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.

4/24/2010- Tiny Pesto Bowties

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.

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

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

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.

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

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



Here's a picture next to a quarter:


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2/26/2010- Pizza Bento for Friday again

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

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

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

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

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

1/28/2010- Scary Monster Spinach Knish

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

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

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

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

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

1/8/2010- Black Bean Burrito

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

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

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

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

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.

12/1/2009- Kale stirfry bento

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.

11/28/09- 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.

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....)