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.

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!