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.

Tuna, She Will Have to Deal.

As the title of this blog expresses, my daughter is a picky eater. Now, since I have introduced bento to her, her tastes are expanding. Despite that, there are some things that she doesn't want in her bento. Kim chi was a very bad experience for her as it stunk up the whole cafeteria (and I dare say her locker), lesson learned. Hard boiled eggs are on the list for two reasons. One, I can't get her to try them (not even those cute quail eggs) and two, she is afraid of the smell. The other item, which this bento is about is tuna. I don't know for sure if she would be okay with cooked tuna, but she doesn't like the canned in her bento, though she does like it normally.
Well, today I said tough cookies about the tuna. I found these adorable pocket breads that were the perfect size of a bento. She isn't keen on peanut butter and jelly, and bananas (her topping of choice) tend to go pretty brown no matter what you do to them. Egg salad is out because even though she loves my potato salad which has a fair quantity of boiled eggs in it, she doesn't want to try it. So, I went with the tuna. I get it packed in oil and find that it doesn't smell that fishy in that form. I can only have tuna occasionally now because of this, but it is so much better than the water packed variety.
Since I will be in school all day and into the evening, I also have a bento for today. Same basic ingredients, but in a one tier box instead of a two tier one.

Here are both of them. Mine is on the left and Pippy's is on the right. Both have those sweet little pocket breads (we used to call it Syrian bread when I was a kid) and a lettuce cup with the tuna. I did this to avoid SBS (soggy bread syndrome). We also both have carrot medallions. I was going to cut them into these sweet fall leaf motifs, but the carrots I have aren't wide enough. Under the carrots and the figs in Pippy's are sugar snap peas. I have never enjoyed them, as peas aren't my favorite. I will eat them when served and am not disgusted by them, but I am not big on them either. They are all nicely stringed. This is probably why I don't like them much, my mother wouldn't string them so I would end up with a mouth full of non chewable fiber. Expect more figs as I have a passel of them to use up.

First Day of School Bento

I had a plan for this bento, but this is what Pippy wanted, so I went with it since it is her first day of school. She is in 8th grade now, I can't believe it. Originally I was going to go with tea party fare, a cucumber sandwich (her fave), a mini quiche, some scones and other things like that. She on the other hand had a different idea.
My photos of it aren't that great. I am still practicing with light and backgrounds. At the suggestion of another blogger, I may try to create a light box. The only problem with that is that gives me one more thing to store, and my house is pretty filled up. I still can't seem to get the flash to turn off. It is also an old camera, gosh, I think that we have had it for almost a decade now. The images are sharp, which is good, but the options are a little hard to figure out.

This may look familiar. She not only loves rice for lunch, but ate some this morning with bulldog sauce. This has BBQ sauces over the top. On the other tier I made some strawberry fans, snow peas and pickled mango (mostly for color, I somehow doubt she will eat it). On the right are my mini hamburgers that were heated in BBQ sauce. Anything to get her to add some protein to her diet. She is very fussy about her protein.