05/02/09 Bento for Two

My boyfriend, Kyle, has to work late tonight so I decided to bring him dinner.  Usually in this situation, I would have picked up fast food on the way to his work and called it good.  This time, though, I decided to make a bento for two.  He and I have different tastes and opinions on a wide variety of foods, but I managed to pick out things that we both should enjoy, for the most part.  (This involved several text messages beginning with, "So do you like..." at the grocery store.  He was a good sport.)

I made cream cheese wontons filled with cream cheese, green onions, onions, red cabbage, red and yellow bell peppers, and celery. They are quite tasty. Those are under the grape tomatoes (which were added mostly for color). I bought a package of swedish meatballs which are mostly for him. I don't eat meat with every meal and I almost never buy meat at the grocery store because I don't like cooking it. But these were frozen and easy enough to put on a plate and pop in the microwave for a few minutes. We'll probably reheat them just before eating them, too. The meatballs are sitting on top of some fried rice. I've got an extra little container of fried rice and one of regular sticky rice to bring as well. On the right is a pile of stir fried bell peppers and onions.

For dessert, I went a little crazy with the fruit. Cantaloupe and watermelon shapes, pineapple and green grapes, clementine slices, red grapes, pineapple and watermelon slices, blackberries. I'll also bring two chocolate-covered caramel and nut clusters for each of us.

I bought the two Pyrex dishes each "tier" is packed in at the store today too because they were too perfect to pass up. I can use them for my own bentos during the week as well as storage and other things.

This is the first time I've made a bento style meal for anyone besides myself (even though I'll be enjoying this too). I had fun with it and can't wait to do it again!

04/30/09 Bento

I really ought to come up with better titles for my posts.  Since I haven't made any themed bentos yet, it seems harder.  How do you come up with the titles for your bento posts if you blog about them?  If you don't blog about them, do you title them anyway, like the works of art they are? =D

Wednesday night after work I went to the mall to pick up the purse I had pined for and finally ordered from The Container Store. I know it sounds kind of weird to be so excited about a purse from The Container Store, but it has a pocket, pouch and place for everything.  As I packed all my purse junk into it Wednesday night it sort of felt like I was making a bento - ensuring that everything fit snugly and well together and keeping it all in order and in such a fashion that it was pleasing to the eye.  Seriously, I love this purse.

Since I was already at the mall, I went to the sushi bar at Sarku for dinner.  I bought a BBQ unagi roll and a cucumber and avocado roll.  I only planned on eating half of them for dinner so I'd have the other half for Thursday's bento.  As I was waiting for my rolls to be made, I noticed one of the workers was taking her break and eating dinner - from a bento box!  She seemed really self-conscious about it so I tried not to stare in awe and fascination.  I'm shy myself so I didn't strike up a conversation with her, though I wanted to.  (Which is an improvement as far as my shyness is concerned because a few years ago I would not have even contemplated talking to her about it.)

I actually only ate 1/3 of the rolls and brought in another third for Thursday's bento.  I hadn't had unagi before.  It didn't have a strong taste or texture, which I had expected.  

On to the bento!

There's a tofu miso soup packet and below that is shredded carrots, celery, green onions and quail eggs to go in the soup.  The sushi is accompanied by soy sauce in a cute little elephant bottle.  The soup spoon I plan to use is something I picked up at my local Asian grocery for a dollar or two.  When I have my own kitchen again, I plan on buying lots of different Asian dishes.  I love the idea of having an eclectic mix instead of just one set of dinner dishes.

The snack bento has celery and hummus sprinkled with shredded carrots and sliced strawberries and kumquats.  Even though I won't snack on a handful of them in the future, I really do like the citrusy smell the kumquats have.  And I'll probably use Toro's suggestion from my last post and make kumquat marmalade at some point because that sounds very tasty and perfect for a breakfast bento!

Kyle and I went out last night to catch the midnight showing of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  As a very slight nod to that, I made a little "X" out of shredded carrots in the hummus.  It's not a Lost-themed or Homer Simpson bento, but it's a start!

As a result of staying out so late last night, I didn't make a bento for today's lunch, but I'm quite pleased that I made one each day the rest of the week.