sorry clean up of bentos that I've done this fall that I never posted. Not too many, sadly. Our set up right now is just not very conducive to bento-making. But I will persevere. My new goal is to try and have something to post once a week. At least that will keep my blog from looking like some kind of desert wasteland.

My little bbq sauce container believes in me! Look at that knowing smile on his tomato face. He's just thrilled to be filled with bbq sauce instead of ketchup.

9/14/2010- Delights of Summer!

2010-09-15T21:57:00.002-04:00

Our garden is bursting with tomatoes and everything right now. Crazy. I spent most of the weekend (it felt like) processing tomatoes to freezer can or making pesto to freeze. Of course, when HB came back from out of town and told me he wanted "that great pesto pasta you make...with the sungolds" how could I say no?

Contents of bento: In lower tier-Pesto mini penne (with almonds instead of pine nuts) with halved Sungold Cherry tomatoes, garnished with parsley. In upper tier- chips, homemade salsa with 4 different kinds of onions from the farmer's market, small plum, and some great mild sheeps-milk cheese (also from the farmer's market).

This bento really says "late summer" to me. Sure, you could make a bento just like this in January, but the plum and tomatoes would definitely be sub-standard.

HB's mum collects all kinds of things, including these little lidded plastic containers that fit perfectly in this bento box. Score! After my weekend of tomato processing, I still had (have) plenty of fruits but I was getting tired of peeling, seeding, cutting, and boiling boiling boiling. I was standing in the kitchen and thinking, "oh man, what else can I do with tomatoes???" And then it hit me: fresh salsa, duh. This came out so well I made more to go with the chili I made tonight for dinner. No picture on that, it's just going in a regular container, so I hardly think it counts as a "bento lunch." But regardless, I am excited to have some other way to eat tomatoes. I haven't gotten a rash from them yet, but the first frost is still a ways off. :D

9/4/2010- Leftovers Bento!

2010-09-15T21:53:00.002-04:00

Even though I'm a working girl again, I don't have a whole lot of time for bento-ing. Or maybe it's just that our kitchen set up is not conducive to being creative. Anyways, excuses aside, I do have a bento or two to show you for September:

Leftovers in bento form! I think this was eggplant parmesan (from a restaurant) on the left and I know that the right was sauteed string beans with eggplant, onions, and balsamic vinegar. The garnish is a celery leaf.

This is in my glasslock box, which is so crucial for hot lunches. I'm very leery about microwaving plastic (as I've mentioned before). There are times, however, when I wish I had a more bowl-shaped glass container. Ah well, I will have to keep my eyes peeled. This is a good example of how to arrange leftovers in an attractive way. So always remember, you don't have to make special stuff for you bento. (This is a note to myself as much as anyone else!)

8/12/2010- Sandwich Bento

2010-08-22T22:14:00.007-04:00

I like sandwiches. They're easy to hold, I like bread, and they taste great at room temperature. But for some reason I don't often think of packing them in a bento. There are these great little buns you can find at the grocery store up here. They're like hamburger buns, but about the size of the palm of your hand...well, my hands are small, but you get the picture. Perfect for bento. Here you go!

Contents of Bento: carrot sticks; sandwich with pesto, cheese, and hummus on tiny bun; blueberries, tomato, lettuce, and leftover pasta salad. Side car with melon and a flower pick, and a peach. (Do I dare to eat a peach?........yes........)

It was great! I put all the lettuce on the sandwiches. By keeping the lettuce off (cheese goes next to the bread, with squishy stuff on the cheese) you can avoid terrible soggy bread, one of my least favorite things. And the place where I'm working is in a converted old mill building, so it's right by a river. I ate my lunch on a nice big rock down by the river. Very pleasant. :D

8/10/2010 a Bento for Back to Work- Mixed rice and Lentil

2010-08-10T18:04:00.003-04:00

As some of you may or may not know, I am currently between libraries. I have a temporary gig (as of today) to bring in the benjamins, so I'll be packing bento lunch again on a regular basis! Hooray! Though, I'm pretty sure that by this point, I have no readers left... oh well, we obscure bento-bloggers must soldier on through anonymity.

Contents of bento: bottom section: delicious lentil goo, and mixed wild and brown rice with almonds, onions, and fresh herbs. Top section: green tomato with sungold in center, carrot sticks, green pepper pieces, a tiny apple, honeydew and 3 flower skewers of blueberries. The side car has very fancy hummus- plain hummus with parsley, chives, paprika, olive oil, and a chive flower.

Everything was delicious at room temperature, though I got a little sun eating my lunch outside. Even though I was in the shade...I guess I need to come up with some plan to prevent this. It's hard when it's 80-90 degrees out, though.

I really enjoy eating out of this blue sheep box. It's so brightly colored that it provides a nice automatic contrast to the food you're eating.

Retro posted from 6/30/2010- Orzo salad for a car bento

2010-07-11T15:53:00.004-04:00

On my way down to DC, I packed a bento lunch so I wouldn't have to eat fast food. I should have taken a picture of it, because it was lovely. This posting has my bento lunch that I packed for the ride up. Less pretty. In fact, pretty darn simple.

Contents of Bento: mini peppers, orzo salad with feta, tomato, olives, and chickpeas. That's it folks. Pretty straight forward.

A car bento is, however, a great way to eat delicious food and also to save your pennies. If you are in the business of penny saving, like I am, it's pretty crucial.

Retro posted from 6/27/2010- Small sandwiches and the toll of no sleep

2010-07-11T15:32:00.005-04:00

As the conference went on, it became more of a test of our fortitude--in DC by 8am, getting on the metro by 10:30pm. And then hanging out with my folks until the wee hours of the night--then getting up and doing it again. So this was the last day that I made a bento for us and it's pretty low-key. It ended up being pretty delicious, though, so I'm not really complaining.

