August 29th Bento Lunch

I felt like making sushi this morning so making bento took quite a bit longer than usual. I was about halfway done when I realized that everything was green and yellow! Oh well, I'm sure it will still get eaten.

I made a sweet, fruit sushi today. For sweet sushi, I use 3 Tbsp of lime juice heated with 1 Tbsp sugar (to make it dissolve) instead of sushi vinegar. I also use mamenori soy wrappers instead of nori. I have to say though, it's much tougher to get this sushi to stick together than regular sushi. It's so pretty and yummy though, that I don't mind making it once in a while.

This time I used mango and avocado as fillings. I know that seems like a bit of a strange combination, but trust me, it's delicious and the texture is amazingly smooth.

First I removed the rind from the mango and the avocado, and cut very thin, flexible slices from the top of the fruit. I cut the remain fruit into strips. I rolled the fruit strips into a regular inside out maki roll and then placed the slices over the seam and rolled it again to make everything stay together. I'm really happy with how these turned out, there is so much fruit in them! I mixed up the pieces and turned them on their sides because it looks more fun than when they're all orderly.

For protein today, I made teriyaki chicken. This is really simple to do from scratch. I used two chicken thighs for BF's bento (I would only use one for mine). Here's what you do:

The night before

• Slice chicken thighs in half
• Place in a small ziplock bag with 1 Tbsp each of mirin, soy sauce and sugar
• Refrigerate overnight

In the morning

• Remove chicken from the bag and fry in a bit of oil on medium heat until browned
• Mix 3Tbsp water with the remaining marinade and pour it into the frying pan with the chicken.
• Cover until the chicken is cooked
• Cook uncovered until the liquid has evaporated and the chicken has a nice glazed finish

The morning part takes less than ten minutes which is a pretty short time to cook meat in my opinion. I put the chicken in a foil tart container that I flipped up the rim on.

For veggies there is some sesame fried bok choy all around the foil cup and some asparagus that I parboiled for 90 seconds and then added to the pan with teriyaki chicken while it was cooking for another 90 seconds (teriyaki asparagus I guess?). There are also steamed green and yellow zucchini, sugar snaps and broccoli.

There was already all kinds of mango in the sushi, so for fruit I just included a few blueberries and three thin watermelon wedges.

On Fridays I try to use up all my leftover produce before the weekend, can you tell?

August 20th Bento Lunch

Ugh. My computer has been on the fritz for the last two days. I didn't think I'd get this entry posted today. I gave up on my computer for now and am using BF's instead.

A couple of critters made it into today's bento...

The onigiris are filled with sweet red bean paste. The fish has a nori face and the other two have sesame seed eyes. The chick's nose is made from carrot and his wing is a small spinach stem.

For protein I made ground chicken dumplings wrapped in nori this morning. BF told me when he got home tonight that he would have liked more meat, so next time I will make a couple more.

Lots of veggies today. I made some sesame and miso steamed spinach as well as steamed broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini with a bit of pepper. I julienned some raw carrot as well to make a little nest for the chick.

For fruit there are a couple of orange wedges, blueberries and strawberry slices.

There were some leftover fruit and veggies that didn't fit in the bento box so I made myself a little snack. I thought the colours were really pretty so I took a picture.

August 11th Bento Lunch

I've been watching a lot of Iron Chef on YouTube. Omg what a fun show! It's kind of renewed my zest for trying new Japanese recipes and cooking techniques so I've been incorporating a lot more Japanese food in my non-bento meals. I'm discovering all kinds of wonderful food combinations. Loving it! Since I'm not working at the moment, it's a lot more important to me to make sure that I'm preparing lots of healthy, well balanced meals so that BF and I are well fed. I figured it's the least I can do.

I took today's picture in natural light instead of with flash in the kitchen and I think it washed out the colours a bit. Everything didn't look so white in real life! Well at least I know for next time.
BF had some disappointing seafood udon at a restaurant yesterday, so I had planned to make some delicious yakiudon (fried noodles) for bento today to make up for it. To my dismay however, I realized this morning that I'm completely out of udon noodles. So I used somen noodles instead (yakisomen?). They're a smaller, flat noodle, so I fried them for a much shorter time and it still turned out pretty yummy.

To make them, I fried up some chunks of chicken breast in a little canola with salt and pepper while boiling the noodles for three minutes. Then I added another tablespoon or so of canola oil to the chicken (to keep the noodles from sticking together) and threw in chives, red pepper pieces and the somen noodles. Once it had fried for about a minute I added about 1 Tbsp each of sake and soy sauce (my favorite seasonings for fried noodles) and fried for about a minute more.

At the very top of the bento is some sauteed gobo (burdock root) and carrot julienne. For gobo, you want to first peel it and soak it in cold water for a bit, and then drain before you use it. I sauteed the gobo and carrot in a bit of sesame oil and then added some mirin and soy sauce. It turned out a bit too salty for my taste (the gobo really sucks up the flavor!) so next time I will use less soy sauce.

