bento #119

Well, my bentos these days mostly consist of the same thing.  A chicken thigh cooked some-way-or-another and whatever fruits or vegetables I have in my refrigerator.

- hb egg
- broccoli, raw (and I actually ate it!  It wasn't too bad)
- clementine
- chicken teriyaki (finally less burnt)
- baby carrots
- some red pepper for garnish

I really need to find more color to add!  Orange seems to be a dominant theme these days.

bento #118

On Thursdays I have a busy day... sometimes visiting with a friend, therapy appointment, quick hike, teaching... so I need some sustenance.

- cucumber slices
- chicken thigh marinated in soy sauce; sprinkled with sesame seeds.  tasty!
- yellow pepper pieces
- one pickle, chunked
- clementine

bento #109

I don't have a picture for this bento... my camera needed new batteries over the weekend.  I've been taking too many pictures, I guess!

Anyway, it contained:
- leftover miso pork
- leftover rice with furikake
- tamagoyaki (they looked much better than my last attempt!)
- green pepper strips
- apple slices

I ate part of it on my way to my friend's play.  I'd brought the bento into school with me, thinking it would get to room temperature, but the rice was still cold and a bit hard (yuck!) after an hour and a half, so ate that when I got home that night.

bento # 108

Can you tell I'm a bit out of practice?  :)  Oh well, at least it tasted good, and that's the important thing!

We have:
- miso pork (from Just Bento)
- pepper slices
- a tamagoyaki that was really more like scrambled eggs...
- rice with salmon furikake
- grape skewers
- apple bunny
- one carrot, steamed.  I put it in with the rice to cook and it turned out great, although a bit soft.  I'll put it in later next time.

bento #107

An interesting mixture of East and West.

- leftover chicken hot wings
- celery and ranch dressing
- rice sprinkled with furikake
- grape "people"

I've been getting my bento books back out and browsing bento websites, and I realized what I had in my freezer would make a good bento.

breakfast bento ideas

I'm still collecting/on the lookout for ideas for breakfast bento, so if anyone has anyone, pipe in!

tamagoyaki, of course
breakfast rolls... with spring or egg roll wrapping (not sure if I could do nori in the morning)
yogurt and granola
fruit

Sausage and rice

Frittata

Croissant and jam

Hard-boiled egg

Sausage bun/roll

Scotch egg

Whole wheat muffin

Baked custard

I'm a bit stumped, obviously!  I actually had a few more ideas, but then I forgot to save my original "bento ideas" file before I re-installed the operating system on my computer... whoops.

Review: Yum-Yum Bento Box

I had some extra Amazon cash, so I decided to pick up this book:

Yum-Yum Bento Box by Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa (click their naems to visit their blogs).
I'm a regular visitor to Pikko's site (Watanabe), but I hadn't visited Maki's before. 

This book is based toward kids, but even I don't mind a little kawaii in my lunch occasionally.

What I liked:
- nice introduction to bento at the beginning if you're new to the world
- very colorful and bright pictures and sturdy pages
- their "food pyramid": 4 parts veg, 3 parts protein, 2 parts carbs, 1 part fruit/dessert.  Yay for healthy!
- each bento has several recipes with it, and they're all easy to mix-and-match
- while this is a charaben book (character bento), none of the ideas are too complicated (usually involve some cutting and/or punching)-- all the ideas seem very feasible!

What I didn't like:
- there's no index.  I remembered seeing a bento that included macaroni and cheese, went to the back to look it up, but nope, no index.  And, when food is sometimes disguised, it makes flipping back through challenging.
- yes, that's all!

While I haven't put together any of the recipes/bento yet, I do have a few planned, so stay tuned!  I never was interested in charaben until I looked at this book, actually; while I enjoy looking at photos of others' charaben, I never had much of a desire to put cute faces on food... until now!  Too bad I don't have any face punches!

I also won Just Bento in a giveaway last month, so I plan to review that as well in the next few months or so.

bento #27

More noodles... comfort food.  I keep watching these anime films (like Ponyo on the Clift), and they'll be eating NOODLES, and I can't stop thinking about it until I eat some. 

Have I shown you the outside of this bento?  Yup, shaped like a hamburger.

