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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

Good Holidays to All Who Celebrate!

Paige had vacation all last week, so there were no bentos to post. She mostly lived off of mac and cheese and canned spaghetti and tomato soup. These were the things that were easy for her to make while I was at school. Because of gas prices, Pippy will be biking to school from now on to save money. When I explained the situation to her she was more than accommodating. I have great kids and don't think that I am not thankful of that every day.
This week I will be featuring bento made out of things at hand. I did buy some cucumber and grape tomatoes, but otherwise these are all things that you would find in my refrigerator after not doing shopping for the week. Since Pete is getting paid biweekly now, we try to shop for two weeks outside of little necessities like milk and eggs.
Today I tried to make an attempt at Charaben, well, maybe that isn't the word since they aren't actually characters from anywhere. Her two rice balls were shaped by hand with salted water to keep them from sticking. One of them is a chick with eyes made from cucumber peel (I forgot who suggested this, but THANK YOU, and a beak made of carrots. The other is a little girl with bangs made of soy wrapper and the eyes and mouth made with the cucumber peel. There are also three meat patties, balled watermelon and a cucumber and carrot salad made with Ponzu dressing. On the side is a small container of bulldog sauce. I took a picture of the container because it is new. We got two of them from a local Japanese store called Ebisuya. I shouldn't have spent the money, but they were just too adorable for words.

No Veggies, Bad Mommy

Today was made for a quick bento. This one took me all of five minutes to make. There are an assortment of lunch meats cut decoratively, two slices of whole grain bread with the crusts removed and some wedges of orange. I thought about putting some carrots in there but there wasn't any room. I also didn't put condiments because she tends to not eat them.
Another exam today, whoopee!

Put On a Happy Face

The apartment drama lives on. I was upstairs painting walls for a few hours after studying my buns off for two "midterms" at school. Catherine and I painted three rooms and half a bath. The orange room still needs more paint to cover it. Orange, really? Two coats of primer and two coats of paint. Yeah, it is unlikely that they will be getting much of a deposit back.

So, today it is study, study, study and hopefully finishing up the bulk of the painting so we can get the carpet folks in to take measurements and give us an estimate. A really sweet family looked at it today, but the mother didn't seem impressed because of the lack of closets. They tried to bargain on the price, but the price is already a bargain. I think that it may be a cultural thing because we rent at a very low price. And they wanted heat included, LOL, at that price? Nope, isn't happening.

Anyway, here is her bento for today. She has teriyaki meatballs, baby carrots split, some stir fried black beans and a sweet salad with cucumbers and radish. She wanted melon, but didn't put it away last night. The onigiri have been colored up a bit with different sesame seeds and a little furikaki, but I don't think she will like it. Whoops. The purple just looked so nice! I also peeled some circles out of two radishes. I am not quite ready for making mushrooms, but they still look pretty.

Two Days of Bentos

Because yesterday was a Thursday, which meant that I had very little morning time to post the bento, and by the time I get home on Tuesdays and Thursdays I just want to pass out, I am posting Thursday's bento today. As an extra surprise, Paige made two bentos of her own today for her and a friend so I could sleep in. She also took pictures!

The bento I made her yesterday was very simple (see above). Her protein was a rolled omelette with the nice white layer. I forget which marvelous lady on twitter showed me this technique, but I love it. I have posted the attribution on another entry though. Also there were raw snowpeas (which she loves) and strawberries. I dressed up her rice with some plum sesame seeds.

Paige took a more decorative approach. Her carrots were cut into hearts and my frugal sweetie used the outside of the cut outs also. Last night we made some fried tofu to put in there on which she put some kind of sauce that I had in the refrigerator and sesame seeds. She included a strawberry and a slice of orange. Paige also made some nori cut outs for her friends rice but she doesn't like nori so it isn't on hers. Both containers of rice had sesame seeds on them.

Soup Day

Today Paige is going to school with a thermos of hot tomato soup along with her bento box. In the box there is no protein, which I try to avoid, but sometimes things happen. In her little take along container are goldfish crackers and around that are apples, a couple decorative so the lunch wouldn't seem too plain and red grapes.
We are currently in the throes of trying to find new tenants for upstairs. With my husband working and me going to school or studying all the time, it is very hard to fit in cleaning up the mess the old tenants left behind. I guess that relates to bento because I really don't have a lot of time or energy to be thinking of new things to do.

Back in the Saddle Again

Spring break is over, and so begins the morning ritual of bento making again. Today's bento was relatively simple, but I did add a couple of decorative touches to it. The rice is self explanatory, and I put a pitted pickled plum on it for color if not taste. Maybe she will give it a try again since it is an acquired taste. In the big section of our bunny bento, there is a checkerboard apple slice, carrot flowers decorated with cut outs of a white carrot. Steamed broccoli in my newish microwave steamer, which I am loving so far, and some Korean barbecue pork. I had more to add, but there wasn't enough room.
Happy Spring everybody, and if you get a chance try this auction that directly benefits charity for Japan: Bento4Japan which is through ebay. Things are getting added all the time, so you can just keep checking.