Contents of C-bento: strawberries and grapes, carrots, tomatoes, small sandwich with star-cut out. More small sandwiches, two olives, carrots. The bottom section has cabbage, mini pepper, and a hot-dog octopus! The little face did not survive, but that's ok. There's also a fishy of ketchup. The octopus is sitting in an octopus food cup which was from the SWAG. The tiny sandwiches have pub cheese and jalapeno in them. It was actually really delicious.

Contents of my bento: tomatoes, olives, tiny sandwiches with star cutout, and carrot sticks. The other side has cabbage and strawberries and grapes.

Like I said, the pub cheese and jalapeno was good. And the sandwiches were not soggy by lunch time. The pub cheese was from Trader Joe's, so I don't feel that badly about eating it. It's more cheese and less cheese-food-product. This bento also reminded me that though I don't often pack a sandwich bento, I probably should consider doing it more often. They are very tasty and if you pack your fillings carefully, they can stay nice (not soggy) until lunchtime.

Retro posted from 6/26/2010- Jambalaya and other adventures in Little Mama's kitchen

2010-07-11T15:17:00.005-04:00

As I mentioned, one of my former colleagues (who was also in the same library science school program as I was) stayed with my folks and I while we went to the conference. So of course I offered to make her a bento too! Lucky me, she definitely appreciated them. She also eats meat, so I could pack things I don't pack for myself.

Packing a bento box in Little Mama's kitchen was an interesting adventure, since I didn't know what she had for bento foods, but I think we made out pretty well.

Contents of bento for my conference buddy, C: small oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, two meatballs, 1 grape, jambalaya rice from Trader Joe's with carrot hearts. The other side has a cream-cheese stuffed mini pepper, more grapes, and a spanikopita. The bottom section has broccoli slaw, grape tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and a fishy of lemon juice. The side car has salsa for the meat balls.

Contents of my bento: broccoli slaw, tomatoes, a few errant grapes and carrots, two cream cheese stuffed mini peppers, and garbanzo beans in the corner. The other side has a spanikopita, more grapes, and jambalaya rice. The lid held some more of those little cookies.

Everything was great and we even had a chance to eat together. It is very nice to make a bento lunch for someone who appreciates it. I had to use little mama's bento box, but she said that was ok. Anyways, fun! And bento lunch!

Retro posted from 6/25/2010-Leftovers and the ALA Annual Conference

2010-07-11T15:02:00.005-04:00

As some of you may know, I'm a librarian. And this year I was able to make it to our ceremonial spawning grounds (so to speak) the ALA Annual Conference. It was great! I got to stay with my folks, hang out with one of my former colleagues, and see/learn/hear some amazing stuff. Of course, since I wanted to do the experience on the cheap, I brought a bento for some of the days. So that means for you, my darling, low-numbered public, that there are more bento pictures! And use of some of the awesome SWAG I got in the bento contest.

Contents of bento: Leftover eggplant parm with rigatoni. Two cut out cheese people in the top left--one of the advantages of being at little mama's house is the ready availability of american cheese for deco. Bottom tier: broccoli slaw with tomato, two dolmas, one kalamata olive, and a fishy of lemon juice. The top of this bento (which is from the contest) holds a little whole grain cookie, chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, and a salt and pepper packet I got from Scandinavian Airlines many years ago. They have hilarious messages on them:

Salt:

The color of snow

The taste of tears

The enormity of oceans

and Pepper:

Pepper has been called

"the gift of the East",

though "gift" means

poison in Swedish,

don't let that put you off.

The little cheese people were because this trip (1-week long) was the longest that HB and I have been apart since we've been married. I think we fared ok, though I was very glad to have him around again when I got back home.

I ate this on the top floor of the Washington Convention Center, sitting against a wall. It was very edible at that point, but the cheese people had gotten a little melty during the day. Oh well, I knew what they looked like when I made it, so it's not too big of a deal.

The white box, which shall be known as the white box, has, to the best of my measurements, 280ml in the top and 205ml in the bottom. There's also a little room in the lid, though none of my chopsticks are small enough to fit in the holders in the lid. I brought my ELPH chopstick set which was great instead.

6/15/2010- Dinner Bento

2010-06-24T12:55:00.005-04:00

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!

2010-06-24T12:48:00.005-04:00

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!

2010-06-24T12:32:00.007-04:00

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

2010-06-24T12:29:00.003-04:00

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.

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

2010-06-12T14:42:00.003-04:00

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.

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

2010-06-10T15:38:00.002-04:00

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!

2010-06-10T15:27:00.009-04:00

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.

Back from Silence!

2010-06-09T09:33:00.007-04:00

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!

Bento Contest = I am a lucky duck!

2010-05-25T17:38:00.004-04:00

Good news, everybody!

In the midst of all of the tornado of turmoil in our lives (we're moving out of our house, uhm, today--but I'm working this week until Saturday and we're not driving out of town until the 1st of June). So yes, incredibly crazy. Who knew we could have accumulated so much stuff in 5 years.

BUT! The good news is this!

I am the proud winner of Bento Zen's contest in honor of Gamene's new apartment. So much swag-- I can't wait to make bentos with all the swag!

Check me out, guys: http://bentozen.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/shikai-maki-bento/
and is was a random thing, so I was especially lucky--one out of 100. :D

I am also a contestant on An American in Bento's theme contest!
You can vote until May 30---so feel free to do so.

Look forward to a glut of bento postings soon...I promise! I've been taking pictures...I just haven't had time to post.

5/7/2010- Fresh Noodles and Salad leftovers Bento

2010-05-07T15:15:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was HB and my 4th anniversary. Yay! We had a lovely set of meals: lunch at Chez Trinh, dinner at Francesco's. Mmmmmm nothing says marital bliss like gluttony. Anyways, I packed my leftovers from lunch in HB's tiffin. It was perfect for the salad/stuff combination that I always get at Chez Trinh.

Contents of Bento: Rice Noodles with Fried Tofu and delicious sauce. With extra cucumber, chopped basil, green onions, carrot hearts, and two fishes with my recreated delicious sauce for the salad. The other container has chopped romaine and red leaf lettuces, and a few carrot hearts.

