弁当のイビー · bentonoibii

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I just realized I've been forgetting to keep count ... ! Sadly although I've been making bento for over a year now I have only done 19 of them?! Hopefully this will motivate me to make them more often...




We had curry for dinner last night and I thought I'd try making the curry into a fish shape for obento. I know that I saw this idea somewhere, though I'm not sure it where.. I think it may have been somewhere on Biggie's site? I think it turned out pretty well anyway ! ^^

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I haven't made a bento in ages, though from now on I'm going to do my best to do so. (You get really sick of eating nothing but bakery food after a while... )



*carrot kinpira
* broccoli
* tempura shrimp
* mini apple
*rice w/ vegetable furikake

＊にんじんきんぴら
＊ブロッコリー
＊テンプラ海老
＊プチりんご
＊御飯＋野菜のフリカケ

☆rice balls with green peas, corn, and plain
グリーンピースの、トウモロコシの、と空のおにぎり
☆Japanese fried chicken with lemon
唐揚げとともにレモン
☆macaroni & cheese
マカロニ・アンド・チーズ
☆Salad with lettuce, carrots, and red pepper
パプリカ、ニンジンとレタスのサラダ
☆Chocolate covered strawberries
苺チョコレート

Andy and I went on a picnic last week so I made a bento lunch to take along with us~! Originally I wanted to put all of the onigiri in a sandwich case and then use only one box for the rest of the side dishes, but I didn't have any boxes big enough, so everything ended up in separate boxes as you see here. Since everything was wrapped up in a furoshiki though it wasn't too bothersome to carry. It probably wasn't the best day to go on a picnic though, since it was 100 outside that day!! I didn't have an ice pack to pack with the salad, so I just popped it into the freezer for a while to let it chill before we left, and that worked out fine since we ended up eating right away.

弁当080325 - my lunch

contents:
- peanut butter & jelly on whole wheat
- fuji apple bunnies (hard to see =( I know)
- strawberry
- salad of green leaf lettuce & carrots
- not shown: 2 thin mint girl scout cookies that were packed to the left of the sandwich

The funny thing about this bento.. is that my boyfriend helped me make it! I was in a rush this morning and hadn't packed a lunch the night before, so he was helpful and made me the apple bunnies and strawberry. He even packed me a little package with a napkin, toothpick, and a piece of gum! I felt very very special, as he has never packed a bento for me before =) The napkin package was wrapped up in plastic wrap so that my peanut butter wouldn't dirty up my napkin, and then tucked inside the lid of my box. I also added a baran (plastic grass divider) to the right of the salad to help keep the leaves from falling out, the top and bottom of the salad was already protected by the paper cups that the apples and strawberry went into. The cookies were added at the last minute (after I took a photo even) so I just dropped then in next to the sandwich without really thinking about it, and it ended up that they melted a little and made my sandwich taste a bit.. minty lol so I suppose that I will just put a divider there next time. =) This bento was made for my second day of work today, and I was quite happy because my coworkers complimented me on my "cute lunch box." Since I am a little terrified of the coworker ridicule that others have faced I was very glad to hear that!

弁当080324 - my lunch

Contents:
- orange slices
- corn
- broccoli
- teriyaki hamburger (harumi kurihara's recipe *no affiliation to amazon*)
- onigiri
- strawberry
- almonds
- lemon
- karaage (fried chicken - recipe below)

弁当080224 -- Andy's Lunch



Left: Beef curry with peas, red pepper, carrot, celery, and onion, food colored onigiri with red pepper cross, tamagoyaki hair, green pea eyes, and nori decoration.
Right: Salad with romaine, carrot, ranch, and garlic&cheese croutons
Center: Navel orange and banana slices.

I tried to make Andy.. he wants to become a nurse.. but he was upset over his hair a little.. :( It's nowhere near how I saw it in my head! >< but oh well, I'm sure that I'll get better as I go. I used 3 different boxes today because last time I forgot that Andy always eats his lunches hot, so I had to put the salad in removable containers so that it would not wilt in the microwave, which made it difficult to pack and eat because the containers were so small. Today I solved the problem by just using multiple containers - one for hot food, and two for cold food, although he didn't eat the fruit because he dislikes things that are sweet... oh, and for the salad today I put the croutons in a separate container (with a lid) to maintain crunchiness, because yesterday when I mixed them in with the salad they became soggy and unappetizing. :( But the closed container was a success! No bento for me today because I was lazy.. haha.

