July 30th Bento Lunch

I accidently drained the battery on BF's fancy camera, so the picture quality today isn't great since I used my little point & shoot.

Today deliciousness won out over pretty.
The main component of today's bento is rice paper rolls. They started out from a recipe in my Vietnamese cookbook, but by the end of it I had made so many substutions and changes that I think it is now an original recipe.

The rolls are filled with a layer of lettuce, followed by a few dots of hoisin sauce, strips of sausage, two egg sheet strips and topped with a layer of sweet potato matchsticks fried with canola oil and garlic. Yum! So this covered off a lot of the carbs and most of the protein for the bento.

I find it really tough to make rice paper rolls look pretty. Does anyone have any suggestions? This time I just put a few parsley leaves on them.

For added carbs, I cooked up some lotus root slices with red pepper. They're propped up against some lentil snacks that you can't see. The rest of the veggies are the standard asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini. For fruit there is half of a clementine, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and some tiny choke cherries. I think these are super cute and they are crazy sour.

No dessert today because I sent BF into work with a batch of chocolate and vanilla cake balls. I will try to post pics/recipe later today.

June 23rd Snack Bentos

My apologies for the lack of posts. I was on vacation last week and I didn't make a single bento. I truly meant to make bento lunches for BF all week but somehow I managed to sleep in every single day. And I ended up not having time to go for groceries over the weekend, so this morning when I got up to make bento I was pretty short on options and ingredients. Which is how we ended up with snack bentos instead of bento lunches.
I grabbed some onigiris from the fridge and put some faces on them. There are gyoza from a batch I made this weekend and a boiled quail egg for some added protein. For veggies there are edamame (frozen), sweet potato sakuras (I love sweet potatos, they last forever), the last two stalks of asparagus and some sugar snaps. I used a few black sesame seeds to decorate the sakuras and I think they turned out really cute. For fruit there are just two cherries in each and a few blueberries.
I used my Cinnamoroll snack bento box and BF used his blue polka dot snack bento box. From the picture it looks like mine is much larger, but they're actually about the same size, BF's is just deeper. I kind of enjoy the fact that they are different shapes because I like the mental exercise of figuring out two different layouts. It's a good little puzzle to help me wake up in the morning.

We managed to get out for groceries tonight, so it should be back to business as usual. My favorite thing that we picked up was the tiniest bunch of vine tomatoes that I have ever seen in my life. They are so small!! And so pretty still on the vine. I put a quarter next to them so you can get a feel for the size. In the back of the bunch there is the tiniest one of all, it's my favorite.

June 9th Bento

I found all kinds of new things at the grocery store this week, so I got to try some new foods in today's bento. And I learned a new way to cook - with banana leaves! They only had about six at the store. They're about two and a half feet long and about a foot wide, dark green and shiny. So today we had lemper!
Lemper is an Indonesian food that consists of coconut rice in banana leaves. Here's how I made it:

The night before, cook up some short grain white rice using two thirds coconut milk and one third water. Fried up some ground chicken with a pinch or two of curry powder and some chives, and when it's cooked, splash on a little lemon juice. Cut 5 inch squares of banana leaf and put 1 Tbsp rice in a rough sort of rectangle in the middle of the banana leaf and 1 Tbsp of the chicken mixture on top of that. Fold up the sides and tie with a small strip of banana leaf, and they're ready to go in the fridge. In the morning when making the bento, steam the lemper packets for 15 minutes (this is the longest time I've ever spent cooking anything for a bento by a long shot, but it was so worth it), remove from the steamer and let them cool for a bit before placing them in the bento. I stacked up two in mine.

This was without a doubt the best rice I've ever had in a bento. It was so moist and flavorful, just heavenly. And making them was fun. There's something about wrapping rice in leaves that feels really simple and wholesome. I have more banana leaf cooked foods planned for this week (we went back today and bought two more), so stay tuned!

Because of the small amount of rice, I packed in a whole bunch of sweet potato flowers (boiled with a little butter and cinnamon on them) for additional carbs. And because of the small amount of chicken, I packed two of the mini quiches BF made yesterday, and a couple of bites of cheddar for additional protein. There was some empty space so I threw in a couple leek dumplings.

For vegetables we have the usual broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini. I found some new fruits though! In the bottom corner there is a fresh lychee. I had never tried these before. They have delicious flavour with a bizarre juicy-membrane like consistency. Sorry, that's best way I can think to describe it. Appetizing, right?