The fishes have soy, rice vinegar, and a little fish sauce. It was not nearly as good as the delicious sauce the original dish had, but I had to bring a little extra. On the ride home from the restaurant, the little clamshell container they had given me with the leftovers leaked in the plastic bag it was in. There was still some sauce, but not as much as previously. :(

This is a great way to do leftovers--take some home, then fill it out to a full meal with whatever you have at home. I had no bean sprouts, but lots of cucumber and lettuce. And even a little bit of fresh basil. It worked out great.

Anyways, I just dumped the container with stuff on top of the salad and tried not to shove it into my mouth as fast as possible, like I usually do when I eat this dish. It's just so good...mmmm delicious Vietnamese food. I actually put a freezer pack into my cooler bag with the tiffin. I was worried about the lettuces getting wilty. Everything was delicious!

Look for a Francesco's bento later this week, perhaps.

5/5/2010- A rather traditional bento

2010-05-05T14:34:00.004-04:00

Last night I was up kind of late working on updates for HB. But, I stayed up even later because I needed to cook something to take for lunch. We had dinner out after my late night at work because I was hungry then. Anyways, I digress...

Fortunately, there was enough stuff around that I made a pretty awesome lunch, even without having a particularly stellar plan for it.

Contents of Bento: Trader Joe's Yaki Onigiri with takuan slices in between, two fishes of soy sauce and rice vin, cucumber sticks, and okazu made with sesame oil, onion, carrot, celery, frozen spinach, and quorn--the sauce is a little soy, a little hoisan, a lot of miso, and a little sweet mustard and hot sauce.

For decoration, I have some striped cucumber ends and carrot hearts. Like I've said in previous posts: I just love those little carrot hearts. They make everything look better and more decorated.

I just sort of whipped up the okazu and then had to wait for it to cool. I know this doesn't look like a whole lot of food in the box, but it was really filling. Quorn fills you up comparable to chicken (if my memory serves correctly) so it's actually more calories than it looks like.

Everything was DELICIOUS at room temperature. So good, in fact, I may recreate the okazu for dinner tonight. When I made it last night, I just made enough for my bento. I also love those yaki onigiri. They've been languishing in my freezer for a while, but it was a great way to get some grain into this bento. My only problem with them is that they're really hard for me to pick up with my little lunch chopsticks. They get kind of slippery and they're pretty dense (heavy for their size). Too bad my mouth isn't big enough to eat them each in one go.

4/28/2010- Lemony Spanish Chickpeas

2010-04-28T14:27:00.000-04:00

Once again, the lemony Spanish chickpeas recipe makes an appearance. This time I actually consulted the recipe, from Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates, and it came out pretty good. The first time I made it, I cooked them for almost 3 hours at really low heat after caramelizing the onions really thoroughly. I have not had the chance to repeat that process, but the quicker-cooking version I made for this dish came out very tasty. It's basically a saffron and garlic-flavored tomato sauce with chickpeas and lemon juice. I like it because it satisfies my never ending craving for tomato sauces, but it's not Italianate. A little something different. If you would like to know how to make lemony Spanish chickpeas, you'll have to buy the book or check it out at your local library.

Contents of Bento: mixed short grain brown and white rice (2 parts white to 1 part brown) topped with a takuan sun. Festive! Spanish lemony chickpeas garnished with an asparagus spear.

So, a pretty plain bento, sun deco aside. But I wanted something I could nuke at work, and this seemed to work really well. Of course, the takuan stained the rice yellow, but that's ok.

4/24/2010- Tiny Pesto Bowties

2010-04-24T14:15:00.002-04:00

I love the tiny pastas that Barilla sells. They were on sale at the grocery so I had to get some. They are absolutely perfect in bento boxes. They also cook really quickly.

Contents of Bento: Tiny bowties with pesto and capers, small breads, tomato bruschetta under the two cheese hearts, frozen cherries, carrot sticks. Two cheese people, who are clearly in love.

This is my lame attempt at charben. But I think it's kind of sweet. I tried something new with the bruschetta. I filled up the silicon cup, and then laid and tucked this plastic lacy sheet over and around it. (The plastic was from part of a wrapper around really fancy Brazilian bon-bons--don't ask.) I was hoping that the surface tension of the bruschetta would keep it neat and tidy. For the most part it worked! Hooray!

The people cut-outs were from tiny cookie cutters that I've had for a while. The heart cut-outs (of cheese and carrot) were free handed. I'm actually getting pretty good at those carrot hearts. They're really not that hard to do.

4/19/2010-Japanese Leftovers

2010-04-19T14:29:00.007-04:00

Again, no traditional bento here. And looking at the picture of the contents, it looks very-not-bento. But anyways...

HB and I had Japanese food last night with our friend S. We went to Hyashi, a local place near where I work. HB decided that we should go out to eat since I had finished the draft of my final exit portfolio. (My degree program has an exit portfolio, instead of a thesis. It's a fairly comparable amount of work.)

Wrapped in furoshiki- I am hiding my Styrofoam takeout container with Japanese leftovers. My tiny chopsticks are stuck in the knot, hiding under it is a small container of soy sauce.

Here's how I arranged the leftovers. Veggie yakisoba, edamame, and sushi: spinach, oshinko, cucumber, ume-cucumber, inari. Very tasty and satisfying. I was too tired last night to arrange this in one of my bentos, but I think it looks pretty tidy and nice in this take-out box.

Everything was great at by lunchtime. This one went in the fridge at work, since it was just in a take-out container and not in my insulated lunch bag.

I've been thinking about what to get as a treat for finishing up my degree...any suggestions? They have some awfully cute bentos over at Japanistic: like this one with a tiny elephant on it or this one with tiny elephants in love. In case you didn't know, I'm kind of into tiny elephants...
Regardless, I think my next bento will be a double-decker, elongated style. I think being able to pack different shapes of bentos is an important part of being into bento. :D

4/13/2010- Salad Bento

2010-04-19T14:28:00.001-04:00

Not a bento in the traditional sense, with a divided box, but in lots of little containers. I had a really rich dinner the night before (which I don't remember what it was....) usually I'm not a "big salad" for lunch kind of gal. Anyways, it was the perfect amount of food on this day.

