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!

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.

Called It In Today

This was a planned lazy day. I am so exhausted by Friday that I just can't think of anything to do. Still, it came out pretty nice without a tremendous amount of trying. There are two dinosaur cucumber sandwiches filled with baby cucumbers and a mayo and paprika mixture. I colored the outside of the bread a little with food safe markers to try to get some of the detail out. I am not sure I succeeded. All around them are "trees and shrubs" that are carrot sticks and cucumber sliced on a rotating bias. In one of the cups is some Smart Food popcorn which she loves (and yes, I realize it is not better than chips) and some frozen mango in the other container.

This picture was taken in my laundry room where we do get a little natural light. Besides the blah background, I like the way the picture turned out. Very crisp and pretty. I also used the Lock and Lock container which is my go to for sandwiches.

It Must Be Bunnies!

Pippy's bunny bento box came in yesterday! I ordered it on the 5th, so it has been a long wait. This is the first time I ever heard her squeal about a lunch box. It took me forever to find it for sale, but I found it at CasaBento and it was on sale. This was good because I really shouldn't have spent the money that I did. This is the first time I ever packed a shaped bento, so bear with me.

In the small container is some fried rice sans egg because that is found in the larger section. On top of that I tried to craft a rabbit with provolone and nori. I was supposed to have bologna for this, but it disappeared in the refrigerator of doom. Yes, he looks quite maniacal. In the bigger section there is tamagoyaki, but I didn't flavor it because I forgot. Still, it is yummy. There are also three mini egg rolls that I baked last night and some broccoflower. Can you see the tiny bell peppers? Absolutely adorable. I will probably stuff them for another bento this week, but today they add some red to the box and Pippy likes them.

Fried rice with Thai peppers (which were not hot), carrots, onions, garlic and peas flavored with soy and mirin.

Scary huh? How on earth can you cut nori with a straw? I had a metal one and I couldn't do it.

The main attraction. As you can see I need a lot of practice to learn to pack this shape properly.

All ready to go, isn't it adorable?

Oh Christmas Tree!

The tree idea is one from a Twitter friend who goes by HapaBento. If you tweet, you may want to look her up, her bentos always look great. The tree is made with sliced snowpeas with an omelette star and present and red pickled ginger for decorations and the ribbon. I hope that it makes it to school intact. All of her friends loved the snowman I made and told her she was evil for eating the head first! So funny.  The rest are all the usual suspects except that they are a different breed of sorts. The carrot sticks which may look burned on camera are actually a deep purple on the outside and orange on the inside. The Christmas tree balls are cut from a watermelon radish which is this lovely bright pink inside (and are huge). The meatballs were simmered in some teriyaki sauce. The only thing I forgot was a bottle of soy.

HapaBento's came out much nicer! Mine is sort of abstract, ya, that is it, abstract. I almost didn't mention that we also got this humongous head of cabbage in our produce box. The family has had issues with cabbage ever since my cabbage soup diet fiasco, so I am not sure what to do with it all. Some made it to the bento as coleslaw. There is some sesame seeds in there too, but the picture sucks, as per usual. Maybe I will do a nice sweet and sour cabbage or something. Oh, and this is the last one I will be making until January 2nd when Pippy's school comes back into session. I sort of welcome the break to regroup and maybe think of something new and interesting for her lunches.

Snowman!

Well, it isn't the most decorative snowman in the world, and they aren't onigiri since I was using leftover rice. The only nori on it are the eyes because Pippy doesn't like nori. The nose is a carrot though! I also made this crab stick salad, but I am a little worried that the sesame oil may be a little strong for her tastes.

The buttons are made with some bacon sprinkles. After declaring last week that she had enough eggs, she requested them again for today. So, there is the crab salad, a two egg rolled omelet with baby spinach and at the top are some leftover roast potatoes and yellow bell pepper which were seasoned with a balsamic glaze. She love roasted potatoes. I even snuck a red and white beet in there, let us see if she eats it.

Cucumber Sandwiches

Pippy loves cucumber sandwiches with a mix of mayonnaise, oregano and paprika. Today I made her two shaped like tea pots. I also made an easy potato salad and cut up some carrots, green pepper and apples. Oddly, this didn't take me as long as it usually does, I had everything done an the potatoes cooled in about 20 minutes.

