September 5th Bento Lunch

It's funny because today's bento looks like I was being lazy, but really I put more effort into this one than I usually do.

I like to make yakiudon on Fridays because by Friday I'm starting to run short on bento ideas and produce, and it's kind of junky so I think it adds a bit of fun to BF's day too.
Last time I made fried noodles, I wasn't happy about how the lunch turned out as a whole. Two many of the foods were soy sauce based or fried, so overall, the lunch was too salty and one dimensional. This time I tried to correct that, and I think I did a good job. I spent quite a bit of time this morning mixing sauces and measuring out ingredients though.

For a salty, soy flavored dish, I made stewed konbu seaweed, on the right hand side of the bottom tier. This was one of those dishes that I thought I wouldn't enjoy since I don't care for fish flavours but I was proven wrong. It has a really mild flavour and the texture is really nice.

To prepare stewed konbu, you first rinse it off and let it soak in cold water until it softens up a little. I used 15 grams of seaweed and 3/4 cup of water and that made enough for three bento lunches. Once it's soft, add 2 tsp vinegar, 3 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp mirin, 1 Tbsp sake and 1 Tbsp sugar and boil for 15 minutes. Remove the seaweed from the pot and cut into thin strips. Return it to the pot and boil for 3 more minutes. Drain.

Next, for the yakiudon, I made a light tasting sauce with ginger and lemon flavors. I mixed the following ingredients for the sauce:

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp grated ginger
• 1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 Tbsp sake

I sauteed some shredded cabbage, grated carrot and chopped green onion in canola oil for about 3 minutes, and then threw in some shredded cooked chicken thigh meat and the sauce and sauteed a little more. Lastly, I added the cooked noodles and sauteed until the noodles were coated in sauce.

It turned out delicious. One pack of udon noodles completely filled the top tier of the bento.

For a little more protein, I fried two pork shu mai in a nonstick pan. I omitted the oil since there was already a fried dish.

For some bite, I made a dressing for the asparagus by mixing white miso, mustard, a little white vinegar, sugar, nanami togarashi (Japanese chili powder) and salt. I adapted a recipe from the book Bento Boxes, Japanese Meals on the Go to come up with this combination. After the asparagus was steamed, I put the dressing on it (sparingly). The sauce has some serious bite to it! It worked really well, a bland but flavorful piece of asaparagus with a really sharp sauce.

There are, of course, some steamed broccoli and sugar snaps. And for fruit there are strawberries, blueberries and honey tangerine.

I really feel that with this one, I did an excellent job of coming up with lots of different flavours that compliment each other and create a balanced meal. It's balanced in terms of flavour, in terms of ratio of simple carbs to complex carbs to protein, in terms of fried foods to fresh/stewed foods and in terms of getting all the necessary nutrients/food groups in a single meal. Despite it's modest appearance, I think this is one of my best bento lunches yet.

And next time that I use these recipes, I'll be sure to make the sauces in advance in order to save time!

May 28th Snack Bento

Work provided lunch today, so I thought it was a great day to test out a new snack bento. The challenge was to see how many different foods I could fit into this tiny thing. It's only about 2.5 inches square! (the picture is bigger than the actual bento was)

I managed to fit in two pieces of pork shumai (homemade), one heart shaped onigiri filled with red bean paste, a quail egg, three bites of asparagus, three broccoli florets, two sugar snaps, two fiddleheads, three fried plantain stars, two tangerine wedges, two bites of fresh pineapple, a strawberry cut into small pieces, four blueberries and two raspberries.

I think I did pretty well! And it was a perfect, delicious and well balanced snack. Here it is with the lid on.

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 21st Bento

Every morning so far this week, I would get close to finishing the bentos, and then look at the clock only to find that I was twenty minutes behind schedule. I couldn't figure out why my bentos were taking so long.

Then this morning, I realized one of my alarms was turned off (I need two to wake up on time) and I actually was sleeping in every morning and not realizing it.

So, I really rushed through today's bento because I woke up so late. It was yummy but not pretty.
I had a sort of greek theme going today, with fried marinated lamb pieces, spanakopita (top left), a little tub of tabouli (premade), tomatoes and cucumbers, baklava for dessert.

But because I was up so late, I didn't really do the theme it justice. I just threw in a lot of random fruits and vegetables. There are fiddleheads (we bought a tonne of these, I'm not sure how I'm ever going to use them up), broccoli, sugar snaps, yellow zucchini and asparagus. If I had planned it better, I probably would have made falafel and some kind of rice dish.

There's a boiled quail egg, a couple of red bean filled onigiris, and then for fruit there are some tangerine slices, blackberries, gooseberries, strawberries and blueberries.

This was one of those mornings where I was really grateful to have a well stocked freezer. It took about five minutes to steam the veggies and fry the lamb, another two to cut the fruit and three and half minutes for the quail egg. The rest was already waiting for me in the freezer.

Where I'm trying to lose weight right now, skipping making bento is not an option. I can't get anything close to this healthy, fresh and filling in the restaurants near my work, so no matter how tired I am, I make sure that it gets done. And it's definitely worth it. Today I wore a pair of pants that I haven't fit into since last March, and they're great pants so I'm pretty stoked about it!

May 14th Bento

I feel like out of all the bentos I've made, today's was the most outstanding yet in terms of making the most delcious food while keeping it pretty. Oh man, it was so yummy!

I made tamagoyaki nigiri sushi. This was my first try making nigiri sushi and it was way easier than I thought it would be. I had no trouble at all making the rice balls uniform just using my hands. I made the rice last night and heated it in the microwave this morning, and it turned out nice and fluffy.

I made the omelette last night as well. For enough omelette for two bentos I used three eggs mixed with 1/4 cup chicken broth, 1/2 tsp mirin, 1/2 tsp sake, 1 1/2 tsp sugar and a pinch of salt, and rolled it into longer layers than usual to give it the right shape. I refrigerated it overnight and in the morning I just had to cut it into slices and attach it to the rice with strips of nori.

Under the sushi there is some sesame fried gai lon with dried cranberries. I never had gai lon before (or cooked it!) and I think next time I'll just steam it. The sesame oil was a little too sharp.

Beneath that there are three home made pork shumai, fried in a little canola and pressed with the spatula to flatten after every flip. That was the end of the batch, so I will probably make more this weekend.

At the bottom there is some broccoli hiding a soy sauce bottle, and this amazing little daikon salad. The taste of this salad is so incredibly sharp, so it has the same effect as pickled ginger with sushi. It's tiny but it packs a ton of flavor. To make it, the night before I sliced up some daikon and cut it into flowers with a punch. Sprinkle with salt, and then try to press/knead out the liquid in the daikon. Set the flowers on some paper towel and cover with plastic wrap in the fridge overnight. The paper towel will soak up even more of the liquid, so in the morning you'll have some really thirsty daikon. Also, the night before mix about 1 Tbsp white vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp lemon juice and a pinch of julienned orange peel and refrigerate overnight so the flavors mix. In the morning, add the daikon to the vinegar mixture and let it sit for ten minutes to soak it up. Drain the liquid and add to the bento.

There are some sugar snaps, sweet potato butterflies and the first fiddleheads of the season, all steamed. I added some lemon juice to the fiddleheads.

For fruit there is half of a honey tangerine and cherries! This was the first time I've seen cherries at the grocery store all year and they were $12 a pound if you can believe it. So I actually counted out ten cherries at the store (enough for bentos for two days). They were so delicious though, it was totally worth it. Then there are the usually strawberries and blueberrys, and a truffle.