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Friday, June 17, 2011

Asparagus!

Today I am trying a little something different. We do have a nice large compartment filled with a vegetable stir fry made with carrots, red bell pepper, snow peas and purple cauliflower but I also made these asparagus rolled with very thinly sliced pork. Around that there are strawberries and raspberries that are almost to the not so good stage, but they do have one more use in them.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Back to Basics

Okay, maybe not exactly basic, but there are carrots in one of them again! The first bento is made up of pot stickers, carrot sticks, snow peas, fresh pineapple and those shrimp and chicken Chinese dumplings.
The second one is a sandwich since she is going to the beach today with her school. Peanut butter and jelly (as per her request), snow peas and grape tomatoes and homemade sweet potato chips and there are pea shoots to stabilize the sandwich.
Almost forgot to mention, the picnic bento went over well and Paige said that there wasn't enough food. Only some rice left over.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Picnic Bento and Two More Days

Okay, lots of bento going on today. It isn't that I have not had the time, I have just been lazy. I am going to post the picnic bento first because I am pretty proud of it. I used a two tier tiffin which is supposed to be one lunch, but this should feed three, maybe four kids.

On the bottom is the deeper tin, so half is filled with rice divided with lettuce with apple rabbits and a checkerboard apple, two donut peaches and tangelo segments. On the top I made a rolled omelet, a pork bun, some cheese sandwich triangles and a cup with fresh pineapple in it. All of the fruit came from Wilson's Farm which I would highly suggest anyone in Massachusetts to check out. Beautiful fresh produce everywhere, plus plants. There are also take out packages of mustard (for the cheese sandwiches) and soy for the rice. I am posting the pictures, but keep scrolling down as I have two more bentos to show you all.
It is also important to note that Paige helped a lot putting this together, even getting up 45 minutes earlier.




The next one was yesterday's. It isn't really very special, but I did give some frozen, cooked shrimp a try which she actually ate! Go team! It is very difficult to get seafood in her. She also had half a plum, fresh pineapple (again from Wilson's, but the pineapple was obviously not local here in Boston), some grape tomatoes (also from Wilson's) which she did not eat, no surprise, and her rice. (more below this one too)


This one was done the other day. I switched out the rice for some French couscous that we got at Hannaford's bulk bins, made with vegetable stock and some dried cranberries. For the rest, I rubbed some soy into a little bit of chicken and fried that up, she has a cup with cucumbers (not local) and grape tomatoes (Wilson's). She also had some nice raspberries which I am not sure are local because it is a little early in the season.



This is Paige in her sister's Naruto jacket, the first piece of cosplay she ever got. Paige is thrilled that it was cool enough to wear it for her field trip today to the Franklin Zoo. I took pictures because she actually let me, which is a miracle.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Fresh Pineapple!

Today is more potstickers, just another bentos worth now left in my freezer. With that she has purple cauliflower from Wilson's Farm and fresh pineapple purchased there too, though since I live in New England it certainly wasn't grown there. I was going to squish some raspberries in there, but they are just too fragile and the box was pretty full.


Monday, June 6, 2011

Two Days Posting

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday's bento, so here it is along with today's. Yesterday we had fried rice. I normally toss a scrambled egg into the rice at the end of cooking, but lately I have mostly cooked the scrambled egg before tossing it in. She seems to like it better that way and it really doesn't take any extra work. We were a little low on extras, so she has a large strawberry, a couple of apple bunnies and a cup of apple and flax seed granola. The strawberry was a standard one from a grocery, but the pink lady was organic and fairly local. The granola was organic.

For today I made Paige her rice as per usual, but heated up a little teriyaki to pour on the top. She has three teriyaki meatballs from Trader Joe's, some really pretty different colored cauliflower, strawberries and raspberries all from Wilson's farm, all organically grown.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Pretty If Not Original

Yesterday I sent Paige to school with some leftover chicken and pasta salad. Oddly, even though it was in a regular, seal-able, plastic container it still fell apart in her back. It is so odd because the bento boxes rarely seal very well and are often only held together by an elastic band. Maybe I should have posted it, as it was a very pretty salad, but I didn't do anything to make it more bento-like.

Today's is better. Hubby made her rice as usual, and I sprinkled it with curry sesame seeds to make it look a little different than just plain rice. She also wanted the rolled omelet again. She really loves those. I make them with a splash of soy and some mirin. The mixture will look a little gross and dark, but it does go yellow once it is cooked. I also had some more mozzarella  which I tossed with some basil, which I know that she really loves. To fill out the space and get a little more fruit and veg in there, I adds a few snow peas and a nice ripe strawberry.