We don't do white bread normally, but it got packed in our bag by accident. Even though it is supposedly "high fiber" bread, we still normally go for whole grain. It turned out to be lucky though because I could draw on it with food markers. On top of what I already said was in here, there is a cut up chicken/apple sausage and some cherry tomatoes. I am not particularly happy with all the bare spots, but hopefully it won't move too much in her bag.

Pot Sticker Surprise

The surprise was that there was no rice in this bento. Usually the pot stickers and rice go hand in hand, but I wanted to at least try to make it a bit more colorful. The tomato and cucumber skewers are from Kawaii Bento, thought I don't have any decorative skewers so I just snipped the end with the pointy bit off. I also sauteed some julienned carrots and pea shoots with a touch of soy and sugar. From the stash is a mini blueberry muffin. To fill in the empty spaces I put some dried mango and baby English cucumber slices. I could have stuffed it more, but as I have said before, I am working with what we have in the house in an effort to clean out the refrigerator before I go shopping for Thanksgiving.

Two for the Price of One

Today is one of Pippy's friend's birthday and she asked me to make a bento for her. The inspiration for the jack o lantern eggs came from a friend on Twitter, notabrownbag. She made me feel a little more confident about my knife skills. We are still using up that BBQ. Good thing that it is so delicious! There is also a pear in there because her friend is allergic to apples.

On the top is the BBQ, some sliced pear, a cheese round and some grape tomatoes and an egg Jack o lantern. On the bottom is buckwheat noodles seasoned with sesame oil, rice vinegar and soy and with purple sweet potato leaves and carrot half moons. The carrots weren't big enough to make leaves. I swear those Japanese made cutters assume some gigantic carrots are available.

Jack O' Lantern

I found a pumpkin cutter in my bento supplies and it fit the carrots perfectly, so I went with it. Pippy desired a sauce of some kind, so we went with hoisin sauce.

Her friends at school don't believe that I get up and cook in the morning, but that I just heat things in the microwave. That isn't entirely untrue, sometimes I do use leftovers or a frozen convenience food that is heated in the microwave. More often though I actually do the cooking first thing in the morning, as I did today. What makes it easier is that she likes most of her vegetables raw, so I don't always have to cook those.

She ate yesterday's bento right up. I didn't ask her about the broccoli that I had tossed with some mirin and a touch of salt, but judging from the empty box, my guess is that she liked it. Her only complaint was that there wasn't enough dumpling sauce. Apparently it has a much lighter flavor than soy. I don't see it, but I don't have to eat it.

On the bottom is Pippy's favorite thing, rice, covered with hoisin because the little bottles don't have enough for her, plus it is thick and I don't have an appropriate bottle. On the top I cut out some pumpkin shapes with carrots and daikon pickles. The front one has a little face that I punched out of nori with a nori punch. Next to that is some chicken thigh strips that were sauteed and then simmered in some hoisin. I found some snow peas that were in excellent condition, so I put those in there too. What you don't see is the figs I placed under the carrots for height.

While I am by no means adept at making bentos, I am getting better with the packing of them as I go along.  It helps that I now have boxes with bands, whereas last year her box didn't have one. Towards the end I started using a thick rubber band though.

Flower Bento

I was looking at my old bentos on Facebook and realized that I haven't made anything cute in a while. I am not someone who can do the characters or intricate work usually, but I can make some flowers.

Yesterday I made a batch of plain meatballs that were only flavored with some garlic powder. That way I can use any sauce (or none) without the flavors clashing. There are enough for quite a few bento in there, but Pippy likes them so they won't go to waste.

On the left there are meatballs underneath as well as stringed snowpeas. Don't ever let them tell you they are string-less, it is usually not true and it is gross to eat them with the tough string still on them. On top of that I have some daikon pickle flowers and a bunch of grape tomatoes. I have no idea if she has been eating the tomatoes or not, but this batch were sweet like a fruit (which they are, I know). On the right is a bed of sticky rice with two flowers made of one strawberry, halved and fanned and I used the snow peas to fashion stems and leaves. I know I can do this everyday, but I need to make the lunches more fun sometimes.