Keeping with the soy theme, I also made some soy quail eggs. To make them, I first hard boiled the eggs (three and a half minutes) and then put them in a ziplock bag along with a mixture of two parts soy sauce, one part rice vinegar and one part sugar for about an hour (BF is working the night shift this week so I don't have to have the bentos ready until late in the morning). I made four eggs, but I only used one in this bento lunch, sliced in half with a small dot of cream cheese on the yolk. They are sharp and salty and really yummy!

There are three home made gyoza as well from a batch I made last week.

I balanced all of these sharp flavours with lots of fresh fruit and lightly steamed veggies. The vegetables are broccoli, cauliflower and sugar snaps. The fruit are strawberries, blueberries, honey tangerine segments and yellow kiwi flowers. There is a chocolate seashell for dessert.

July 19th Bento Lunches

I've been pretty sick all week, so I haven't spent too much time in the kitchen. That's why I haven't been posting. Today I've completely lost my voice so I guess I'll be sick for a while yet :P

All I've really done this week was to make a couple of snack bentos, and I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream that disappeared faster than I could take a picture of them.

BF and my sister's bf scuba dive together mostly every week, and this week my sister and I went with them (to hang out and watch, not to dive). I wasn't going to make bentos because I still wasn't feeling well, but then at the last minute I changed my mind.

So I rushed together four bento lunches with zero prep work or planning. They're messy and the picture isn't great because everything was so rushed. I'm more posting it because I'm just impressed with myself that I pulled this off. Making four bento lunches is a tonne of work as it turns out.
They're mainly veggie because we also had a barbecue so we cooked meat on that, plus my sister is a vegetarian so her bento didn't have any meat at all (bottom right).

In each bento there are four bites of inside out chicken teriyaki sushi and four pieces of avocado maki made with soy wrapper instead of nori. BF gave me a lot of help making the sushi to save time. There are two pork shu mai 'burgers' (leek dumplings for my sister. Thank goodness for my well stocked freezer!). For added protein there is a quail egg and two bites of cheese in each.

For veggies there are sesame fried carrots, steamed miso spinach, boiled edamame and sweet potato flowers, steamed asparagus, broccoli and snow peas, and some homemade daikon pickles.

For fruit there are nectarine bites, cherries, blueberries and strawberries.

I thought it would be really challenging to fill so much space but I actually ended up with more food than I could fit in them. I only wish I had more time to pretty them up.

July 14th Bento Lunch

Hmmm....the pics didnt really turn out today. But you get the idea.

We didn't manage to get out for groceries until tonight, so it was slim pickin's for produce for today's bento. We had avocado maki and bacon wrapped chicken thigh for the main components of the bento.

In the top right corner you can see the lentil snacks I made last night. I got the recipe from a site that justbento links to. I forgot to put them in my bento, but BF said they were really yummy. It's a good thing too, because the recipe made about fifty of them.

For veggies, I used everything we had in the fridge. Steamed gai lon, broccoli, sugar snaps, carrot flowers and fried plantain tulips.

There are a few bites of cheddar in the top of the bento. For fruit I used apple slices to add more carbs since there isn't really all that much rice in the sushi. There are some butterflies cut from yellow kiwi (I actually liked this better than regular green kiwi. Its sweeter and has a smoother texture), a lychee, blueberries and some rhubarb that I cooked up with some strawberries.

I made the sushi, chicken, lentil snacks and rhubarb the night before, so this was actually really quick to throw together this morning. And considering how late I slept in this morning, that was a good thing!

July 10th Bento

This has been a pretty busy week so far. It was snack bentos mostly and they were nothing special, so I didn't bother posting them.

This morning I actually managed to get up and make a proper bento. Nothing new today, just all foods that I love!
I made two rolls of chicken teriyaki sushi (one for BF and one for me). I made a two egg and spinach omelette, which makes exactly enough to put to hearts in each bento. I fried up some gyoza and some plantain hearts together to save time. For veggies there is asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and sesame fried baby bok choy.

I used all kinds of different fruits today. There is half an apricot, cut into slices, two lychees, some satsuma wedges, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Simple but yummy, with lots of variety!

June 26th Bento

I have not been this excited about bento rice since I found those banana leaves and made lemper. Omg, it was so delicious today.

Last night BF was helping a friend move, so I suggested we go for some late night sushi after he got home. So I was making onigiri, thinking about the restaurant, and I started thinking about this dessert sushi I had there one time. It was made with mamenori soy paper, and it didn't stick together very well. I remember thinking that if a sushi chef can't get it to stick together, what chance did I have?

Then I had an epiphany. I would made dessert sushi for today's bento and to get it to stick together, I would brush the last couple of inches of mamenori with warmed up honey.

Worked like a charm!

The sushi is made with short grain white rice seasoned with a syrup I made by microwaving 2 Tbsp of lime juice and then mixing in 3/4 Tbsp sugar. It's filled with strawberry and kiwi slices, wrapped in sesame seed mamenori and sprinkled with a little ginger. When I cut it up this morning and saw how pretty it was, I wished I had made two rolls. At least I'll know for next time.