Contents of Containers: Salad w/ carrot (duh), small jar of sunflower seeds, small container of cut mushroom, cheese slices and toasted french rounds. All of the lids to the 4 containers are stacked by size in the background.

I kept the sunflower seeds and mushrooms separated out for an important reason. Mushrooms tend to get slimy when they're too damp, and the sunflower seeds were salted, which would have leached water out of the lettuce and carrots. By keeping them separated, everything was lovely by lunchtime.

4/2/2010- My Famous Fake-BBQ-Chicken-Wingaling Pizza

2010-04-19T14:26:00.003-04:00

Ah! My blog reading public--if any of you are left out there....

As some of you may know, I've been finishing up a master's degree this spring, which has left me with very little time for bento-ing. Homelife has been REALLY busy/strange as well, which all combines for no blog postings.

The end, however, is in sight! I'm posting the meager samples for April.

A bento featuring my famous BBQ fake chikin-wing-a-ling pizza:
Contents of bento: pizza pieces, baran, strawberries, mixed salad. (The little jar has salad dressing in it).

Unfortunately, I think this one would have been better refrigerated. The strawberries and salad were a little worse for the wear by lunchtime. I also should have used the lift-out trays; the pizza was a little damp from the strawberries. OH WELL, it's still delicious.

Here is my recipe for the pizza:

Make pizza dough (or buy preprepared--I won't look)
Flatten on pan
Top with BBQ sauce
Cheddar cheese
Chopped onions
Fake chikin-wing-a-lings *see note

Bake until awesome and done at 400°F. Allow to cool before you eat or you will burn off all the skin on the roof of your mouth...like I do every time.

*Ok, so I have LOVED the Morningstar Farms BBQ chikin wing-a-ling buffalo wing things for many years, but I recently learned that most low-fat soy products are processed using HEXANE which is a terrible thing. You're ok with organic soy, or with Quorn products (which are mycoprotein, not soy). Boo-Hiss!
In the next couple of weeks, I will be experimenting with other, non-neurotoxin-containing fake chikin products to see if I can come up with a tenable solution for what to use for the "fake chikin" part of BBQ fake chikin wing-a-ling pizza.

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

2010-03-18T12:17:00.005-04:00

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

2010-03-18T12:08:00.002-04:00

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

2010-03-18T12:04:00.005-04:00

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

2010-03-12T18:00:00.001-05:00

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

2010-03-12T07:32:00.002-05:00

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

2010-03-06T17:35:00.004-05:00

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

2010-03-05T18:00:00.000-05:00

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.

2/25/2010- Star of Wonder, Star of Curry

2010-02-25T09:41:00.004-05:00

I'm back on the "pretty" bento band-wagon. Last night my housemate made delicious potato and collards curry, which I decided to pack in a new-to-this-blog container. It's a weird little rectangular container that's about 700ml. As you can tell from this picture, it's not filled up to the top by any stretch of the imagination.

Contents of Bento: Potato and Collards Curry (under rice), brown rice, curried sweet potato fries, carrot sticks, steamed broccoli, around garlic pickle garnished with a takuan star. Not pictured, 2 tiny lady apples.

This container is actually the first bento container I ever used. I stuffed it (and myself) with way too many onigiri. A good lesson to learn for bento packing: don't take a bento box that is too big, because you will fill it, and you will end up eating too much. To my mind it's always safer to take a much smaller box and bring something extra. Since I'm a clean-plate-club lifetime member, this is a good technique for me.

The curry was great. I nuked the whole container for about a minute and then enjoyed delicious and beautiful brown rice and curry. I do so love a hot lunch...

I usually pack a more varied assortment of things for lunch, but I think I may start to do this when I take my one-dish kind of lunches. It's more satisfying and attractive than just stuff in containers.

2/24/2010- Leftover Sushi

2010-02-24T21:00:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a long time since there's been a new posting. Things have been very, very hectic at our house recently. Fortunately, things should be calming down a little bit this weekend.

The other night HB and I decided to get take-out sushi from the grocery. Of course some of it had to find its way into my bento for lunch.

Contents of Bento: Seaweed salad, darling little lady apple, soysauce packet, inari sushi, and some vegetable maki rolls made with brown rice. The four around the outside have a little dab of wasabi on them.

I'm not sure if this counts as a "pretty" bento, but I figured that some posting is better than none. The inari sushi looked nice and full and pretty in the container they were sold in, but when I flipped them over, I saw that they had all been woefully under-filled with rice. I'm not sure what that's about. The nice thing about a sushi bento is that I can eat it at room temperature and it doesn't feel weird or unsatisfying. I'm kind of picky about lunch foods-- I much prefer a hot lunch to a cold one.

I've been eating lady apples like crazy. HB found a HUGE box of them at work and brought them home. They have a crisp, creamy sort of flesh and an almost floral-apple flavor. They also fit into bento boxes of all sizes because they're so tiny, which is, of course, a selling point all its own.

2-11-2010- Simple Bento with Onigiri, Apple, and Soup

2010-02-11T12:10:00.005-05:00

Things have been a little hectic chez nous this month. I am posting this particularly plain bento to illustrate that, yes, I do take non-cute containers. And that also sometimes my lunches are really boring. This is jazzed up a few notches from boring, but that's just to fit in with my New Year's Resolution.

Contents of Bento: Yaki Onigiri garnished with takuan stars, umeshiso paste, and wasabi. Three apple rabbits and one checkered apple. The ugmo red-topped container is filled with delicious, homemade vegetable soup.

