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.

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.

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.

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".

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!

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.

Pantry Clean Out # 2

This week I have decided to clean out the freezer and refrigerator of all the bits and pieces we have that are perfect for bentos. I may dig into a box of pork curry buns, but other than that, everything will be made from things that are already open.
Todays bento contains the last three meatballs from the freezer stash tossed with the last of the bottled teriyaki sauce and sitting on lettuce from the other week's produce box. I also used produce from that box for the watermelon radish and carrot salad that is spiked with a little rice vinegar and mirin. We have really been bad about our produce, so on the side is brocoflower tossed with a little curry powder and butter.

Not Ready For This Week

I have a huge exam that I have been spending every waking hour studying for tomorrow. As a result of that and the stress of losing a tenant I haven't been sleeping. This is not a good mix. Basically, this is my excuse for completely phoning it in this morning. I do intend to use up the bulk of my freezer stash and refridgerator stash this week though. I have bits of different things here and there and it is time to finish them up.
Today I thawed a pig in a blanket, cooked some frozen glazed sweet potatoes, fried up some potstickers (which will be seen a bit) and made a purple cabbage salad. With this she had rice and soy sauce as she likes it.

Surprisingly Simple

First, Paige did not like the rice yesterday. Funny, the kid will eat ketchup on anything but rice. So, that is one recipe off the list. She has a surprising small list if you take into account all the variations on similar ingredients.

Today I planned to get up early and make tempura for her bento. I figured that it would take a while fixing the vegetables and heating up the oil. Well, I didn't get up until 6:15 so I thought my plans were shattered. Then I thought that I may as well give it a go and I did. It worked out nicely. The baby zucchinis were sliced thin, some julienne red bell peppers and shaved carrots went into the fryer. The carrots were shaved using a vegetable peeler and after tasting them I have to say they came out the yummiest. I love cooked zucchini, but a few of them got a bit soggy while cooling, so I had to cherry pick the ones that were crispy, though I am a bit worried that the moisture content may cause some problems.

The curry sesame seeds on the rice were supposed to be in the shape of a mitten, but that didn't work out as well as I hoped. I think that the next time I pack something round I will put it on a bed of lettuce or spinach. I don't like the look of the bottom of the box showing. Those are freezer meatballs simmered in BBQ sauce. On the other side is the tempura vegetables, a container for more BBQ sauce and some dried cranberries.
Tempura batter is easy. 1 cup of ice water, 1 cup of flour and an egg. Mix well and dip whatever you want into it and deep fry it. You can also use the bits of tempura batter in octopus balls at a later time.

Tofulicious

Today's bento features a dish that Pippy loves. Okay, she may not love the broccoli, but she does love her fried tofu. I found a package of tofu at Ebisuya that is actually four blocks, which makes the cutting much easier. It also helps because I don't have to waste so much, the rest of the tofu goes back in the refrigerator for another time. This bento only has three items: Fried tofu with broccoli and "fruit and vegetable sauce" and orange segments.

As you can see, I didn't bother taking a picture of the rice, it just causes glare anyway. The lunch definitely needs some red, but I couldn't fit any in. On the side is a little bear bottle that I am using for extra sauce.

Running Low

We are running really low on basics in this house, which makes the bento a bit challenging. This getting paid every other week thing is going to be tougher to deal with than I thought. Add to my already hectic schedule and we have an empty pantry. I am also running low on creative ideas. There are a few things I could do, but I am thrilled that Just Bento will be coming out in America soon to get some new recipes.

I made a fried rice with the leftover rice from yesterday (which was a frozen leftover from another day) and fried in some red bell pepper and carrots, eggs and a sprinkle of green onion. The divider is made from long strips of carrot that I made using the vegetable peeler. There are also some "baby" carrots, a rabbit apple and some cookies. 

I can't go shopping today because I will be in school the whole day, so I hope that I can come up with something else for tomorrow. It may end up being a sandwich day, we will see.

Full of Ick

Yesterday my sweet daughter made her own bento because I was sick. When I got up to take her to school in the pouring, driving, cold rain, she said that she would walk and I was to go back to bed. That's my girl! Needless to say, I don't have a picture of that bento. She made herself two onigiri and some chopped apple. At least there was a fruit in there!

Now she is sick. I almost sent her to school because they get all kinds of upset when kids don't come in, but then I remembered how bad it was for me and that she could be infecting a bunch of other kids and she is staying home. I did make her a bento though.

Today's is made out of things I had in the freezer, including the rice. I did add some blanched broccoli and grape tomatoes to round things out though.

I would also have a picture of my birthday cake but my eldest wasn't as happy with it as I was, so I figured she didn't want me posting it. It was cute though. I like crime stuff, so she drew caution tape on it.