The meat is chicken cordon bleu (premade from the butcher, I just cooked it last night). I baked a couple of slices of acorn squash with it, and then mashed them with a little butter. It's in the little cup, sprinkled with a smidge of allspice and topped with a tiny tomato. I had never cooked squash before, but it was yummy, I'll make it again.

I steamed some more of the beet greens, some asparagus and snow peas. The edamame and sweet potato butterflies were boiled for 5 minutes.

For fruit, there are some apple hearts, cherries, raspberries and blueberries.

I thought this bento was especially delcious.

I have an interesting plan for some baking tonight. If it turns out the way I'm hoping, I'll post pics later!

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.

June 12th Bento Lunches

His and hers bento lunches...

BF's been on vacation all week, but I've been making him bento lunches anyway. Its just as easy to make one bento as to make two, and in some ways it's actually easier. For example, I wanted a few bites of plum in mine today. If I was only making one, then I can either include the whole plum or else the rest of the plum winds up in the fridge, needing to be used up quickly. This way I can use the whole thing but we still get lots of variety in our bentos.

Today we have (on the bottom tiers) strips of beef, leftover chicken curry from the Vietnamese restaurant we went to last night (it's a sweet, curry made with coconut milk - so delcious!), gyoza, steamed broccoli, sugar snaps and asparagus.

On the top tier are a few bites of plum, a container of pomegranate seeds and the usual assortment of berries. BF's bento is a little bit bigger than mine so I also included a chunk of cheddar (hiding under the strawberries) and a couple of daifuku.

May 22nd Bento

Last night I felt like I'm starting to come down with something, so I decided that today's bentos would be made entirely with my favorite foods.
On the top we have some chicken sushi. This was my first attempt at making maki rolls with the soy paper (mamenori) and it was delicious and held up really well in the bento. I braised strips of chicken thigh with 1 Tbsp sake and 1 Tbsp ponzu sauce, and rolled them with a strip of green pepper and two chives and then sprinkled them with black sesame seeds after cutting the roll into pieces. They were juicy and crunchy, it was a great combination.

There are three gyoza and my favorite salad of chopped lettuce, mashed avocado and honey. For veggies there are edamame, a few sweet potato flowers, broccoli, sugar snaps, a couple of pieces of asparagus and a few fiddleheads.

For fruit there are apple slices, tangerine wedges, cherries, strawberry slices and blueberries. This is BF's bento so there's a truffle for dessert.

We have a bonus picture today! This is Macaroon, my hedgehog. He went in for surgery yesterday to have an infection removed from his ear and to have his legs examined. I guess they just put a little gas mask over his face to knock him out.

We bought him a few months ago from someone who didn't take good care of him, so he wasn't very healthy and he's never been able to walk properly. Since his surgery yesterday though, he's been the happiest and most active I've ever seen him. We have some antibiotics to give him, so I'm hoping that he will be even healthier in the next few weeks.

He was up this morning chilling with me in the kitchen while I made bento, so I thought I would share a picture of him. He's such a wonderful pet, I just love him to pieces.

May 16th Bento

This morning was one of those mornings where I wished my bento boxes were just a little bit bigger. I wanted to fit so much more in here than there was room for.

We got take out sushi last night because I was feeling lazy and we wanted a sushi late night snack. So there is some avocado maki, sweet potato tempura maki and a couple of unagi (eel) maki. Generally I'm nervous about putting fish sushi in a bento, but but the eel in unagi sushi is actually cooked, so it's not quite as scary.

The main protein in the bento is a chicken 'tournedo' (basically bacon wrapped chicken thigh) that BF cooked up last night. There are two homemade gyoza sitting on top of some asparagus pieces. For veggies there is some sesame fried bok choy, sauteed red pepper slices, steamed snow peas, carrot flowers and broccoli, all tucked into the various nooks and crannies.

For fruit there are blueberries and strawberries, the last of the cherries and half of an apricot. Dessert is a small piece of homemade whole wheat and walnut baklava (I made a batch last night to use up the rest of the phyllo from when I made spanakopita last week or whenever it was).

BF's Second Bento!

BF is so good to me. Last night he took me for sushi and on the way home we walked past a movie theatre. He suggested that we see a movie and I said I couldn't because I needed to get bento stuff ready. So he offered to get up early and make me a bento, even though it was his day off, and we went to a movie.
In the top tier we have pieces of chicken breast fried with balsamic vinegar, dill, oregano and thyme. There are two onigiri, a red bean filled flower onigiri and a cat shaped onigiri coloured with tumeric (He took the picture before he put the face on it, but it was cute). My favorite part was a flower he made in the bottom left from a yellow zucchini slice and some snow peas. There are sweet potato teddy bears, broccoli, asparagus and steamed fiddleheads.

On the bottom there is a gyoza, more broccoli, strawberries, blueberries and the last of the persimmon.

I didn't help at all!