August 12th Bento Lunches

This was one of those mornings where you lie in bed for ten minutes trying to decide whether or not to bother getting up to make bento, choosing between luxurious sleep or a delicious lunch.

Lunch won out today. I put together a couple of bentos for BF and his dive instructor for their dive this morning. All that swimming works up an appetite! I used a nice, big (1320ml) two tier bento box for this (you can see a picture of it here) that BF can just throw in his bag. As an aside, when I've been out shopping this summer and see the big picnic kits that carry all of your plates and cutlery and stuff, I think of this bento box and how little space it actually takes me to pack a portable lunch and I just want to stand in those stores all day and explain to people that they don't need all that. I mean figuratively of course, I would never actually do that. But they do seem excessive to me. Simplify!

Anyway, back to bento. I didn't do anything complex this morning because I was pretty rushed. Usually BF is sleeping when I make bento, but this morning he was up getting ready for his dive. I think it scared him a bit to see me reaching for the biggest knife we own while my eyes were still half shut, and then start hacking away at whatever I could find.

I figured that since both bentos were for grown men, I would load them up with meat. I had a huge piece of pork schnitzel in the freezer. These are great because they are so thin and fast to cook. I just defrost it in the microwave, throw it in a pan with some canola oil for a minute or two, add a little water and cover to steam for a minute or two more (so that I can be sure it's cooked through) and then fry uncovered for a few more minutes until crispy on the outside. I sliced it up after it was cooked. There are a couple of pork dumplings and a small bottle of sauce in there as well.

I used up the rest of the batch of forbidden (black) rice onigiri that I made last week. The heart shaped ones are stuffed with bonito flakes and soy sauce and the star shaped ones have a red bean (adzuki) filling.

For veggies, I steamed up some yellow swiss chard. I had never seen this before, but it's pretty cool. The stems are bright yellow (they didn't show up well in this picture, they look kind of greenish here) and they taste like regular swiss chard, but maybe a little more bitter. There are also some carrot rounds, broccoli, sugar snaps and cauliflower. I haven't been able to find thick carrots for a few weeks, so sadly the carrot I used today wasn't big enough to punch out shapes.

For fruit there are strawberries and blueberries. That's all there was room for. I also packed up half a dozen cupcakes for BF to take with him to share with the dive shop people, so I decided a dessert was unnecessary for the bentos.

There actually was a theme to these bento lunches, although I'm not sure it's obvious. I decided I wanted to use every colour of the rainbow and I actually managed to do it. To recap:

• red strawberries
• orange carrot
• yellow swiss chard
• green broccoli
• blueberries
• purple onigiri

I love when things work out the way I want them to!

July 7th Bento

We went to the grocery store yesterday as usual. BF went to the meat counter and ordered some stuff. As we walked away, I asked "What do you plan to do with that ground bison?"

He replied "Give it to you to put in a bento!"

Of course.

Seeing as how this was the first I'd heard that people even eat bison, I didn't know what to do with it. Luckily I know how to use Google.

And that is how we ended up having buffaloaf for lunch.
I followed the recipe at the link above. The only changes I made were to divide it in four and use a quail egg instead of a regular egg (because it's easier than measuring a quarter of an egg). This is the first time in my life I've ever made meatloaf. I don't think I've even eaten meatloaf since I was a kid. It turned out much better than I expected. I actually prefer bison to beef as it turns out.

The other interesting component to this bento is a Vietnamese dumpling called bahn khuc. The recipe is from my Vietnamese cookbook (listed in the carousel in the left column of my blog). The basic idea is that the dumpling dough is made of spinach puree and glutinous rice flour. The filling is ground pork, mung bean paste and shallots. It's then rolled in uncooked rice and steamed for about 20 minutes until the rice is cooked (I did all of this the night before and then put it straight in the bento from the fridge in the morning).

These were a whole lot of work, although I suspect it would have been faster if I had the mung bean paste already prepared, waiting in the freezer (it takes two hours to soak the beans). And for how much work they were, the taste was only so-so, so I don't think I'll make them again. The consistency was similar to a daifuku, which didn't carry over well to a dumpling in my opinion. BF wasn't so keen on them either. I really wanted to like this recipe because I thought it was a cool idea with lots of healthy ingredients, but alas, it was not to be.

For additional carbs, I included two heart shaped red bean onigiri.

For veggies there is some steamed red swiss chard (I really liked this last time so I bought another bunch this weekend), broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps, raw carrot and daikon flowers and yellow zucchini.

For fruit there is half a fig, a strawberry that I thought was adorable, some fresh pineapple chunks, blueberries, raspberries and a cherry.

Sometimes my lunches take even me by surprise. I never would have guessed bison and mung!

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.