- cheapo ramen noodle with a little ground beef and red pepper
- baby carrots, snow peas, grape skewers
- leftover egg bake, half an orange, one cherry tomato

bento #26

Tried a new vegetable today: raw, at least.  Snow peas!  They taste like grass.  But that's not exactly a bad thing... after all, lettuce and spinach have that grass-like taste too.

- egg bake (sausage, mozzarella cheese) in the lower right corner, with snow peas
- corn muffin, orange
- cucumber and cherry tomato with Italian dressing.  I love this salad!  My dad would eat it every day during the summer when neighbors were giving us their cucumbers and tomatoes.

for the starch portion of your bento, I bring you:

Sushi roll

Rice

Onigiri

Crackers

Plain potato croquettes

Miso yaki onigiri

Spicy lentil snacks

Risotto cakes
yakiudon
somen noodles


Obviously starch is where my creative skills are lacking.  Probably because I don't like them as much as I like other foods... although I do love my noodles!  They just don't taste so great room temperature/cold.

And, if you want to be crazy and combine starch AND protein, use any of these:

hot dog sushi

musubi w/ spam

sushi w/ tuna and sriachi

spring rolls (lumpiang)

gyoza/pot stickers

potato croquettes

bahn mi

Philadelphia rolls

Tuna and mayo maki/sushi

Potato oyaki w meat soboro

breakfast bento #7

Today I have a friend's basketball game and then another friend's baby shower, so I packed a breakfast I could eat on my way.  Bento is great for traveling!

- sausage balls, a classic from my childhood (recipe here).  I bake them longer because I like them crispy!
- granola crackers.  I've never heard of them before either... made them up.  Basically a very thin granola bar.
- pineapple and grape skewers.  Apparently I like these picks a lot.
- a hard-boiled egg

Afraid the bento is a bit brown in tone!  That's what meat and starch will do... oh, I also have a thermos of pineapple orange juice to accompany.


* Interesting note: if I lived in Slovakia, I wouldn't be able to eat and drive because it's illegal.  It would make my trips much longer because I'd have to stop and eat every hour: driving makes me even more hungry than usual!

bento #15

Ate this one last night.  I like using noodles for bento because they squish into all the little places and gaps.  Apparently this bento is my noodle-bento, too, because that's what I used last time I had a noodle dish.

- Asian Noodles with Vegetables (mushrooms and onion) and Pork (recipe here... love Rachael Ray stuff!)  Also, my first time to try soba noodles.  They were good, but I think I prefer wheat noodles, and not sure how they'd taste cold.
- green beans with sakura blossom peppers
- 2/3 of a banana
- grapes!  Math question: if I have a small bag of grapes and I put four in each bento, how long will they last?  I think I'm a bit predictable!

bento #10

I had to make a trip to"the big city" (Indianapolis) ;) yesterday, so I took a bento.  Actually, I didn't end up eating it because I just waited and had an early dinner (Al Basha... gyro... yummy).  So, this bento will be lunch today:

- hardboiled egg... I need to remember to buy X-Large eggs so my animals will have ears, but I've been buying large for years so automatically go for them
- cucumber slices
- satsuma
- two octodogs
- a "sea" of rice noodles with leftover potsticker sauce.  And some scallion and spinach
- with a little bear swimming full of soy sauce

Also, I checked out three Asian/Japanese restaurants on the northside Indy.  One had one bento box, and another had about half a dozen, but all were rather expensive, so I didn't get anything.  Was able to pick up a few ingredients to make more Japanese food.  And some grape leaves... I've been craving lamb and dolmades.  And kibbe, and kafta... you get the idea.  At least the gyro temporarily put a patch on that Middle Eastern craving.

breakfast bento #4

More ham sandwiches for breakfast!  I wanted to give my cutters a work-out.  It's a spring-themed bento, but I'm not especially eager for spring to come: I like snow!  Apparently this is what happens when one was raised in Michigan.

- ham cooked in Bull-Dog sauce sandwich; ham and cheese characters
- satsuma

breakfast bento #3

So, you didn't think you'd be seeing any sandwiches appearing in my bentos, did you?  Well, you probably won't see many for lunch unless I'm craving tuna salad, bologna, or ham salad.