Two Days

Because of an early class I didn't get a chance to upload pictures of Pippy's lunch yesterday, so today we have two pictures. The first one is a raisin bread sandwich of peanut butter and orange marmalade with the crusts cut off, some sun chips and her favorite fruit lately, kiwi and a couple of sandwich cookies. Not the most colorful lunch, but I was tired.
The second lunch is today's. For the first time ever, I tried to shape onigiri by hand and failed miserably. I wanted triangles but could only manage slightly wonky balls. One has black sesame seeds on it while the other is plain. Then I cut some apples, one with a checkerboard and the other as a baby bunny. In the side dish compartment there is some cut up roast beef from the other day in bulldog sauce, leftover broccoli, grape tomatoes and more kiwi.

Monday Morning

Last week I hardly made any bentos at all as I was pretty sick. I was mostly really, incredibly tired. Pippy, rather than taking the money for lunch at school decided to bring nothing. She ended up using her money for lunch.
Today, I tried to make it a little decorative, but also tasty. I made a little salad with watermelon radish, daikon and carrot with a simple rice wine and sugar dressing. I also used some of the frozen crab sticks with chopped celery for a crab salad. She claims to hate celery, but I have never seen her try it, so we will see how that goes over. I made a ham "flower" but it didn't come out as nice as I wanted. Maybe I used too big of a slice. Also, are some pretty looking strawberries. Pippy loves strawberries no matter what the season, but I am more picky than that.  She also had rice, but said she was getting a little tired of rice with soy sauce and asked for dumpling sauce instead, and more of it.  At least it is colorful!

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.

A Just Bento Bento

I took out my trusty The Just Bento Cookbook and made ham roll-ups. So far she is liking all of the recipes I have used with the small complaint that the chicken yesterday was cut too big. That is easy enough to fix. I made the roll-ups the night before as was suggested. I was a little worried that the spreadable cream cheese that I used wouldn't firm up enough, but it was easy enough to cut through with a serrated knife. The tamagoyaki is how I normally make it, not with the recipe provided for this lunch. I also made the spinach that surrounds it all with a little bit of soy. There is also rice in the other box, but I didn't decorate it like it was suggested in the book because I couldn't find the carrot I had used and didn't want to cut up another.

Soboro!

Last night I made a delicious turkey soboro for today's bento. This morning I cooked the carrots as the Just Bento cookbook did, except I cut the carrots into hearts rather than thin sticks. I was dubious about the eggs because when you "over cook" scrambled eggs they tend to exude liquid, but it worked out fine. I also used the Just Bento recipe, a dash of salt and a little sugar. The green beans were called soboro in the book, but were easily made as they were simply chopped up and simmered in salted water. All of this was layered with rice that I had in the freezer. I do wish I had a slightly smaller one tier bento, as I had to nearly double the serving for the turkey and used two eggs instead of one. Pippy self regulates pretty well though, so I will either get a lot back or she will share with her friends. I sliced up some kiwi for her in the container that came with the ecolunchbox.

Hearts

Today's bento has a heart theme. The container which holds the pickles (both a cabbage one from the The Just Bento Cookbook and the prepackaged burdock root pickle) and some pretty white and purply red ones on the rice. I heated up some pre made meatballs that I had in the freezer and made a sprout and red bell pepper stir fry that I also got from Just Bento. The tofu patties that I made from that cookbook were a success, so if these two go over well I will probably do a nice review for the book when I get a chance. In with the meatballs are some cut up red grapes. The meatballs are a little sweet, so it should work nicely together.

New Bento Box

My children say I have a bento problem. They are probably right, but how can I resist the squeal of Pippy when she sees one she really likes? That and I did need a couple more big silicon cups.

Today's bento is a combination of two I found in different books. The rice and candied sweet potatoes were from Kawaii Bento Boxes and The Just Bento Cookbook. The layout is from Kawaii Bento, but I think I would have done something similar as it is fairly regular. I also made the sauce on top of the tofu nuggets from that book. From the Just Bento book, I made the tofu nuggets. I messed them up though. I didn't cook the green onion and ginger first so they have a strong flavor, though I am not sure why they didn't hold together very well.  Still, they should taste good, especially with the glaze. The scrambled egg with vegetables also came from Kawaii Bento Boxes.

I really don't like that there are bare spaces, but I didn't have anything that would fill them nicely, at least not at 6 in the morning. I made the tofu nuggets last night rather than this morning to cut down on my work time, plus the rice is from Wednesday.