I had never made checkered apples before, so I thought I would give it a try. I soaked it and the apple bunnies in OJ and water. They all came out OK, but I'm not going to win any contests with my knife skills. The onigiri were hard to photograph. I probably should have arranged them differently so that their decor would be highlighted. Oh well, they were mostly decorated for added flavor.

2-10-2010- Prettiest Bento I will Ever Eat

2010-02-11T12:01:00.002-05:00

Maybe. At the very least, certainly it displays garnishing talents that are beyond my ken. HB and I went out for Thai food on Tuesday night at ThaiPot (it's my long day at work) and I brought my bento box in and filled it at the table. Maybe a little weird, but who cares? It's so beautiful!

Contents of bento- Pad Thai Jae with carrot, beet, and daikon beautiful garnish; fried corn cake; two tiny vegetarian spring rolls; lime slice; sour cherries and blueberries in a red silicon cup with carrot pieces underneath to raise it up a bit.

In addition to being beautiful, everything was very tasty. The corn cake and spring rolls were a little damp, but they were still pretty good. I love the little spring rolls they serve; they're about the length of my thumb--perfect for bento. I also took a little packet of soy sauce with me to eat with the fried foods. The sour cherries and blueberries were from home. They're frozen here, but they defrost really nicely by lunchtime.

I'm also going to submit this for hapa bento's B.O.M.B. challenge-- the red of the beet strings and the sour cherries counts. I suppose.

2/9/2010- another BOMB bento- with dumplings

2010-02-08T23:02:00.004-05:00

Here's another entry for Hapa Bento's B.O.M.B. contest

This is one of those "lessee what's in the fridge/freezer" bentos...

Contents of Bento: Chocolate cake with red sour cherry in a red silicon cup; ruby red grapefruit sections; two fishes with soy and rice vinegar with red caps; Trader Joe's cucumber wonton dumpling things, garnished with takuan and umeshiso paste; auber-age fried tofu hearts (see, don't they look like hearts?); one yaki onigiri with takuan star; awesome Korean fried seaweed in a red silicon cup.

I was tempted to say that the umeshiso paste counts as red, but it really is more purple. I really wish I had some steamed broccoli to put in this bento. Even though the seaweed is technically green, it's not the brilliant, brightly-colored green that gives good contrast.

This is the first time that I've tried the Trader Joe's Cucumber Wonton Rolls. I think they're the perfect size for bento. They're ok, stuffed with tofu, tiny bits of cucumber, and rice. The package suggested boiling them, but I followed the microwave instructions. They were a little bit dry. All in all though, not bad. Especially with takuan and umeshiso paste and soy sauce/rice vin.

The auber-age was kinda disappointing, fluffy, oily, and flavorless. I have used it in stir-fry and salads before, I think that's a better use of it.

I would also like to point out that I am excited to have FIVE DIFFERENT cooking methods in this box! Woo! Steamed wontons, fried seaweed and tofu, fresh carrots and grapefruit, pickled takuan and umeshiso paste, and baked yaki onigiri and chocolate cake. :D

You (all 2 of you who read my blog...) may also notice that this is again the famed Totoro Bento Box. I was really jamming on the Leaflet Tight box for a while, but lately I've just been feeling like the good ol' Totoro one is the one I want to use. I can see why people collect millions of bento boxes. I have been thinking that I would like one that is brightly colored like little mama's red box. I love the design on the lid of the Totoro box, but the light green color seems to always look washed out on my pictures. I am also worried because my "official" Studio Ghibli stickers on the bottom are getting worn. :( I should have picked them off and put them someplace safe. Oh well.

2/8/2010- B.O.M.B- A Red Bento

2010-02-08T22:43:00.004-05:00

Hapa Bento is running her Bento of the Month contest again (Best Of the Month Bento). This month's theme is RED and here is my entry!

Contents of Bento: Himalayan red rice with red sour cherry, Thai red curry with vegetables and red pepper.

The red curry is more orangey- colored than red, but that's ok, it still counts. I tried to make the curry portion look nicely arranged (as part of my new year's resolution for prettier bentos) but I'm not sure how successful I was. It's hard to make mixed vegetable curry look pretty. As you can see, it has carrots, red pepper, green beans, broccoli, also mushrooms, onions, cauliflower, and edamame. I was feeling in desperate need for vegetables!

2/3/2010- Assorted Curries Bento

2010-02-02T23:30:00.006-05:00

More Curry! This was stuff that was sitting in the freezer. The rice is fresh though...

Contents of Bento: Potato and pea curry, carrots, kala chana masala with takuan star, broccoli-red onion-red bell pepper stirfry with green Thai curry. In side car: basmati rice, takuan star stuck to lettuce circle (for contrast!).

The star on the rice is "glued" down with a little dab of yogurt (which is what was handy.) I hope it doesn't taste too weird with the takuan. The stir-fry is also fresh made. I always steam the broccoli in the microwave and just throw it in in the last minute. I never can cook broccoli in a sautee without it getting kinda washed out and terrible looking.

1/28/2010- Scary Monster Spinach Knish

2010-01-28T12:33:00.004-05:00

Another charben attempt. Everyone is shocked, I know. I had intended to just take this lovely spinach knish from the deli counter, but it looked sooooo monstrous in the box...well, the carrot decorations just got away from me.

Contents of Bento: Massively scary spinach knish monster with carrot fangs, eyes, and toes (feet-idies). Decorated (?) radish, pomegranate seeds, broccoli sauteed with garlic and soy sauce, red pepper spread in the pink silicon cup. It sort of looks like the monster's gore, or something.

I know this definitely doesn't qualify as "pretty," but I think it's pretty funny, so maybe that works. I suppose I should have put some of the "gore" around his mouth. I thought the yellow stains from when the knish was originally cooked looked fearsome enough.

I took the knish out to heat it. Everything else was deeeeeelicious. The broccoli was part of what HB made the night before for dinner. I have been up to my eyeballs in school work (3 projects due on the 30th. wtf??) so he has been bringing me a study dinner in my little office. Verrrry nice :D and prevents me from subsisting entirely on granola bars and tea.

