March 19th Bentos

BF went back to work today. I was so excited to start making bentos again that I woke up half an hour early! Here they are:

Possibly the yummiest bentos yet! I'm going to try to give more detailed descriptions of how I make them from now on, so if my posts start getting longer, that's why.

On the bottom, there are breaded chicken cutlets, fried in a little oil, steamed asparagus with a little butter, blanched snow peas for space fillers. I made the rice last night with a mold I got off ebay that makes five rice balls at a time. They remind me of Tater Tots :) I added sushi vingar to the rice and tucked a small piece of avocado in the middle of each one. This is my new favorite mold, rice is so easy to eat and yummy this way.

I've been buying little lunch sized cuts of meat from the butcher that are mostly prepared, and then frying them up in the morning. It's the quickest easiest method I've found so far. For example the chicken in today's bento was already breaded and seasoned, I just had to fry it and cut it into bite sizes.

For the top, I made little 'salads' with canned mandarin oranges, chopped chinese cabbage and a dressing made from rice vinegar, canola oil and pepper.

Last night, in my bento excitement, I made mini cornmeal muffins (BF surprised me with a mini muffin pan last night in support of my quest for tiny, adorable bento foods), with sweetened red bean filling. I used this recipe, and filled the muffin pans with batter half way, then added a dollop of red bean paste, and then filled them the rest of the way with batter. I used foil candy cups (instead of muffin cups) to protect the muffins from moisture from the fruit in the bento box. They turned out awesome. The red bean is almost like a jam, so they didn't need butter.

Then there are adorable animal skewers with a quail egg and a cherry tomato, heart shaped kiwis, cucumber, berries, more snow pea fillers, and there's a small block of cheese hidden in there. Lastly, a truffle from Laura Secord (mmm...mojito flavour!)

I thought I would also post a picture of what I put in the top of the bento box before I put the lid on:
Chopsticks, salt, pepper, soy sauce and a couple of sticks of Pocky. I also packed small containers of tonkatsu sauce for the chicken seperately in my bento bag.