A couple of new bentos

It's been a long while since I've posted a bento, but here are two I've made recently. Hopefully, I'll be more organized and back to making bentos regularly soon.


Top: carnitas "sandwich" and sausage

Bottom: cherries and blackberries



Top: veggie curry, lamb, carnitas, and pickles

Bottom: mac and cheese with peas and bacon bits

Lunch!

Top: strawberries, goat cheese, sautéed carrots, forgotten vegetable kinpira, pickle!, greens

Bottom: greens miniera, rice (under the greens)

Not pictured: two teriyaki meatballs that I forgot to fit into the top compartment (yes, there was room).


It was really really yummy.

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

Bolognese

Top: Mini Farfalle with bolognese and parmesan, pickles, and broccoli and bean salad.

Bottom: more of the baked apples, and a sliced carrot.

I'm looking forward to this bento because A) it has bolognese in it and B) it has my new salad in it. Hopefully I'll be trying some of maki's kinpira recipes from Just Bento tomorrow, since I have celery and broccoli stems.

Bento Again

Top Left: teriyaki meatballs and greens version 2

Top Right: two inari with pickles

Middle: salad with lettuce, peas, tomatoes, broccoli, and carrots (and dressing that I added)

Bottom: celery sliced to fit in the top case of my box

So a return to bento-ing today. The goal is to finish the stuff I have in my fridge. So far I'm doing ok since this was the last of greens version 2. I don't have anymore meatballs, either, but I'm sad about that since that means I need to get more ground pork and ground beef. I've decided to refrain from diving into my stock of tuna this week, since I've had tuna two weeks in a row. This leaves a bit of prosciutto and some frozen salmon for animal protein, and beans and eggs for veggie protein. oh, and milk. I do have plenty of milk. I'm sure I'll drink it all, though. If there's one thing that I can devour, it's milk.

Thursday's Bento

Top: Baked Apples, celery, pear tomatoes, tuna-stuffed inari, pickles

Bottom: Greens version 1, roasted veggies, greens version 2, celery, tuna with cilantro hot sauce

Didn't have time to post this yesterday. And then after a week of bentos I wanted a day off today.

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.

beginning bento again

Top: greens version 2, tuna, cilantro hot sauce, pickles, and cold soba with ponzu.

Bottom: greens version 1, roasted veggies, and baked apples.

Greens version 1 are a more Mediterranean style with olive oil and raspberry vinegar. Greens version 2 are more Thai/Indo inspired using olive oil, fish sauce and sambal terasi. Both are pretty tasty, though version 2 would have benefited from sesame oil.

The cilantro hot sauce is a riff on the sauce recipe of approximately the same name in South American Table. I had a ton of cilantro hanging around, so I figured what the heck and made it. Pretty tasty, somewhat akin to a very cilantro-y salsa verde.