1/27/2010- Taquito and Pig Bento

2010-01-28T12:23:00.007-05:00

No, it's not Taquitos with Pork...there's clearly a Pig in my bento box. (At least, I hope it clearly looks like a pig...)

Contents of Bento: black bean and cheese taquito, split into two pieces, clementine. Black beans with salsa, carrot sticks, pomegranate seeds, 1/2 a prune (for purple color). Carrot flower decorations. Steamed broccoli with PIG radish, his eyes are a little askew in this picture, see below for a more glamorous shot. Side cars have salsa with a little yogurt and multigrain corn chips. The Bear of Salt is eying the pig. Good thing pandas only eat bamboo.

I didn't end up eating the side cars, because there was food at work from a breakfast party.

So, my little pig. Have a look at a closer shot:
awwww, look at 'im. He looks so mad. :D his snout is a slice of carrot, he is a radish (obvs.), and his nostrils and eyes are sesame seeds. The snout is held on by a little piece of an orange toothpick. Since I'm not making bentos for tiny children, I can put dangerous-choking hazards in them. He started out as a mouse, with big round ears, but then quickly turned into a pig once I realized I didn't have a good way to make his face look mouse-like. I trimmed the ears to be pointy-piggy ears. They're big and floppy, like some pigs are. Woo! First Char-ben attempt.

1/19/2010- Rice Pilaf Bento

2010-01-23T11:00:00.004-05:00

I was going to cross-post this for Hapa Bento's B.O.M.B. challenge (that's Best Of the Month Bento). The theme for January was roasting, but the winner has already been drawn. Whoops. I guess I'll have to see if I can get something together for whatever February's challenge is.

Contents of bento: Rice pilaf (from Trader Joe's) with peas, garnished with peas, pomegranate seeds, and feta flowers. Steamed broccoli, carrot sticks, seasoned pecans. Roasted potatoes with thyme and rosemary, topped with feta and pomegranate seed.

Everything was tasty. I actually stuck the entire box in the microwave for a whole minute at work. Nothing exploded and there wasn't any "plastic flavor" (a dead-give-away for badness and breakdown)-- so hurray! My box is supposed to be microwave safe, but I'm pretty leery about microwaving in plastic. I try not to do it at all, but if I do need to, I try to keep the amount of time as short as possible.

1/18/2010- Bento-sized Calzone

2010-01-23T10:30:00.005-05:00

Another try at a pretty bento. Our housemate had a "Make Your Own Calzone" dinner, so I made part of mine into a tiny, bento-sized one. This is a good technique to use to fill your bento. Are you making something for dinner? Cook a small serving of it especially for your bento. Making burgers? Make a mini-burger for your lunch at the same time. (or what have you) It saves time and makes for a cuter way to take leftovers.

Contents of Bento: Mini Calzone, sitting in foil, steamed broccoli with carrots below, carrot sticks, and green salad with mushrooms above. There is a tiny foil cup with a marinated artichoke cut into little pieces (garnished with an olive). The elephunt has balsamic vinegar for the salad. The small side car has sauce, and a strange garnish pattern. Patterns are pretty, right?

I heated the calzone a little bit when I went to eat it so it wasn't so cold. Cold cheese makes me a little sad. I had packed this bento on Sunday night, but it was fine when I went to eat it on Tuesday. The calzone has cheese and artichoke hearts inside. Deeeeeelicious.

Here's what it looks like all packed up in my kinchaku bag. See my awesome, new, tiny chopsticks! I love thems :D they are so tiny!

1/15/2010- Pizza for Friday Bento

2010-01-14T12:55:00.005-05:00

When I was a kid, the elementary and middle schools I attended would always have pizza on Fridays in the cafeteria. I always had a packed lunch. I didn't have a bento, but it was an attractive, tasty, and healthful assortment of foods. My little mama packed my lunch for a lot of my youth and then helped me to continue to pack a great lunch as I got to be an adolescent (Thanks, little mama!). But sometimes in middle school, the peer pressure was too much and on Fridays I would forgo eating my lunch and buy the crappy school pizza. Man, was it terrible. But it was pizza, so how could a 12-year-old say no?

In that tradition, a pizza-for-Friday bento!

Contents of Bento: Steamed broccoli with olive garnish, balsamic vinegar in elephant bottle. Banana bread man, frozen sour cherries. Two mini pizzas with 2 wing-a-lings behind flanking 4 cut out stars of bread and 1 of Parmesan cheese. Side car of sauce, with olive and broccoli garnish. Not pictured: side car of tortellini (just a few).

So, the banana bread man was an experiment. I should have cut out a more recognizable shape from the banana bread (he looks a little indistinct) but it was the only cutter I had available that fit the strip of banana bread I had cut. I suppose I could have cut out a banana bread pepper or something, but that seemed even sillier than a banana bread man.

(Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the banana bread man! But actually, a man made of banana bread would have squishy little legs and wouldn't be able to run very fast at all. That was the case here. He was deeeelicious.)

I ate my lunch with my new tiny chopsticks. Hurray! They fit inside the leaflet tight box, too, which is also super awesome. I didn't really use the fancy orange pick I packed, since the chopsticks were so perfect. Also, the pick was inadequate for eating the tiny broccoli. I really cut it down to doll-house size, almost.

Also, this lunch was packed on Wednesday night and stored in the fridge until Friday morning. I have to report that everything fared pretty well, all things considered. The pizzas were a little soft, but I stuck them in the toaster oven to rewarm. The wing-a-lings had also started to separate from their breading, but that wasn't a big deal. Interestingly enough, the texture on the banana bread man was perfect and the bread stars were also fine. Wednesday night was when I had time to make pretty lunches, though I suppose it's a little against bento-principles to make a bento lunch a few days ahead. Well, too bad. That's probably how my bentos are going to have to go this spring. :D

1/14/2010- Indian curries bento and Bento Resolution

2010-01-14T12:46:00.006-05:00

There haven't been a lot of postings recently because I've not been packing a bento lunch, just stuff in a bag. Although it's been tasty, it's not really interesting to look at, and also outside of the scope of this blog. ANY-ways.

