NoodleRama

Today I used udon noodles instead of rice for the carbohydrate. I stir fried them quickly in some store bought stir fry sauce to give it a little flavor and hopefully keep the noodles from sticking together. I did rinse them very well, but you never know. It is no fun to stick your chopsticks into a bunch of noodles and have them come up as one whole piece. We are also giving pickled daikon radish a try. It should taste good with the plain fried tofu.

This bento is mine. I made the apple bunnies again and the stars are the daikon pickle. Since we still have cantelope left I didn't want to waste it so I am using it again in the boxes. The little doggy pick makes it easier to eat the little melon balls than it would be with chopsticks.

Very Simple Lunch

Today we are having an "easy" lunch. I made some udon noodles and tossed them with some sesame oil (to prevent sticking), soy, mirin and a shot of hot sauce as she has said that she likes things a little spicy. Who knew? Then I steamed some pork and shrimp dumplings for some protein. Added to that is some burdock root salad, a little pickled radish and three small cookies that we got in a gift basket from Ebisuya. The bento box I got for a steal from Ohayobento. I also got some picks, a lamb bento and some cut flower silicon cups I can't wait to use. I wrapped it using the napkins I got from Ecolunchboxes a while back. Pippy is not thrilled with the stainless steel, but I love it.
I am in the process of making new clothes for her bento that don't come with bags. We picked out the fabric, but now I just have to find the time and clear a space on the table to cut and press them for stitching. I am not sure if I want to use my eldest's sewing machine or do the more tradition running stitch by hand. We will see. Considering my crazy schedule I may use the machine.

Help me go to China!!!

Please donate towards my going to China with the Scholar Laureate Program. It is a diplomatic trip but I will be able to spend a lot of time outside of that learning about different cultures in the country and making this an experience worthy of my resume. Every little bit helps, and I have a 750.00 scholarship towards it. The 5000.00 includes my airfare. Thank you!!! Give

Paige's Creation

As some of you know, we have been having some money problems. This means that Paige is going to start getting free lunch at school. It kills me to have her eating that garbage, but it is free and for a little while, necessary. Still, she needs lunch until it comes through, so today she made a bento for herself. The rice is supposed to have a bear and a rabbit in sesame seeds, the stenciling can be a problem though, but I can see them, can you? Her carrots have a little dressing on them and more sesame seeds, otherwise there are octodogs and pineapple. I am just happy she remembered a veggie!

Inarizushi

My alarm didn't go off, again. I didn't wake until 7:00 am and Paige had to leave in just a few minutes so I didn't have time to take a picture of the actual bento. I did put some more together though for some photos.

Last night I simmered the tofu skins in chicken broth (I had no dashi) soy, mirin and saki. I found the skins in the freezer from last year, and the rest I had left over from the year before. They were stuffed with fresh sushi rice that my husband kindly started when he got up in the morning. We just rinse it and set it up the night before so it is just a matter of plugging it in and flipping the switch. Still, I am grateful that he remembers in the morning fog.
I also made a variation of one of the Just Bento recipes. Thinly sliced cucumbers with shaved carrots that had some lemon rind, juice and sea salt. The other side was also from the cookbook and was some green beans that I have for dinner that were lightly steamed then tossed with a touch of light miso and butter.

This is going to be a trying time for us as we are having money problems like so many others. Buying things specifically for bento is not going to be happening very often as I try to conform our dinner foods into something different for her bento.

First Day of High School

I realize that some may be surprised that I am making bento for my 15 year old. This year I will be trying to make them the night before more often though as I have school later on and need my sleep. Today both me and my eldest got up with her. Catherine made her some cinnamon roll pancakes for breakfast (yep, all carbs) and I got her bento together. Paige picked out the box to use, so while it seems quite small it was her choice. From now on Paige will be responsible for putting rice in her bento in the morning.

 Noticing a bit of a color theme? The only thing she asked for was the egg and rice, so I tried to pretty it up with some cut baby carrots arranged like a flower and a rabbit apple. I am not sure how artistic her future bentos will be, but I tried to make her first one of the year at least a little cute, or as Paige would say "Kawaii desu ne".  Okay, definitely not that cute!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Soboro!

Today I pulled out the frozen ground beef soboro out of the freezer. I have another couple of bag, so it will make more appearances. I also made some egg soboro (both recipes are in "Just Bento") to go with it, cut up some carrots and a plum and put in some snow peas and of course rice on the bottom of it all. I do wish that my pictures weren't so fuzzy. It recently started happening all the time. I tried noise reduction and sharpen and that just seems to make them worse, so I apologize again for my lack of photography talent.

Lately I have been doing a lot of repeats, particularly with the potstickers because we had a lot of them in the freezer with different fillings. She is still not sick of them! I am hoping to make a few decorative ones before school ends since I have more time with the semester over. 

In school news I got two A's and two B+'s, so I am on the Dean's list again, Whee! This is so much better than when I was doing horribly in Spanish 101. Finally back on track. The Fall with be my last semester as an undergrad, then I look for work and see if I can get into a Masters program.

