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!

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.

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.

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".

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.

The Girl Likes Her Omelets

Today Paige and I decided on the rolled omelet for the protein. I filled it out with some potato salad I threw together this morning and pickled burdock root and an ominous sounding pink pickle that was referred too simply as "vegetable pickle", but hey, it is pink! Tomatoes are no longer on the menu. First because Paige doesn't really like them and second because they are over 4 dollars a pint. We can live without the pretty red unless I can afford red peppers which are pretty expensive too. I guess that this is turning into a budget bento blog too!

Too Busy!

Somehow, in the next couple of weeks we have to wash and paint all the walls, find time to have someone come in and re-carpet, find a good time for the appliance repair guy, study for two major exams, write a couple of papers, go to a school meeting for Paige, go to my appointment with Karen and then get my mammogram. I hardly have time for this entry. Things are crazy, and I just hope that we can get the place painted this weekend. Pete still hasn't called the carpet people. Ahhhh! These are the days I wish I did crack, LOL.

Yesterdays bento was not put up due to a long school day. She had teriyaki meatballs from Trader Joe's, a purple cabbage with green onion "pickle" and curried cauliflower. The cauliflower was actually this pretty orange, but it doesn't come through on the picture.
Today's bento may not be eaten today as Paige is staying home. There are Shu Maui dumplings, also from Trader Joe's nestled in some green leaf lettuce with was locally sourced through my produce people, Boston Organics, "baby" carrots from the grocery and a couple of strawberries that my daughter bought which are organic, but due to me being in New England, they were definitely shipped in. Oh how I miss the really good strawberries, small and so sweet. Oh, and there is a bottle of a tangy soy sauce for the dumplings and the rice.

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.

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.

Running Behind Again

I had a rough plan for this bento, but didn't work it out until I woke up half and hour late at 5:30. Suffice it to say, there is only one cooked from scratch dish. I also reheated some meatballs from a bag we got at Costco a while back, sliced up some apple (I love pink ladies as they don't brown very fast) and some frozen vegetables. I must apologize in advance for the crappy picture quality, I only took one picture because of time constraints.

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.

One of Pippy's Favorites

I have learned that the Korean barbecue was not her favorite. She ate some and said she liked it, but there was a lot left behind and she doesn't like to hurt my feelings. Yesterday's meal was gobbled up, and the curry with rice balls that I didn't post also was eaten completely. So, that is the progress report on what I can get Pippy to eat.
Today is very simple. I took out Just Bento's "hamburgers" that I made a while ago from the cookbook and doused them in some barbecue sauce. I think put a line of the sauce on the rice because she loves that combo. I also stirfried some beansprouts with snow peas and stuffed some tomatoes, which will not get eaten, in between along with a "baby" cucumber cut in a rolling bias.
Everyone who doesn't know yet, the bento community has an auction going on at ebay called Bento4Japan.
I also won some bento from Bento Fabulous which is a fun site to get ideas from, plus- I got a purple panda box!! The other two are also very nice, but...purple...panda... the cute!

I also made the background cloth. Because I couldn't find double sided cloth, I put two sections together and sewed them together. It is a little bulky, but it does the job when I don't have a bento bag to go with the box.

Happy St. Patrick's Day Dinner

The reason I haven't been posting bentos this week is because I am on Spring Break. In the past I still had to get up early and make Pippy's bento and get her to school, but this year she volunteered to do it all herself so that I could get some much needed sleep. As a result or as Pippy said "because I am lazy" she has in fact not made bento, but usually a sandwich and a couple of times money for a school lunch which she said that besides the fact that she can't tell what it is, it was pretty good. 

Instead of bento, today I am posting my "boiled" dinner. The reason it is special is because I tried a different cooking method this year. Boiling meat has never been my favorite smell and all that water leaves the corned beef very tender, but tasteless and impossible to slice into neat slices. The cabbage always comes out waterlogged. The potatoes and carrots are usually okay, but because most recipes call for up to 3 quarts of water, they don't gain any real flavor from the bath. My Gramma would do a smoked pork shoulder which could take the boiling, but the corned beef just does not seem to like it as much.
For the corned beef, I pricked the meat on the fat side and stuck in some cloves. Then I rubbed the top with honey mustard and sprinkle brown sugar on top. This goes into foil, and wrapped so that the foil doesn't rest on the fat. Pop it into a 350 degree oven for a couple hours and it is done. I may try to cook it lower and slower, or maybe in a crock-pot to make it more fork tender, but the family absolutely loved it. As you will see in the picture, I need to trim off the fat too. What you get is a lot of liquor from the cooking which you can use to flavor the meat more (but it really didn't need it at all) or the potatoes, which, having only been boiled and tossed with butter might like the seasoning and make it feel like a boiled dinner.
The cabbage got special treatment too. I sliced a small head of cabbage a little thin, then sauteed minced garlic in olive oil. Once I could smell the garlic I threw in the cabbage (I have a huge skillet, for those who don't you may have to put it in in batches as it wilts) and tossed to make sure all the bits have the flavored oil on it. Then I pressed it down in the pan and let the cabbage get a little brown, tossed again and repeated.  My entire family, two of whom used to hate cabbage in boiled dinners, absolutely loved it. It has been asked for a repeat performance.
Sadly, I totally forgot the carrots. I also forgot Cat's Irish Soda Bread, but we were very full and unable to move, so everyone ate well.