6/15/2010- Breakfast Bento!

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

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

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

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

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

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

SWAG!

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

I began by laying out everything I got in the awesome box of great stuff:

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

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

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

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

Retro-posting from our last week in VA

This was a bento I made at S&A's house our last week in VA. Tasty, nondescript, but a bento picture!

Contents of bento: fried rice with decor, sliced strawberry, and mini-babybel cheese.

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

A really simple bento:

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

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

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

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

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

I think the lettuce was there to add some color.

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

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

This is my inaugural bento for the ELPH box!

Contents of Bento:

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

Here is a detail of my awesome charben attempt:

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

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

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

We also had another side car

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

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

Back from Silence!

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

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

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

And with the lids on:

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

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

For CB who likes scale...

ELPH box and quarter

and

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

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

Bento Contest = I am a lucky duck!

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

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

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.