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?

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 3rd Bento

About a month ago, I tried to make a symmetric bento with little success. Today I pulled it off and I didn't even plan to!

Today's theme was Bunnies in Love
We have two bunny onigiri with a ground chicken/hoisin sauce filling and sesame seed eyes. The heart is made of rolled omelette (tamagoyaki) and steamed spinach. There are three pork shu mai (I had to cut one in half and stack it to make it fit) and some silly pasta pieces (tossed in balsamic vinegar and olive oil). The veggies are broccoli, edamame skewers, snow peas and asparagus. The fruit was mostly berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries and can you spot the blackberries?) with a couple slices of kumquat.

For dessert, I tried something new and exciting - dessert sushi! Basically, I made it like regular sushi, but with a lot of substitutions. Instead of normal rice, I used coconut rice. I used lime juice and sugar instead of sushi vinegar and soy paper (mamenori) instead of nori. The filling is peach slices sprinkled with ginger.

I had a hard time getting it to stick together (mamenori is not very sticky to begin with and the coconut rice made it even harder to work with). BF had the brilliant idea to tie it closed with strips peeled from a stalk of rhubarb and it worked perfectly. I tied six strings around it, one to hold together each piece once it was cut.
It held up perfectly in the bento and was absolutely delicious. There were so many different flavours going on in each bite, I will definitely make this again!

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 8th Bento

Last night I was all set to make exciting sushi. I bought a frozen eel filet and was going to make unagi sushi because it's BF's favorite. It was going to have the unagi wrapped on the outside (because I haven't tried to do that yet) and avocado on the inside and it was going to be really pretty.

I cooked the unagi according to the directions on the package and when it came out of the oven, I brought BF into the kitchen to try a bite (I don't like the taste of fish). According to him it was pretty bad. Unsalvageable even. So we had to toss it.

He assures me that it just tasted like a low grade of meat, and had nothing to do with my cooking skills (this was the first time I've ever tried to cook fish). He's so sweet.

Yeah, so we had plain old avocado sushi for bento today :)
As you can see, my lettuce wall building skills are improving a little. I tried using kale this time because it's firmer (although not as delicious as whatever lettuce I was using before).

There is some avocado sushi, some pork bites underneath that, three home made gyoza (there's a bottle of dipping sauce hiding under them), slices of lotus root cooked in vinegar and water (finally, I made a bento where you can see the pretty holes in it!), and asparagus. Fillers are the standard broccoli and sugar snaps.

For fruit there are a couple of cherry tomatoes, a hidden gooseberry, slices of apricot, strawberries and blueberries. Dessert is some kind of truffle (I bought a mixed box and now I can't remember what any of them are!)