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

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

This is my inaugural bento for the ELPH box!

Contents of Bento:

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

Here is a detail of my awesome charben attempt:

Can you tell I'm just so pleased with myself?

Here is HB's box, which is very plain looking. We shared the decor from the Elph box set.

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

We also had another side car

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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