11/28/09- Post Thanksgiving Bento

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tragedy.

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

The Bear of Salt is Dead!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onigiri Post- new stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retro posted from 10/20/2009-Vegetable Okazu

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Retro posted 10/8/2009- soba noodle stirfry

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

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

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

HB Bento retro-posted from 10/8/2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here is what it looks like all wrapped up:


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

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

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

11/5/2009- Rice and Eggplant Bento

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

Enough. Now a very boring bento:

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

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