05/03/09 Bento for Kyle and 05/04/09 Bento

On Sunday, I went to my mom's house for an early Mother's Day celebration surprise.  Originally Kyle was going to come over after he got off work, but he had to switch things around so he had to work later in the day and wasn't going to be able to come have dinner with us.  But!  With the leftover food I had from Saturday, I made him his very own bento.  He said it was delicious and he ate it as soon as he got to work.  I was more nervous than I expected making a bento for someone else, but it was a lot of fun, too.

On the right is the main dish stuff; fried rice with stir fried bell peppers and onions on top; cream cheese wontons and a lion filled with soy sauce to go with them; broccoli, celery and cauliflower sprinkled throughout to munch on.

In the bottom of the nikyoro bowl is a bunch of fruit: grapes, pineapple, clementine slices, and watermelon shapes.  The middle portion of the nikyoro bowl has some ranch dressing (for the broccoli, celery, and cauliflower) in a silicone cup (covered with plastic wrap to prevent any spillage), grape tomatoes, cheddar cheese shapes and two chocolate caramel nut treats.  

He said it was perfect, which makes me feel pretty good about my bentomaking.

Today, though, it's back to work!  I ate so much over the weekend (mostly just at the BBQ we had for my mom yesterday) that I wanted to have more fruits and veggies than anything else today.  

(I apologize for how sucky this photo is. I must not have been paying attention to the settings on my camera. Oops!)

The bottom tier has strips of raw bell peppers (red, orange, yellow and green), two wontons and grape tomatoes for filler.  The top tier has cucumbers, baby carrots, fish-shaped egg and grape tomatoes.  I think I probably should have used a different bento box or lined it with lettuce because the red from the tomatoes and bell peppers kind of washes into the red from this particular box.  Good to know for next time.

The side box has blackberries, green grapes, red grapes and cubes of cheddar cheese.

The fish-shaped egg came out right this time, which was nice.  I tried to make shaped eggs when I originally got my egg molds but for some reason I couldn't get them to boil right at all.  Once they did finally firm up enough to be considered hard-boiled, I popped them in the molds, but they were too big so lots of cooked egg whites squeezed out.  I put them in the fridge overnight (which might have been my mistake) and the next morning when I tried to get them out of the mold, they were stuck in there pretty good.  I hadn't used any oil or baking spray to grease the mold first off which was also probably a mistake.  I ended up using them to make egg salad which was also delicious, just not very cute.

This time, I boiled the eggs perfectly (using my brand new egg timer, which I love), sprayed the molds with some cooking oil, popped in the eggs and let them sit in a cold water bath for 20 minutes or so (as I was doing other things in the kitchen).  The eggs weren't quite big enough, but they worked.  

I generally like to make whatever I can ahead of time to make things easier for me in the morning.  The shaped eggs, though, will probably have to be done the morning of so that the shapes are visible and good.  Storing them in a little container smoothed out the shape a little bit so it doesn't look as cute.  Still, I'm glad to know that next time I'll have very cute shaped eggs.

04/29/09 Bento

I was able to stick to my morning routine for the most part today which even allowed me to whip up a very quick and dirty tamagoyaki for my bento.  Usually I avoid cooking in the mornings and prefer to just piece a bento together with what is already made.

The top container has an onigiri filled with seasoned seaweed paste (I believe this is called nori tsukudani) with perilla.  This is the first time I've wrapped an onigiri completely with nori instead of doing just a strip or two.  It felt difficult to get it completely wrapped in a presentable fashion, but it was quite tasty this way.  Next to the onigiri is my quick and dirty tamagoyaki, with lots of soy sauce.  I need to get some dashi to make proper tamagoyaki at some point, but for a quick five minutes this morning this worked out well and was very tasty at lunch.  Beside that are slices of a "tofu pup" which is a vegetarian (it might be vegan?) hot dog alternative and some diced celery.  Chick sauce bottle has soy sauce for the onigiri and the rabbit has bull dog sauce for the tofu pup.  

