June 24th Bento + Last Night's Cupcakes

Wow!! My blog has had 5000 hits!! That didn't take long at all!

I didn't have a plan this morning, but I think the bentos turned out pretty nice regardless and it was particularly tasty. I think I'm getting better at on-the-fly bento lunches.
I wasn't feeling like rice so I decided to boil up some soba noodles (they take two or three minutes). I already had dipping sauce for them in the fridge, so I just filled up a small container of sauce and tucked it in a silicone muffin cup, under the noodles. One of the tiny tomatoes is perched in the center of the noodles (it's smaller than a raspberry!). I really liked the way this sort of looked like a cupcake with a cherry on top (it's a little hard to tell from this angle, but the soba noodles were piled up, resembling frosting), so I put it in the top right of the bento where I usually put the dessert.

For protein there is a bacon wrapped chicken breast that BF baked up last night, cut into eight bite sized pieces, and the onigiri under it has ground chicken and hoisin sauce filling. There are a few cubes of cheddar cheese beneath the noodles as well.

For veggies, there are the standard asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini slices as well as some steamed red swiss chard. This was the first time I tried red swiss chard, and it was yummy. Tastes a lot like beet greens.

For fruit there is half of a fig (I think these are so gorgeous!), raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and some locally grown strawberries (these were much more juicy and tasty than the ones we usually get, but they were more expensive). I also included two of these freaky little fruits called langsats. They look similar to lychees, but they divide naturally into wedges. I don't care a whole lot for the taste, but BF likes them. There is a truffle for dessert.

And here are some cupcakes I made last night by special request from BF. They were made from scratch (!!!) and were vanilla flavoured loaded with raspberries. The frosting was a plain buttercream and the letters and stars were made from fondant. I ran out of fondant decorations so I put candy coated chocolate sprinkles on a few of them.

May 20th Bento

BF said he thought today's bento was 'particularly tasty' so I consider that a success.

There was some leftover stuffed porkloin (it was a huge cut of meat) from yesterday's bento, so we had repeats today. To add a little more protein to the bento, I made a rolled omelette with three eggs, chives, chicken broth and a little soy sauce and sugar and included a few slices in each bento.

In the top right we have soba noodles. I was really surprised at how yummy these were, I thought they would be plain. Buried underneath them is a small container of dipping broth (a sharp, salty combination of chicken broth, soy sauce and mirin). I couldn't figure out how to twirl them around chopsticks to make a nest, so instead I just laid them in the silicone muffin cup by hand. It only took a couple of seconds.

For veggies there is a mixture of corn and red pepper (leftover from fajitas last night ), asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and fried plantain butterflies. I learned a new way to cut carrots yesterday, so I included a few of those to practice my cutting skills.

There are blueberries, strawberries and persimmon bites for fruit. Dessert is some homemade baklava. I made a batch last week and froze it.

BF was taking the pictures this morning and he's more creative than me when it comes to that stuff, so here's another shot of the bento. Ooh, angles! Fancy!

Oh yeah, and there's a coconut onigiri star and a few slices of gouda cheese hidden under some of the stuff in there. Secret bento foods :)