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!

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.

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.

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.

Nachos!

Okay, today's meal is not exactly nutritious, but I was running out of ideas and food. I am hoping to do a bento food run this weekend in between studying and showing the apartment and prepping the apartment for paint and arranging to have a flooring person and an appliance repair guy to come in. Fun! I did make a run in the sleet to the store this morning, but I hadn't planned any bentos, and quite honestly, the store didn't have anything I would normally use except for a few things like broccoli and tofu.
I guess this is all self explanatory. I used the ecolunchbox for this one because it is deep. A few of the chips got crushed anyway, but it should be fine.

Sweet and Sour Tofu

Well, yesterday's bento was a bust. She didn't touch the crab salad or the edamame and only ate half her noodles, though she did eat a couple shrimp. So, no more crab-stick for her, but I may add edamame off and on to see if she ends up liking it.
Today's bento is pretty straight forward. I tossed some cubed and drained tofu with some sweet and sour (bottled) sauce after sauteing to get them nice and brown. I also shredded some purple cabbage and carrots and doused it with some sushi vinegar. She also has cucumbers and grapes. On the very top I added some Flipsides (TM) for something crunchy.
I tried to make a blue egg sheet but it was too thin and flimsy to use. Maybe next time!

Friday and Monday Bentos

I forgot to post Friday's bento, so here it is today. I thawed out the ground beef soboro and laid that on top of the rice. On the side is some uncooked baby spinach (which she likes), grape tomatoes (that she doesn't like) and broccoli and grapes which she likes well enough. It was very simple and took me about 10 minutes or less to put it together minus the cooling time.

Darned blogger wanted to make this text centered. Well I showed them with my HTML Fu. This next one is today's lunch. Again, this is pretty speedy. She has rice which is separated by green leaf lettuce, a tamagoyaki made with soy and mirin, snow peas and grapes. I expect an empty box if she is given enough time to actually eat.

A little rant about her cafeteria. She has eaten lunch there exactly twice all year. I paid for one meal and Pippy said that she put one on credit during my break because she didn't want to be bothered to make a lunch. Now they are saying that I owe them 6 dollars. This has been happening for the last three years and I can't seem to get them to believe that they are making a mistake. I am having the same problem with the library. She owes money on a book she never took out. They say she took it out when she was five, but I would have known and she refused to take out a book at that age. I love computers and all, but I have issue with the folks who like to mess them up.