yesterday's bento

Top: greens miniera and rice

Bottom: radishes, teriyaki meatballs, sautéed cabbage, sautéed carrots

Top: Strawberries, radishes (they are the braised ones again - tucked in with the strawberries), goat cheese, carrots, and cabbage, meatballs, and marinara.

Bottom: Rice, avocado, greens miniera, and regular greens.

I have one more day of regular greens, which is about all I can take of them. I like the greens miniera better, which is a good thing since I have a ton left. I am all done with the strawberries, and to tell the truth, I am surprised they made it this long. I really like strawberries, and they usually start to go before this, anyway.

Top: strawberries, goat cheese, sautéed carrots, greens, and meatballs and cabbage and sauce
Bottom: braised radish, rice, and greens miniera

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.

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).

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).

New noodles bento

Left: two meatballs, peas, goat cheese, and baked apples
Middle: Satay flavored noodles with beets, carrots, and greens
Right: Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made peas, meatballs, cookies, and the noodles this weekend. The cookies are a recipe I got from my mom, and the noodles were a variation on a panfried noodle theme. The meatballs were my regular ones.

Not sure how tasty the noodles will be, but I'm hoping they're good. Really, the only thing that could ruin them is the beet presence. I'm not much of a beet fan, but I'm trying to figure out few ways to prep them that I like or can at least tolerate.

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.

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. :)

Tuesday and Salad

I planned a completely different bento for today, but didn't have time to prep sufficiently. I wanted a relatively low-cal meal for lunch, so I went with salad and a few things from from the freezer.


Top Left: salad toppings - tomatoes, avocado, goat cheese

Top Right: teriyaki-pineapple meatballs, havarti cheese, lobster salad

Bottom: carrots and lettuce for my salad

Not pictured: salad dressing

Thursday's Lunch

I didn't do the best job on the photo, but since my camera ran out of batteries right after this, I didn't get to take a second photo. Anyway, it's mostly the same staples today. I was pressed for time, so it's not exactly a cute bento today.

Top: Inari, teriyaki-pineapple meatballs, sesame greens, and homemade spaghetti and marinara.

Bottom: Paté, Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor, cornichons, pineapple, steamed green beans, a little bit of carrot, and a quail egg.

Another Day Another Bento

I had time to make some inari this morning! I made them with a half quinoa, half genmai rice mixture. When I first made the rice/quinoa mixture it was fairly sticky, but that's faded. I think from now on I'll make it and then make onigiri or inari immediately to preserve the stickiness.

I also tried to make a molded quail egg, and I did get slight indentations for a chick face, but clearly I wasn't using hot enough eggs. It's a learning process, I guess.

Anyway, here's whats in the bento today:

Top: two inari, two teriyaki-pinepple meatballs, pineapple, and below the meatballs and pineapple is sesame greens.

Bottom: Paté, carrots, cornichons, Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor, steamed green beans, and the boiled quail egg.