However, this is a breakfast bento, and I like sandwiches for breakfast.  More of an European thing, I guess.  Theirs are typically open-faced (at least in Slovakia), but it's easier to eat with the bread holding everything together.  ;)

- ham sandwich: the ham is cooked in Bull-Dog sauce.  It tastes a bit like chipped ham (a Pittsburgh favorite, if you're not familiar with it), and it's my new breakfast favorite
- satsuma and a few banana slices

I used the largest of my new Miffy bentos.  Pretty simple, overall.  I wondered later why I didn't throw in a few sheets of baran to separate the sandwich from the fruit-- and for a little more color.

bento swap!

I participated in my first-ever swap.  Well, okay, I'm in one on Craftster right now, and while I've sent, my participant hasn't received yet, and neither have I.

Back to bento... I swapped with another bento enthusiast on flickr.  It was fun, and she was super-generous!  The funny thing is that she only lives an hour south of I.

She said she wanted to spoil me because I'm just getting into bento.  :)  Yup, I feel spoiled!
- Putifresh green bento... love this color
- yellow bento with a cute little guy on the front!  It looks like it's the perfect size for a salad on the bottom and a sandwich and a few snacks up top
- hamburger bento!  Seriously, I'd been looking at these and was considering one as my next purchase!
- tootsie roll snack bento!
- onigiri wrappers... cute animals and soccer ball shapes
- a natural lunch fork, spoon, and chopstick set with case
- small containers: two hearts, a cupcake, and a hostess cupcake
- two sets of cutters: a sandwich dolphin one and a flower/garden set
- many picks, suitable for all seasons!  The dolphin, fall, and flip-flop ones are my favorites

at-home bento #2

My lunch yesterday.  Okay, so the pic doesn't look too appetizing... tacos don't exactly translate to bento, so I plopped them on a plate and call it another at-home bento.

- tacos with chicken wing sauce over turkey (after eating fresh Mexican tortillas, store tortillas barely taste like tortillas!)
- salad with fresh spinach (and using up the last of my lettuce)
- clementine

Slovak bento... #6

I'm 7/8 Slovak, visit Slovakia every summer to teach English, and incorporate Slovak foods into my diet fairly frequently.  Actually, I grew up eating Polish and Slovak food.

So, it's not surprising that some Slovak food will find its way into my bentos.

- chicken paprikas with peppers... except that I made mine more of a stir-fry instead of stewed chicken
- brown jasmine rice
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumber salad, a.k.a. uhorkovy salat

Mnam!

If you're interested in traditional Slovak cuisine, here's a great blog: Slovak Cooking.

I think I'm done buying for a while

Got my last order of bento supplies, from fitjp; I was expecting it to arrive tomorrow, so was surprised to hear the package drop and doorbell.  Yay!  I tend to buy "in bulk" to save on shipping costs... I hate to pay shipping for anything.

Anyway, here's what I got:

3 new bento "sets"
- 2 petit amour at 510 and 320 mls
- 3 tomo tomo boxes; 425, 300, and 125 mls.  I like the deer and squirrel ones best  :)
- natural lunch flask and a 560 and 480 ml box; I have an ongiri box in the same green if I need a sidecar

and, some accessories:
- two bento bands, in penguin and matryoshka
- a pair of Clickety Click monkey chopsticks
- bear and flower rice molds
- fish-shaped sushi mold
- animal and flower cutters!  these should be useful for everything
- silicon grass baran and animal baran
- clickety click picks; no monkey, sadly, but I wanted some longer picks to use for kabobs

There's more, but I'm saving it to swap.  I'm also obsessed with swaps at the moment; I'm doing one on Flickr with bento folks and have an inchies swap going on Craftster.

bento #5

Last night I made a mini dinner bento... I was already working in the kitchen, so made it up ahead of time for when I'd be hungry.  I didn't think I had anything but veg to put in it, but a little poking around in the fridge and freezer produced two onigiri and some leftover tuna soboro that needed to be used up.

- two brown rice onigiri, one with tuna soboro inside, the other with it sprinkled on top
- sesame spinach
- cherry tomatoes

One of the things I'm realizing about bento is that all the flavors in bento don't always complement each other.  I'm a fan of simple tastes: two items at most on my pizza, no more than two veg/additions in my salad.  Therefore, combining four or more things in a meal is odd for me... I think three is my limit, but that's not exactly bento!  We'll see how this works out.