August 27th Bento Lunch

I know that the majority of my readers are not Canadian, so I'll start with a bit of background. One of our largest suppliers of luncheon meat, called Maple Leaf, had a recent contamination in their products causing an outbreak of listeria. I don't really know anything about listeria other than the facts that this recent outbreak has killed six Canadians, and that it can take up to 70 days for the symptoms of the illness to show itself.

So I know people who have eaten these products within the past two months and they don't know yet whether they're going to get sick, so I guess there's some phone number they're supposed to call and then I don't know what happens after that. So there's an acute feeling of 'awareness' around here. I wouldn't call it worry, we just have it on our minds and see it in the news all the time.

When we heard about it, BF and I sat down and tried to remember any times in the last 70 days that we had eaten processed meat, and to my surprise we couldn't think of a single one. So as you can imagine, it's reaffirmed our decision to eat natural foods whenever we can (of course, had it been a contamination of say, broccoli, we'd be in trouble).

So why am I bringing this up in a blog about bento? As a result of this incident, there was an article in the newspaper that made me pause. It was entitled Panic in the Lunchbox and it talks about the fact that school starts next week and all kinds of parents across the country have no idea what to pack for lunch since sandwiches are out for the next little while. So, I guess I just wanted to say that it makes me sad that a lack of luncheon meat can inspire the use of the word 'panic' in this country. And that I'm tempted to make a list of 100 delicious lunch foods that don't involve sandwiches and anonymously mail it to everyone in the country who packs lunches.

Thanks for listening to (reading?) my rant. Okay, here was today's bento.

The center piece of today's bento lunch was the zucchini dumpling I made (the tutorial is below). I think it's so pretty! On either side there are triangle onigiri, stuffed with the same bison soboro that is in the zucchini.

For meat there are bites of marinated lamb steak that I pan fried. The veggies include steamed asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps, and julienned carrot fried in sesame oil. For fruit there are some really juicy raspberries, blueberries, something called a damson plum, mango pieces and apple tulips.

BF sent me a message from work that said "This is an amazing tasting and looking bento!" so I think that means it was a success!

August 18th Bento Lunch

BF was on vacation for most of last week which is why I haven't posted much. Everything is back to normal today though, so I got up bright and early this morning and decided to make a donburi bento. I think this is the first time I've actually made rice in the morning. Usually I make it the night before and refrigerate or freeze it. It didn't actually take too much extra time though because by the time I had the donburi topping finished, the rice was ready.
Here's a picture of what is in the donburi. The recipe is a variation on one that appears in the book 'Bento Boxes - Japanese Meals on the Go'. There is a sliced inari pouch that I boiled for a few minutes in a mixture of 1/3 cup chicken broth, 1 Tbsp each of mirin, soy sauce and sake and 1 tsp sugar. Next I added some canned mushrooms I had leftover from the weekend (mushrooms are the one vegetable that I don't eat fresh. I've never liked fresh mushrooms but I love the canned ones), and let it boil about two more minutes before adding the parsley. Once the parsley had wilted, I added a beaten egg and stirred the mixture until the egg had set. The last step was to transfer it onto the rice in the bento box. I used the bento box divider in order to be able to compact as much rice into that area of the bento as possible.

It looked a little plain so I put a couple of red pepper butterflies on top. On the right hand side of the bottom tier are slices of steak left over from last night's barbecue. Between the steak, the egg and the inari, this bento is pretty heavy on the protein, which is fine for BF. If it was for me, I would have left out the steak altogether.

The veggies are simple. Just asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps. My grocery store has been out of asparagus for the past week so we were happy to be able to get some yesterday.

For fruit there are orange slices, half of a plum, strawberry slices, blueberries and two cherries. I learned a neat trick for orange slices, to make them easier to eat. You just slice the orange away from the rind for about two thirds of the way across the wedge. Then when you go to eat it, you can just hold it by the peel and tear the orange off the rest of the way. For dessert there is a chocolate mint square from my freezer stash.

Sadly, I think summer is nearing it's end. I saw the first sign of it this weekend: strawberries were $4.99 a box. Well, at least it's still hot out!

As an aside, this weekend I started reading "Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art" (previously I was just using it as a reference whenever I needed a recipe or ran into an ingredient I didn't know how to cook). Ordinarily I wouldn't read a cookbook cover to cover but this book is really exceptional in how much there is to learn from it. There are full chapters on knives, sashimi, sushi, soups, pickles, sweets and tea, as well as chapters on each of the fundamental cooking methods (grilling, pan frying, teaming, simmering, deep frying, etc), each with a discussion of the subject and accompanying recipes. I'm discovering all kinds of new cooking techniques and philosophies on food, it's really exciting. I made some awesome chicken udon soup this weekend, and I've been working on perfecting my own version of eggs and rice as a light breakfast. Next I think I'm going to tackle light appetizer-style soups. I definitely recommend this book, it's completely changed the way I approach cooking.

July 1st Bento

I felt like everything about today's bento was overshadowed by the fact that I overcooked the veggies. I missed the beep of the microwave timer and ended up steaming them about five minutes too long. They turned out soggy and a sickly green instead of a bright, delicious green.

Oh well, I won't make that mistake twice.

In the bottom tier there is some delicious yaki udon. I boiled one pack of noodles for three minutes and then fried with 1 Tbsp each of canola oil, soy sauce and sake. On top of that are some carrot flowers with snow pea leaves. On the other side there are some delicious seasoned lamb bites and some chinese broccoli (gai lon).

On top we have asparagus pieces, sugar snaps, a mini banana and a delicious mix of black beans, sweet onion, cilantro, red pepper, lime juice and olive oil that I picked up at the deli on the weekend. It was called a salsa, but it seems more like a salad to me, so that's how we ate it.