There are a couple of cherries next to that (they're down to $4.99 a pound so I've been eating a lot of these), and above that there red and white raspberries. I didn't even know white raspberries existed. Turns out they taste just like red ones, but I like the colour that they add to the bento. There are some blueberries and strawberries, and to finish it off, a cupcake from the batch this weekend.

Here's a diagonal shot too because I liked how the banana leaf looked in this one:

The 11 Minute Snack Bento

A lot of times I sleep in or whatever and think I don't have time to make bento, but really, there's no excuse because bento making takes me as long as I have. If I have 5 minutes, it takes 5 minutes, and if I have 40 minutes, it takes 40. The trick is to multitask. Most mornings I have at least 3 out of 4 burners going on the stove, plus something in the microwave, and I'm chopping something up at the same time.

This morning I had 11 minutes. Here's a snack bento that I put together.
And here's how:

1. Boil some water in a kettle. While it's heating, cut out some flowers out of a slice or two of sweet potato. Heat some canola oil in another frying pan and a little water in another pot or steamer. Pour the water you just boiled into a small pot.

2. Add edamame and sweet potato to the boiling pot of water. Remove and strain after six minutes.

3. While that's going, throw some frozen pork shumai in the pan with oil. Periodically flip and smoosh with a spatula until cooked through.

4. Now you've got two things cooking. Slice up two stalks of asparagus, a couple of broccoli florets and two sugar snaps. Put the asparagus and broccoli in the steamer for 3 minutes. Add the sugar snaps and steam for two more.

5. Now you've got three things going. Heat a frozen onigiri in the microwave, about 20-25 seconds on each side.

6. Pour some tonkatsu sauce (or whatever your favorite dipping sauce is for pork) in a small container.

7. Slice up a strawberry.

8. Everything should be ready by now! Place onigiri in the bottom right of the left compartment. Place shumai above the onigiri and asparagus to fill in the gap on the left. Slice sugar snaps in half and tuck into the gaps. Cover the rice with edamame and position sweet potato flowers on top of it.

9. Place sauce container in the top left of the right hand compartment. Cover it with strawberry slices. Place any remaining edamame below the strawberryt. Place broccoli florets beneath the strawberry, and two cherries below that (on top of the edamame). Fill any gaps with blueberries.

10. Rush out the door!

So that's how I do it. And at 3:30 this afternoon when I was starving because lunch was hours ago, I had something delicious and healthy to snack on. It's a good thing too, because there was an open box of donuts in the office!

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 19th Bento

I didn't intend for today's bento to turn out so cutesy...it just kind of happened!

I found some mini sweet potato pies in the freezer from a batch I made a few weeks ago, so I thought they would be nice in today's bento. I decorated this one with mozzarella and cheddar flowers.

The onigiris are from last week's frozen batch. The bunny is plain, the tiger was coloured with tumeric and rice vinegar, and the elephant was coloured with purple yam powder and rice vinegar. Accents are nori and ham. There's also a heart shaped onigiri made with coconut rice and a nori accent. It was nice to have so many different onigiris because it adds some different flavours to the bento.

Underneath the onigiris are slices of a stuffed pork loin. The onigiris are really short, so they need to sit on something to elevate them, and that allows me to fit even more types of food into the bento!

In the bottom left corner there is some steamed spinach with miso and ground sesame seeds. Other veggies include yellow and green zucchini, fiddleheads and broccoli space fillers (all steamed).

There wasn't much room left for fruit so we have some blueberries, strawberries and blackberries.

Yesterday I made cupcakes, and I ended up having some leftover batter, so I made a batch of mini cupcakes as well that turned out small enough for a bento box! It's a chocolate cupcake with red bean filling. The frosting is buttercream with some matcha green tea powder, and the cupcake is topped with a small ball of mochi. It was sooo decadent! I put the cupcake in a foil muffin cup in addition to the muffin cup it was baked in, so that none of the moisture from the fruit soaked into it.

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!

May 1st Bento

I feel like the individual components of today's bento were all excellent, but somehow, it just didn't come together. Well, here it is:

The main components are slices of stuffed turkey roll (premade from the butcher), lotus seed paste filled onigiri, home made spanikopita (under the ducks), and a small container of eggplant braised in a sweet miso sauce.

I had half a sweet potato I wanted to use up, so I shaped some into flowers and made a couple of turtles (with nori). The ducks are fried plantain. There is some edamame hiding in the top left corner, and the regular broccoli, asparagus and snow peas.

Fruit is persimmons, strawberries and blueberries, dessert is a truffle.