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.

Ground Beef Teriyaki

This isn't a bento recipe yet, but given the praise for this dish that I made up because we have very little to work with in the house means that it will be making an appearance in bentos at one point. I have no pictures because the entire thing was eaten up pretty fast. As far as I know, there isn't another recipe for this, so here is what I did.

Teriyaki sauce:
1/2 cup of soy
1/2 cup of white sugar (yep, it is a lot, this is sweet and salty)
2 tablespoons mirin
2 teaspoons grated ginger (fresh or frozen, it keeps in the freezer a long time)
1 good sized clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

Mix together well and set aside

The "stir fry":
1 pound ground beef or pork or turkey, whatever you like
4 carrots (mine were medium sized)
Handful of edamame beans (they are a pain to shell btw so use frozen if you have them)

Cut the carrots into sticks. Mine were a couple inches long and fairly narrow.
Shell edamame beans if you are using fresh.
Cook ground beef in pan chopping it up until in small pieces
Drain in colander and set aside
Put carrots and edamame into the pan and add about 1/2 cup of water. Cover and let steam about 5 minutes until you can just pierce the carrots with a fork, time will depend on how small you cut the carrots. I suggest trying to have the carrot and edamame finish at the same time.
Take off cover and allow last of liquid to dry up and stir fry briefly. Get the carrots as brown as you like them.
Add ground meat back into the pan and stir together.
Stir the teriyaki again until well incorporated and add to pan.  Reduce heat and allow to simmer a few minutes.
Serve on top of rice.

Not only did my eldest and husband like it, but even more amazingly my youngest loved it too and was even asking for it this afternoon, but there was none left. Carrots and all! This will definitely make it into a bento in the near future. It is perfect to make the night before because letting it soak in the sauce will only make it better.