For fruit there are fresh lychees (yum!), cherries, the last few satsuma wedges, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

We're going to fireworks tonight - yay!

June 10th Bento

Have I mentioned that I love banana leaves? BF used them last night on the barbecue and it was phenomenal. For supper he made some sort of coconut milk-curry-ginger-cayenne rice in banana leaf packets with bites of seasoned lamb. We made a couple of little ones for the bentos as well of course (it's in the top center). You can't really tell from the picture but the rice was crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside and all stuck together sort of like rice loaf. I wasn't sure I would like crunchy rice because I thought it would just taste like uncooked rice, but it wasn't like that at all. The texture was actually really nice.

I also got to try out a recipe from a Vietnamese cookbook I ordered from Amazon a couple weeks ago, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Highly recommend!! I added it to the carousel in the left panel of the blog). It's called Chuoi Nuong and the basic idea is you take a chunk of banana and wrap it in some coconut rice mixed with shredded coconut. Wrap the whole thing in a banana leaf and fire up the grill. As you can see, the banana leaf gets kind of brittle on the barbecue, so I removed it before putting this and the curry rice in the bento.

No joke, Chuoi Nuong is quite possibly my new favorite food now (if only I knew how to say it). It was unbelievably delicious and I will be very sad when I can no longer get banana leaves because I want to eat this every day.

Both of the rice dishes were made the night before and kept overnight in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap. In the morning I removed the banana leaf and put them straight into the bento and the texture of the rice was still perfect by lunch time.

For a little bit more meat, there are three homemade pork shu mai, and just the standard veggies (I was running out of room!), although I did manage to sneak some steamed gai lon under the curry rice.

For fruit there are raspberries (red and white), cherries, strawberries (buried in there somewhere), some apricot bites, a couple of slices of kumquat along the bottom wall and a container of pomegranate seeds. I was just going to use a few of the pomegranate seeds to decorate the bento, but then I ate one and remembered just how much I love them, so it ended up being a whole dish full. Dessert is a (store bought) daifuku filled with red bean paste.

As far as lunches go, this was definitely one of the yummiest yet!!

June 5th Bento

This was another unplanned what-do-we-have-in-the-freezer-this-morning bento. I used the six element formula that never lets me down: rice/meat/veggies/fruit/dumplings/dessert. Aside from the fruit and veggies, everything in the bento started its morning in the freezer.

For rice we have a few plain rice cubes and a ground chicken filled triangle onigiri. The meat is marinated lamb pieces (these were so wonderfully spicy and peppery!). There are three gyoza and a hidden bottle of rice vinegar/soy sauce dipping sauce, as well as broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps, carrot hearts and snow peas for vegetables.

I put some slices of star fruit in the bentos, but BF had never had them before and ended up not liking them. Lots of berries as usual (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries and strawberries) and a "midnight mint" square. I made a batch of them on the weekend. They're similar to a nanaimo bar but with a green mint filling. The trickiest part was cutting them into tiny bites without cracking the chocolate layer on top. I managed to cut about 15 before I gave up!

Although I didn't plan anything ahead of time, this bento was still really yummy and satisfying. The downside is that the ingredients aren't as creative and it's not the cutest, that's for sure. But when I'm feeling a little lazy in the morning and want a couple of extra minutes of sleep, it's nice to know I have a freezer with lots of great options for lunch!

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 12th Bento

BF is taking a couple of days off work, so you get to see my bento instead of his today and tomorrow!

I tried out my new nori punches and mini onigiri molds today.

On the bottom there are three onigiri. The elephant is coloured with purple yam powder mixed with vinegar, the pink heart is a coconut onigiri from the batch in the freezer and the bunny is plain with salt. None of them are filled. There are a few lamb bites in there (from a skewer from this weekend's barbecue), asparagus, broccoli and edamame.

On the top there are three gyoza (I made another batch this weekend, we go through it like crazy!), a boiled quail egg, more edamame and broccoli, star shaped coconut onigiri, persimmon bites, a fried plantain flower, strawberries and blueberries.

May 5th Bento

Today's bento was nothing special. I wasn't feeling good yesterday so I went to bed super early. I woke up this morning with no plan and nothing prepared. So this is an on-the-fly bento

On the bottom we have a large onigiri, half of a flower shaped egg, steamed asparagus and brocoli, steamed miso spinach, sesame fried carrots and some bites of marinated lamb.

The top is two mini onigiris, a couple of sugar snaps, kiwi flowers, orange slices, strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries and a strawberry shaped chocolate.

May 2nd Snack Bento

I've had a pretty stressful week, so I thought I would save some time this morning by just making a quick snack bento and going out for lunch, so I wasn't even planning to post today, but it actually turned out pretty cute so I figured I'd share it.

So it's not my most creative in terms of design/ingredients. Efficiency, healthiness and using up leftovers were my only concerns this morning.

There are three pork gyoza with dipping sauce and some asparagus tamagoyaki bites. I made more of the avocado salad (with a gooseberry on top) because I had half an avocado in my fridge that needed to be used up. There is steam asparagus, broccoli and snow peas. Under the asparagus are a couple of bites of the lamb from earlier in the week. For fruit I used the other half of yesterday's persimmon, and strawberries and blueberries.

I was halfway to work before I realized I forgot to put in any rice :P

As an aside, BF told me yesterday that he's lost 7lbs since we started having bento lunches instead of going out for lunch every day or skipping it, so that's a great thing! I can't think of anything more important than the health of myself and my loved ones, so I feel really good about contributing to that in a positive way.