August 12th Bento Lunches

This was one of those mornings where you lie in bed for ten minutes trying to decide whether or not to bother getting up to make bento, choosing between luxurious sleep or a delicious lunch.

Lunch won out today. I put together a couple of bentos for BF and his dive instructor for their dive this morning. All that swimming works up an appetite! I used a nice, big (1320ml) two tier bento box for this (you can see a picture of it here) that BF can just throw in his bag. As an aside, when I've been out shopping this summer and see the big picnic kits that carry all of your plates and cutlery and stuff, I think of this bento box and how little space it actually takes me to pack a portable lunch and I just want to stand in those stores all day and explain to people that they don't need all that. I mean figuratively of course, I would never actually do that. But they do seem excessive to me. Simplify!

Anyway, back to bento. I didn't do anything complex this morning because I was pretty rushed. Usually BF is sleeping when I make bento, but this morning he was up getting ready for his dive. I think it scared him a bit to see me reaching for the biggest knife we own while my eyes were still half shut, and then start hacking away at whatever I could find.

I figured that since both bentos were for grown men, I would load them up with meat. I had a huge piece of pork schnitzel in the freezer. These are great because they are so thin and fast to cook. I just defrost it in the microwave, throw it in a pan with some canola oil for a minute or two, add a little water and cover to steam for a minute or two more (so that I can be sure it's cooked through) and then fry uncovered for a few more minutes until crispy on the outside. I sliced it up after it was cooked. There are a couple of pork dumplings and a small bottle of sauce in there as well.

I used up the rest of the batch of forbidden (black) rice onigiri that I made last week. The heart shaped ones are stuffed with bonito flakes and soy sauce and the star shaped ones have a red bean (adzuki) filling.

For veggies, I steamed up some yellow swiss chard. I had never seen this before, but it's pretty cool. The stems are bright yellow (they didn't show up well in this picture, they look kind of greenish here) and they taste like regular swiss chard, but maybe a little more bitter. There are also some carrot rounds, broccoli, sugar snaps and cauliflower. I haven't been able to find thick carrots for a few weeks, so sadly the carrot I used today wasn't big enough to punch out shapes.

For fruit there are strawberries and blueberries. That's all there was room for. I also packed up half a dozen cupcakes for BF to take with him to share with the dive shop people, so I decided a dessert was unnecessary for the bentos.

There actually was a theme to these bento lunches, although I'm not sure it's obvious. I decided I wanted to use every colour of the rainbow and I actually managed to do it. To recap:

• red strawberries
• orange carrot
• yellow swiss chard
• green broccoli
• blueberries
• purple onigiri

I love when things work out the way I want them to!

August 4th Bento Lunch

Messy bento!
I tried a couple of new things today. The first was an attempt to duplicate the gorgeous onigiri that Lyvvie from Obento Baby made back in May. To make the onigiri I first soaked 2 Tbsp of forbidden rice (black rice) for about an hour in order to pull out some of the colour so that it didn't completely overpower the white rice. I put it in the rice cooker with enough white rice to make 1 cup and then formed the onigiri as usual, using bonito flakes and soy sauce as a filling and sprinkling with white sesame seeds. I do like the way they turned out, but the colours didn't turn out as bright as Lyvvies!

The second new thing I tried was the rolled omelette in the top left corner. Instead of doing a rolled omelette in layers, this time I made one thick layer and then laid a sheet of nori on top (I need to get a tamagoyaki pan!!!). I then rolled the omelette using a sushi mat and sliced it to get the spiral pieces in the bento. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Next time I might try using a larger pan and a thinner omelette to see how that looks. For some reason I absolutely love rolled foods in bento lunches. I always get really excited when I find or think of a new roll I can make.

For protein there are some leftover pork bites from last night's supper, covered with a few parsley leaves. For veggies there are asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps, zuchinni slices and raw red pepper strips.

For fruit there are a couple of slices of yellow tomato, a few chunks of a fruit called a cactus pear (it actually comes from a cactus! The peel is spiny and can irritate your skin), a lychee and some berries. I included the last of the chocolate banana cupcakes for dessert.

July 29th Bento Lunch

100th post!!

Now that I'm not working, I can post earlier in the day, which is nice.

I found some great foods last week during a trip to the asian grocery store. My best find was frozen banana leaves! I'm too excited to have these back again because I haven't been able to find them since that one time my local grocery store carried them. They were dirt cheap too. I got 1 lb (about 20 sheets, 1 square foot each) for $1.65. Love it!