Lots of the blogs I read have been talking about New Year's Bento resolutions: make bento lunches for the first time, make bento lunches every day, try to post every day, stuff like that.

I decided that I, too, should have a New Year's Bento resolution. I know that my schedule will keep me from packing (and photographing) a bento lunch every day. I'm just too busy between work and school and life. But I decided, after reviewing my blog, to take more time in how the bento looks. I resolve to make "prettier" bentos this year. Maybe not charaben or anything like that, but with a stronger eye towards visual appeal. It has never been a challenge for me to pack a tasty lunch. I'm a pretty good cook (IMHO) and like good quality food. But I do tend to disregard how things look. No more!

The first bento of the resolution features Indian foods made by my housemate, who makes delicious Indian food. It's turmeric-heavy, so I busted out the old glasslock box. MAN, is it tiny. (407ml, baby)

Contents of bento: Kala Chana masala with potatoes, topped with a takuan star, steamed broccoli to keep the sweet things from being curry-ified, frozen sour cherries, and two small pieces of banana bread, curried green beans. The side car has basmati rice in it.

It may be tiny, but this was a very filling lunch. It ended up being more rice than I had thought. I pulled out the two silicon cups and microwaved everything else for max-tastiness and hotness. The takuan star was a little strange on the curry, but not unpleasant. The broccoli barrier also kept the banana bread dry. Sadly, I think my silicon cups will be stained with turmeric tie-dye for a little while.

I tried to use my new, awesome, bento-sized chopsticks (thanks, little mama), but they are white and I didn't want them stained yellow on their first use. I'll have to wait, I suppose.

In my effort to make "prettier" bentos I think I may need to build some kind of light studio. I had a heck of a time trying to take a decent picture of this last night. And I still think it looks weird and dark.

Crossposting- Bento Safety

2010-01-11T12:25:00.003-05:00

After my last couple of postings where I talked about how I'm not really concerned with food safety, I've been feeling like the universe is telling me I should be.

For example, this blog entry from Just Bento (one of the ones I follow) gives some tips and hints for keeping your bentos fresh and safe. I feel some sort of obligation to repost it here, since I'm so terribly blase about food safety. In an effort to present a balanced view, I thought I should put it up.

I unrelated news, I had a dream last night about trying to pack up a bento. In my dream I had all of these new bento boxes...hah!

1/8/2010- Black Bean Burrito

2010-01-08T15:14:00.009-05:00

The title of this posting says "burrito" but you'll notice that there is not a burrito pictured.

Contents of bento: salsa and plain yogurt in small container, a piece of pumpkin raisin bread, kale and bell pepper burrito filling, HB's famous refried black beans.

This picture shows the sidecar of corn chips. I don't know why I felt compelled to post two pictures of the same, rather plain lunch, but that's ok, I suppose.

What's not pictured (even in two pictures) is the tortilla that made this accumulation of fillings into a burrito. It was very good (heated in the microwave and then crisped in the toaster oven). I'm pretty lucky to have both a microwave and toaster oven at my disposal at work.

The pumpkin raisin bread is from our housemate, who is our resident "baker." It was really good. I didn't think about keeping yogurt unrefrigerated until lunchtime (my lunch sits in the fridge overnight and then is carried in an insulated lunchbag until I eat it) but it tasted fine. The salsa on top of it was pretty spicy/acidic, so maybe that helped. I'm not really very concerned with food safety. I mean, I use clean utensils and bento boxes and I keep them cool overnight, but once I take them to work, the biggest feeling I can muster is "meh." I've not gotten sick yet. :D

1/5/2010- Happy New Year with Chili

2010-01-08T15:14:00.007-05:00

Happy New Year! This chili lunch was packed at my folks' house before I came back to work.

Contents of Bento: Cornbread muffin, french onion dip for the carrots and celery, mini banana muffin with pecan on top, green olives, picked onion, some pieces of cheddar cheese.

As you can see, I put two of the pieces of the cheese on top of the chili before I microwaved it.

The chili was from a nice get-together my little mama hosted for some of my old friends. It was just lovely. Yay old friends!

Retro-posted from 12/29/2009- Yaki Onigiri from Trader Joe's

2010-01-08T15:12:00.005-05:00

This posting features my first real product review. Woo!

Contents of Bento: yaki onigiri from Trader Joe's Frozen section (review to follow), dried Korean seaweed, mini pepper stuffed with broccoli floret, takuan with umeshiso paste in the center, burrito filling which is mostly tempeh and peppers--adorned with a pepper ring, and steamed broccoli with Hoisan sauce.

Also: a side car of my homemade applesauce with dried cranberries

A pretty complicated bento for me, all in all. The Korean seaweed stayed crispy until lunchtime, which is so crazy. Like I've said before, it must be some amazing technology.

The burrito filling was on the stove when HB and I got home on the 28th. But I didn't realize that it was burrito filling. It also has rice in it. Our housemate made it to clean some stuff out of the fridge. It's funny how your expectations of what food will taste like changes how you think it tastes. I was pretty sure it was stir-fry before she told me that it was burrito filling. Weird, huh? Anyways, it was quite tasty and a perfect addition to this bento.

Yaki Onigiri from Trader Joe's

I don't know how long that link will stay active, since it's a new product page from Trader Joe's. So here is a listing of the nutrition information from them. They call them Baked Rice Snacks (because they're baked, not fried) and all you have to do is microwave them. They come in a package of 8 for around 3.50$ (your mileage may vary) and are pretty tasty. They do have fish sauce in them (and are made with dashi) so if you are a strict vegetarian, it might not be for you. I personally am not bothered by fish sauce. It's made with small anchovy-type bait fish, which are basically like bugs. And I would eat bugs, I'm just glad I don't have to.

