Top: beet and greens noodles, carrots, and teriyaki meatballs
Bottom: three tuna-salad stuffed ongiri (heart and star have prosciutto on top), broccoli, more carrots, celery, prosciutto, and celery kinpira

I was really stuck for variety today. I need to figure out more to do with my produce because I feel like I'm in a rut making mostly the same things every week. And I feel like I've got too many carbs (mostly noodles and rice today).

New Box!

A new Clickety Click box from my local bento store. I was actually looking for big egg molds, but they were out.....and they had cute boxes. And so I got this one and a collapsible one that I'm sure I'll use in the coming weeks.



So I made a huge onigiri in the top (stuffed with tuna and miso) and added some nori to aid consumption, since my big onigiri usually fall apart:



And then I filled the bottom with roasted veggies, two kinds of kinpira, and pickles:
tasty tasty

thrown together bento

I tried planning, but I came up a little bit short today. I hadn't planned to need to include carrot sticks, celery, and cornichons, but I had more room than I'd planned and didn't want to pull out the panfried noodles when I already had a nice fat onigiri in the mix.

So on top: hot cilantro sauce, teriyaki meatballs, plain onigiri, celery, carrots, cornichons.

On bottom: roasted veggies, goat cheese, celery kinpira à la JustBento, and broccoli stem kinpira à la JustBento.

Maki has really really good kinpira recipes. If you haven't tried them, do. Especially her recipe for broccoli stems. I left out the red pepper since I wasn't feeling it last night when I made the kinpira, but it turned out just fine regardless (actually, it was kind of like crack - I tried it just to see how it came out and miraculously, over half of my broccoli stem kinpira disappeared).

Accidental Wall-E

Top: Tuna-stuffed inari (with spicy mayo and topped with sorrel), pickles, celery, pear tomatoes, and baked apples.

Bottom: Roasted veggies, teriyaki-pineapple meatballs, greens version 1, and an onigiri with a surprise stuffing (in other words, I don't remember what I stuffed it with).

One of my labmates saw this picture, and declared it to look like an adult Wall-E. At first, he just said it looked like a face, with the inari as eyes and the onigiri making the nose/mouth. Then he pondered the box a little longer and declared it a robot face, something like an adult Wall-E.

I hadn't thought about it this morning, making this - making the inari, really, since I saw the inari skins in the fridge and thought 'oops, better use those up!' even though I hadn't planned to make them. The rest of the stuff was all pre-prepped, so I just had to heat and pack. Even still, this bento stuff is taking more time than I'd like. When other bento-ers talk about how fast they pack their bentos, I am usually jealous. Maki over at JustBento says it takes practice to get that fast, and I believe her. Anyway, packing my bento, just trying to fit everything in, I accidentally made a face. :)

Onigiri Today

Top: greens version 2, roasted veggies, and three onigiri (teddy bear is filled with tuna and miso, star is filled with cilantro-pepper sauce, and heart has nori wrapped around it and is filled with tuna).

Bottom: baked apples, celery, pickled ginger and peppers, and tuna topped with cilantro-pepper sauce. There's also a few folded sheets of seasoned seaweed under the pickles, but they didn't hold up well. Lesson for next time: put the folded nori in the top of the bento box where the chopsticks go!

I went to a seminar today at lunch time, and as there was pizza, I promptly forgot about my bento. Instead, I stashed it in the fridge and ate it for dinner. It was still pretty tasty, probably thanks to tips I've read about bento food needing to be well-spiced.