We made coconut banana rice (Chuoi Nuong) again last night - check out this blog post for how it's made. BF said "Remind me again why we don't eat this every day?" Well, now we can! I made two extra stuffed leaves for the bentos this morning. The meat in the bento lunches today is leftover from last night as well. It's a premade cut from the butcher, a pork loin stuffed with herbs, veggies and cheese with a strip of bacon wrapped around it that we barbecued.

I included a few lentil bites as well for extra carbs. For veggies, there are some strips of green pepper sauteed in a bit of oil and salted, a couple of pieces of yellow zucchini, some asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps (all steamed), and some awesome beet hearts.

Now I can hear my seven-year old self cringing as I call beets awesome, but oh man, these are gorgeous. The inside of the beet is alternating red and white rings and each beet is tiny, the perfect size for bento. I was able to get six heart slices from one beet which is exactly enough for two bento lunches in my opinion.

For fruit there are a couple of fresh lychees, some pluot bites (BF tells me that a pluot is a cross between a plum and an apricot), raspberries, blueberries and strawberry slices.

July 2nd Bento

BF seems to have misplaced his single tier bento box. We've looked for it everywhere but it hasn't shown up yet. It's been two days and at this point I'm not sure whether I want to find it or not. I'm a bit scared of what might be growing in it by now.

So we might be back to two tier bentos for the next little bit.

I decided I wanted to make sushi last night and BF requested inarizushi, so that's what I made. We both really enjoyed the fruit sushi I made last week, so I decided to see how it would carry over to the inari version. I made them smaller than last time by folding in the edge. I think it looks much better this way. I filled the tofu pouches with a little sushi rice and topped them with strawberry and kiwi pieces. The rice was premade and frozen, and the assembly was done this morning. Took about 5 minutes including the time it took to cut up the fruit.

They were really yummy. Because the inari skin itself is a bit sweet, I actually preferred the sweet fruit toppings rather than a savory meat topping for example.

I stabilized the sushi in the bento box with some steamed broccoli. Also in the bottom tier are slices of breaded pork cutlet, asparagus pieces and three gyoza.

On the top, there is more of the black bean salad (so delicious!), broccoli and sugar snaps, persimmon pieces, fresh lychees, blueberries, blackberries, cherries and a chocolate truffle.

June 25th Bento

I swear I had a plan for today's bento. No, for real!

It was so gorgeous out last night, and I spent most of the evening on a patio downtown sipping pineapple and vanilla flavoured martinis with BF. I got home at 11:30pm and realized I had nothing to put in the morning's bento.

So I threw a chicken breast (cordon bleu style) and some veggies in the oven for 45 minutes, thinking that would cover off enough of it that I could just throw in some onigiris and fruit in the morning.

I was falling asleep towards the end of it, but I knew it would be worth it in the morning when the bentos were already half planned. After the 45 minutes were up, I pulled the pan out of the oven, removed the foil, and to my utter disbelief, everything was still completely raw, and the pan was only a little bit warm.

I glanced up at the temperature gauge and the oven was turned on to 350 degrees, although the light was on indicated that it was warming up. For the life of me, I can't figure out what happened. My best guess is that I didn't close the oven door all the way, but I can't even imagine that happening. I've been baking since I was like 12 and I don't ever recall not shutting the oven properly.

So it was 12:30 and I was exhausted, so I just went to bed.

And to top it off, when I got up in the morning, and went to grab some onigiri out of the freezer, I realized I was down to the very dregs of my onigiri bucket (I lost track of what I had stocked while I was on vacation), so I used everything that was there, but it meant I was a bit limited in what I could do creatively.

So I think the moral here is to plan better and don't stay out so late on weeknights. But given that the hot weather is finally here and I love summer nights, I'm not sure that's a realistic goal for me :P

Anyway, enough rambling. Here is what I came up with:

On the left, there are two sets of three onigiri (one tumeric and vinegar, one plain). For meat I fried up some pork schnitzel in a little canola oil. These cuts of meat are very thin, so they cook really fast - perfect for bento!

I picked up some Shang Hai bok choy on the weekend which I sauteed in sesame oil. This was the first time I had tried it, and I have to say I can't tell the difference between this and regular baby bok choy at all. I think regular bok choy is prettier with the darker green and the white, so I don't think I'll buy the Shang Hai version again.

There are some sugar snaps and asparagus pieces. I divided the broccoli florets into really small pieces because there were tiny gaps everywhere. I tucked in one of the tiny tomatos.

On the right tier, there is another onigiri (heart shaped, filled with lotus seed and white bean paste), some rolled omelette (tamagoyaki) slices, more sugar snaps and broccoli.

For fruit there are some apricot pieces, strawberries, blueberries, cherries. Dessert is a truffle.

So it was nothing fancy, but we didn't starve!

Tonight I'll be cooking up and freezing lots of rice!