The onigiri were easy to microwave; they were a little sticky when hot, and the flavor was a little pungent when they were warm. They carried excellently in the bento until lunchtime and were absolutely delicious at room temperature. There's no filling in them, but I found that taking umeshiso and takuan was fine for ramping up the flavor. They also have a soy-dashi taste that's pretty nice when they're at room temperature. The texture was pretty terrific too. They are not (like homemade yaki onigiri) at all crunchy, but they are still pretty great. I definitely was glad to have gotten them, will get them again, and keep them in my freezer for quick lunchtime addition. They're pretty expensive for what they are (um, rice), but you're paying for the convenience. I wouldn't take them every day, but once and a while they are a nice addition.

Retro-posted from 12/28/2009- No-chicken Parmesan

2010-01-08T15:10:00.003-05:00

On the 26th I made a special dinner for HB and me. This bento has some of the parts of it.

Contents of bento: sauteed broccoli and mushrooms (very savoury and delicious), stove-top applesauce with dried cranberries, and no-chicken Parmesan.

No-chicken Parmesan was made with Quorn, this bizarre myco-protein chicken substitute. Basically, I made my awesome homemade tomato sauce, cooked it down, then dumped in the Quorn. Then it went over fancy, Italian squiggly pasta and was baked briefly in the oven (under the broiler) to melt the Mozzarella and Parm I put on the top. So good. Too bad it looks so ugly in my bento. As you can see, the portion in the box just has shaved Parmesan on it. It didn't take a magical trip through the broiler. I microwaved everything in the box a little bit before I ate it. I love warm applesauce.

Also, I think it's impossible to make applesauce look pretty. I guess if I had used a pretty-shaped food cup, or decorated the top, I could have pulled it off. But sadly, it just ended up looking like mush. But the mush was as tasty, as tasty could be....

Retro-posted from 12/26/2009- Stuffed Shells

2010-01-08T15:09:00.003-05:00

Before Christmas my little mama made some awesome stuffed shells. Unfortunately, I was packing this bento on the 25th, late at night, because I had to work on the 26th. The unfortunate part is how mashed up the stuffed shells look.

Contents of Bento: Stuffed shells (with ricotta and lots of spinach) made by my little mama. Two mini peppers (not spicy, though they really look like jalapenos) a piece of artichoke square and some orange segments.

The artichoke squares are a "my family" tradition for events (of any kind). They're sort of like an awesome crustless quiche, but with lots of artichoke and 1/2 a lb. of cheese. Amazing, addictive, and probably not very good for you. These get made for Thanksgiving or parties or whatever. They are tasty both hot and cold. Maybe I'll post the recipe here sometime.

When I went to eat my lunch, I microwaved the shells tray a little bit. Deeeelicious.

Retro-posted from 12/25/2009- A bento for my Little Mama

2010-01-08T15:01:00.007-05:00

My little mama made the mistake of expressing some passing interest in bento-making. So I got her her own set (with some stuff to start her out).

Here is the set all wrapped up in its matching kinchaku . Next to it is a tiny Bonne Maman jar, which matched the box. However, it is too tall to fit in either tier, but it's often nice to have a little extra jar to take salad dressing or what have you.

The box looks like this:
Sorry the picture is a little out of focus. Two tiers with rubber lids on both tiers.

Under the lid, a little storage area!
You can see the elastic band in the front and some tiny cocktail (bento-sized) forks in the back. One plastic and the rest are bamboo. This set also came with some darling bento-sized chopsticks. But little mama doesn't do chopsticks so her darling daughter got them instead :D. I guess I should take a picture featuring them...they really are a great size, about the length of my hand, and plain white. Now you know what they look like.

Inside everything...
Top tier has two lift-out trays in classic 2/3 - 1/3 proportion. Bottom tier has a sliding barrier. Obscured by the barrier are 2 little fishes for sauce. Also featured: 4 silicon mini-cups (2 blue and 2 red) and a little 40ml container from Japan. Seriously, I love these guys. I'm going to have to buy some more if I keep giving them away...

The box is micro-safe with lids off and also dishwasher safe. These are key elements for my little mama. It has yet to be used, but someday soon! I was supposed to pack her a starter lunch before we left, but that didn't happen. It's a little bigger than I thought it was going to be, but a very nice set all in all. I got it from jBox. And even though I ordered it in late November, it arrived before Christmas. The shipping and whole process was very smooth.

Retro-post from 12/9/2009- Pasta Bake

2010-01-08T14:58:00.002-05:00

An astoundingly boring bento. Can you guess what's in it?

That's right. Romaine salad. Penne with sauce and cheese (affectionately called pasta bake in our house.) I ate the salad, then heated the pasta a little bit. Tasty. Boring and tasty.

Updates soon~

2009-12-29T15:38:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-09T12:38:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-09T12:21:00.004-05:00

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

2009-12-02T09:11:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-30T11:39:00.002-05:00

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!

2009-11-30T11:10:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-19T13:41:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-19T13:36:00.003-05:00

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!

2009-11-19T13:28:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-11T15:41:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-05T11:47:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-05T11:44:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-05T11:40:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-05T11:00:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-05T10:41:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-05T10:28:00.006-05:00

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

2009-10-08T11:21:00.004-04:00

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

2009-10-07T10:59:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-07T10:39:00.008-04:00

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

2009-10-07T10:35:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-07T10:31:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-24T17:45:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-24T16:57:00.006-04:00

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

2009-09-22T16:00:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-22T15:48:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-18T14:39:00.005-04:00

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

2009-09-11T16:15:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-11T16:00:00.010-04:00

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

2009-09-10T17:44:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-10T17:11:00.005-04:00

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

2009-09-10T15:18:00.006-04:00

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

2009-09-04T22:00:00.010-04:00

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

2009-09-03T11:19:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-03T10:28:00.003-04:00

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

Enjoy!

6/10/09 Bento- mushroom meatball

2009-09-02T17:19:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-02T17:11:00.003-04:00

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?