It Has Been a While

I haven't posted in a while because my bentos have been pretty lackluster. Mostly she has been eating potstickers as I endeavor to get rid of all the bits of bento stuff still in my freezer. Recently though, she told me that she loves, loves, loves fresh mozzarella with basil, so when I was at Trader Joe's I picked some up as a treat for her.
Today she has her rice, some dumplings (shrimp and pork)**edit** Actually the dumplings are Chicken Shu Mai from Trader Joe's, slices of red bell pepper, mozzarella with basil chiffon and a half of a plum that we also got at Trader Joe's. I put it in this one level container to hold all the dumplings as there were not enough left for two bentos. It also gives me a little head room. she also has a bottle of homemade teriyaki sauce for dipping and putting on her rice.
This is the first time I tried steaming something with the rice in the cooker and they came out perfect. Not bad for a 20 dollar machine.

Starting To Run Low

Ingredients for original bentos are running low right about now. I just used the last of our eggs, and while I have a ton of carrots and lettuce, there isn't a lot of anything else right now. I am going to do a fresh mozzarella and basil one as soon as I can get to the store.

Today I used my purple panda box courtesy of bentofabulous . It is filled with sweet tamogoyaki , carrot and radish flowers along with some pickled vegetables and pickled daikon radish. Her rice is topped with the leftover shreds of the omelet.

Fried Rice Again

The great thing about fried rice is that is uses up so many things in the refrigerator. Today's has onions, zucchini, carrots and sugar snap peas with egg. I also sliced some cucumbers and sectioned a nice tangelo from our Boston Organics box. I wanted to use the purple panda box that I won, but I can't find it anywhere. Maybe Paige knows where it went. Last time she didn't even know that there was zucchini is there! (She doesn't like it very much)

Caterpillars and Social Commentary

First the good news, Osama is no longer a threat. I can't say that I am happy he is dead. That is the easy way out in my opinion, and will also anger his followers. I can say that I am happy he is gone, and I hope that means we will get out of the Middle East sometimes soon.


In other news, this week is another "make do" week. We still haven't found decent tenants for the apartment, so we have to find a way to afford the mortgage for another month. That plus the carpet hasn't been put in yet. On that vein, I will try to make the old standbys at least a little interesting.

Today I made a caterpillar out of round onigiri and cucumber skins for the eyes and spots. I also sprinkled on some white sesame seeds, but that is hard to see on the camera. I thought it would make it look a little fuzzy, like a real caterpillar. For the stuff that goes with the rice, we have the teriyaki meatballs, sugar snap peas and one of those frozen blueberry muffins that I thought we finished up. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, and that included the my making homemade teriyaki sauce for her rice and meatballs. My husband starts the rice for me as soon as he gets up, so it was all ready for me to go to work. Sadly, I don't have a lot of fillers in the house right now, I will have to do an inventory to see if I can find some, but this should stay in place okay.

Very, very tired

I owe you good folks two bentos today since I did not upload yesterday's bento. I also got my shipment of bento boxes that I got from a drawing at Bentofabulous a while back, so there is a picture of that also.

Yesterday's bento was as Paige's request. We had some little weenies from H-mart I believe that were frozen and hadn't been used yet because I foolishly didn't freeze them in portions. So, with her rice she has two octodogs and two crabs, both with peppercorn eyes. There is rice of course and hoisin sauce, also at her request. In the containers are watermelon balls (even small watermelons yield a lot of fruit!) and pickled vegetables. She said that she ate the whole thing, but since she washed out her own container we will never know for sure.

The next box is for today and it was thrown together at the last minute due to my incessant sleeping. I had some fried onigiri in the freezer from Trader Joe's along with a few vegetable croquettes. I sliced up some fried tofu, which she loves and cut off a strip to make it brown and white for contrast. Of course there is still melon left, so in it went along with some frozen peas.

And finally by new collection of boxes. She also sent me some very pretty teaspoons, but I didn't get them into the picture. Yesterdays lunch used the pink on and I can't wait to try the purple one! I think that the lock and lock would be great on sandwich days to bring extra stuff along to fill her up.

Fun Tamagoyaki

Today's bento is brought to you with some sadness. I young student that I go to class with died suddenly last night. I have decided to go to school anyway, but both her and her family are in my thoughts.

I used the egg white trick with the tamagoyaki but dyed the whites red for a contrast. I put them on a bed of lettuce and added some cross cut cucumbers and a grape tomato. Her rice is made with a roll form and sprinkled with black sesame and plum sesame seeds.

Tuesday Quickie

Okay, not so quick. It took me about 20 minutes to cook and cool this bento. There is fried rice made with carrots, zucchini (sshhh, don't tell, she ate is ALL), egg, soy sauce and mirin. In the other compartment was fried tofu (which she says she could eat like and ice cream cone), watermelon balls and sugar snap peas. The verdict came in this afternoon when she returned an empty box. Love it when healthy meets "I loved it Mom".