弁当080223-01 -- Andy's Lunch


Left: Rice with nori, Japanese beef curry with onion, carrot, celery, sugar snap pea, and red pepper.
Right: Salad with romaine, carrot, and garlic&cheese croutons, orange wedge and cheese wedge.

Andy requested a zebra.. we're both too old for kyaraben (19!) but he still enjoys it anyway! So .. why not? haha. Although I forgot to make a white ear and add a mane ><! Can you still tell it's a zebra? I hope?! And originally I wanted to put only a little curry rice in that container so that I could add more colorful things, but because there was so much I couldn't make it fit on only one side...

Just in case anyone has been wondering, (though I doubt it lol) I've been missing because of .. hmm.. family issues I suppose. Basically I made up my mind to go to culinary school for baking&pastry, which my family greatly disagrees with and so I am now supporting myself through school and haven't had much time for bento with everything that's been going on because of that. (moving, working, etc...)

弁当 080102 -- My Lunch



From left to right: Mashed potatoes with bacon and spinach, broccoli, lemon-herb chicken, and rice with a bit of lemon pepper seasoning.

My first bento of the New Year!! Not exactly the greatest bento, but this is the first one I've made in a while because my camera somehow died on me, and I didn't really want to make a bento if I couldn't show it to anyone... haha. But I did get a new camera for Christmas..!

[ 070420-01 -- My Lunch ]

[ 070418-01 -- Andy's Lunch ]

[ 070417 -- Andy's Lunch ]

[ 070322 -- My Lunch ]

[ 070315 -- My Lunch ]



            The onigiri molds that I ordered from eBay finally arrived, so I of course I had to make onigiri. I only made one small onigiri and I ended up storing the other four large onigiri I made in the freezer for future use in bento. Yaki onigiri is usually brushed with soy sauce and then grilled, but soy sauce is incredibly salty for my liking, even in extremely small quantities. I used Kikkoman teriyaki sauce instead, but this sauce tastes exactly like soy sauce to me. Teriyaki sauce is basically sweetened soy sauce, so I added a teaspoon or so of sugar to the bottled sauce until it tasted like teriyaki sauce to me. And oh, that yaki onigiri was heavenly ~

            I also had Andy eat one of the yaki onigiri while I was grilling them, but he said it still tasted like soy sauce and that he didn't like it. I'm wondering if he just predisposed himself to disliking it, though, because he made a comment that while I was stuffing the onigiri, it just "looked gross" to him, and also stated that he wasn't going to eat it. Oh well, at least he tried it. You can find a tutorial for making yaki onigiri here.

[ 070315 -- Andy's Lunch ]



            According to Japanese nutrition guidelines, someone Andy's size should have a bento box between 1,000 and 1,100ml / calories per meal. (That's a lot of food for just one meal in my opinion... I don't know where he puts it all!) I know that this box was only 920ml, but he told me that he was still really hungry after the meal, and he also ate a bunch of cookies before that. Also, since the foods packed are not necessarily "healthy," (the chicken is fried; large amounts of cheese; butter) this meal probably easily tops 1,000 calories. Am I going to have to pack two 920ml boxes every day?! @_@

            Leftovers are definitely your friend when it comes to bento. The pasta, chicken, and garlic bread were all leftovers I stored in the freezer for later use. The pasta was from a cajun-shrimp and pasta dinner, as was the garlic bread, and the popcorn chicken was from leftover takeout. The honey-teriyaki chicken was from a teriyaki-chicken dinner I made a few days ago; I simply shredded the leftovers and mixed in a few tablespoons of honey for use in onigiri. The seedless red grapes were also previously frozen. However, the broccoli, onigiri, and orange slices were all prepped the night before. Time: Not sure on these two!