The bottom container has three strawberries (sliced, though you can't really tell from this picture), some apple slices and an apple flower and then two kumquat slices.  I've decided that I don't care for the kumquats.  I may juice them and use the juice as an apple coating.  I cut the apple on the same plate I used for the kumquat today and the citrusy taste on the apple was kind of good.

On the side is my last mini chocolate bar.  I may or may not get more of these in the future - they are quite tasty, but not cheap and higher in calories than I thought.

The produce for my bento stock is dwindling so I will have to go grocery shopping tonight or tomorrow night.  I try to buy a little bit of a lot of different types of produce each time I go to the store which usually lasts me for a week or more.  I think I might adjust my buying though, so that I go to the store more often to theoretically get fresher produce into each bento.  The strawberries in today's bento had definitely seen better days so I was hesitant to use them, but didn't want them to go to waste either.

I would also really like to try umeboshi, but have only been able to find them at the Asian grocery store in a bigger jar.  Since I don't know if I'd like them or not, I'd rather not buy the bigger jar and see most of it go to waste if I find out my palate doesn't appreciate it.  I think the solution to this would be to try to order something with an umeboshi from a Japanese restaurant.  Of course, I'd have to find and go to a Japanese restaurant in the area first!  

(There are plenty to try, it's just that I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to trying new things by myself and haven't found anyone else to go with me yet.)

Sanrio Trip and 04/27/09 Bento

Over the weekend, my boyfriend, Kyle, and I went with a friend of ours to the Sanrio store at one of the big malls south of Denver.  It's the only official Sanrio store in the area, and it's not too far away so it made for a nice Sunday afternoon excursion.  I had been there in February, but didn't buy anything.  This time, though I found three bento boxes and a slew of stationery items to use for swaps and pen pal correspondence. 

I was excited to use the new boxes for my bento on Monday.  We went out for dinner at Noodles & Co. Sunday night and I tried their potstickers for the first time.  They were fairly tasty, so I saved two to have with lunch.  I also saved most of the tofu and vegetables in my Med Salad to have as well.

The side box has celery with hummus in a sakura-shaped silicone cup and sliced kumquats on top of quartered strawberries.  On the far left is a mini bar of chocolate with almonds and cranberries.

Top container (which is actually the bottom tier of the Sakura box) has the leftover Med Salad ingredients with extra diced celery and a quail egg.

Bottom container (which is the top tier) has the two potstickers, grape tomatoes and a little panda full of the sauce that came with the potstickers (it was sweet and spicy, but not salty enough for my tastes).  

Everything is on a bed of green leaf lettuce, mostly for decoration because I discovered that I don't particularly care for the taste of it.  It's possible that I didn't get a good head of green leaf lettuce, but I also don't know much about leafy veggies since I grew up in an iceberg-lettuce-in-chef's-salads house.  Does anyone have any other recommendations for tasty leafy greens?

I was worried when I bought the bento boxes that they wouldn't be big enough for my lunches.  The bento box I've been using is a little bigger than the Sakura Hello Kitty box, but using the Mashumaromitaina Fuwafuwanyanko box as a snack/fruit box is perfect.

Kyle is understanding and encouraging when it comes to my bentoing and even my budding kawaii obsession, but I realized as we were headed toward the overwhelmingly pink Sanrio store that not everyone understands why people like bento or kawaii.  Our friend was a little wary of all the pink, and I gave both of the men leave to go to a more manly store if they wanted.  They did, of course.  I understand that kawaii isn't everyone's cup of tea, but since it overlaps with bento so often, it has definitely grown on me.

"Falling cherry blossoms

settle on Kitty's ear,

and put a dance in her heart."

How could you not love that?  I think more people need dances in their hearts!

Afterwards, on the drive back home, I was trying to explain bento and aside from "cute, healthy lunches" couldn't come up with anything that would do it justice.  How do you explain bento to your friends, family or coworkers?