So many bentos! @.@
Sorry for the lack of bento post last week! I did, in fact, do the bento challenge. I just didn't get around to writing it up. So, this week you'll get twice the bento goodness!
Week Three:
This is the week we're supposed to focus on money saving aspects of bentos. Given that I was already packing most of my lunches, and the days when I didn't I was eating veggie subs at Subway (not exactly an expensive food), I'm not sure how much I can really save with bentos.
Not that I think JustBento woman is making up the money saving possibilities, it's just sort of like how vegetarianism can save you money, sometimes. It depends on what you were eating before, and what you start eating after. If you go from eating knock-off highly processed meat products to fresh vegetables; going veg will cost you money. If on the other hand you go from nice fresh cuts of meat to, say, frozen vegetables, you'll save money. Since most of the food I'm making here is either stuff I was eating before just arranged differently, or stuff I have around but I didn't eat as often before, I don't think much will change here. I did try to stick to food I already had around.
Anyway, on to the food!
I still had some of the smashed chickpea salad left, so I have that here. I cut the Naan bread into hearts with a small heart-shaped cookie-cutter I bought after Valentine's day a few years ago. Since I'm eating at my desk most days, and the keyboards are communal, I try to avoid eating with my hands. Colds and such spread through the call center like wildfire. I'm certain it's because we're all eating at the same desks. The previous week's bento with Naan bread was difficult to eat since the Naan was in a large sheet. Cutting up the bread made it easier to just use a fork.
I added an egg (tamagoyaki style), and the vegetable is sauteed carrots and asparagus. We were almost out of fruit, but I'd managed to go to the Peppridge Farm outlet store to get bread and two boxes of cookies (one as a house warming gift for my sister who recently moved), and come back with two loaves of bread and five boxes of cookies (in my defense it was due to a sale and not a general lack of impulse control on my part). So we had a lot of cookies on hand, which I used for the dessert. Those are mint Milanos, which fit neither the healthy aspect from last week nor the inexpensive aspect of this week's challenge. Even on sale at the outlet store those cookies are a bit pricey for something I shouldn't be eating anyway (having said that, I regret nothing).
Thursday's a short day for me; it's only five hours. Usually I get a flat bread from a cafe in the hospital near where I work. I eat it before work, and I'm good for the rest of the day. Unless they're out of the flat bread. Since I started this challenge I have gone to the vending machine once, and that was the Thursday of week 2 because there was no flat bread. So week three I made an effort to make a smaller bento. I made the whole wheat rotini with cheese and carrots on Wednesday for lunch, and managed to keep John from eating the left overs. The trick is to make a lot of it so there's some left overs he can eat. It was quite simple to put together since it's just the pasta and some Chessmen.
Here we have rice with Trader Joe's meatless meatballs and another Tamagoyaki. I'm getting pretty good at that one egg tamagoyaki recipe. It's actually a bit faster than boiling the egg, and tastier too. I have some broccoli and carrots with that miso-tahini-nut paste. The recipe made a lot of it, and I froze most of it. So it's become a pretty easy way to add a lot of flavor to the veggies. I used the last of the mandarin oranges for the fruit/dessert. Last minute I thought it wasn't enough fruit and added a few small frozen strawberries. They look a little weird here because they're still frozen. I take the pictures before I leave in the morning, not at lunch, because I'm using my laptop as a camera.
The strawberries were a bit better whole like that than they were when I sliced them. Still not as good as fresh, but not bad in a pinch.
This was my favorite bento so far. It's also the one that held together the least well in transit! There were edamame and furikake in my peaches, but it all tasted wonderful. I've been a bit intrigued with furikake since I watched Hana Yori Dango. One of the characters freaks out when the main character offers her a rice ball because she thinks it's covered in mold. But it's just furikake. Anyway, I made the carrot sesame furikake recipe, and it's my new favorite thing. I made a half batch, but even that was a lot of furikake. But like I said, it was Amazing! I'm not used to eating plain rice, but this style of lunch packing does generally work better with rice. Furikake makes that rice awesome. Just a warning though, the carrot sesame furikake is a bit spicy. I like spicy things (and oddly find I crave sweets less when I've been eating spicy things) so it was all good. I think it would still taste good if you left out or cut down on the red pepper flakes though.
Also included are edamame, asparagus with red onion, a hard boiled egg, and peaches. One of my co-workers complained that the onions were making her eyes burn. Which seems kind of incredible to me since there's like less than a table spoon of onions in there, and I couldn't even smell them, plus she was technically in the other room (there's no door but there is a short corridor between them). I guess some people really are more sensitive then others.
This week I actually made six bentos. I only work five days a week, so why six bentos? On Sundays I meet with a friend (sometimes more!) to just hang out and do some artwork. I usually get hungry, and there is food at the coffee shop where we meet, but it's both expensive and not very filling. So made a bento for that. Of course the week I got it together to do that, we ended up canceling due to illness. Nonetheless, the bento at home was quite tasty. I was quite tired of asparagus and the only other vegetable we had were frozen peas. So this is frozen peas on the bottom, rice on top with more of the carrot furikake, another tamagoyaki, and peaches. The peas were a bit bland since I just boiled them. But over very good.
This is the last of the six. I wanted to go back to my more usual food again as sort of a rest from the more Japanese style foods I've been eating. So I made penne with an improvised tomato sauce and meatless meatballs. I still wasn't feeling like asparagus again, so I made peas. To make them more flavorful I cooked the frozen peas in butter and some of the carrot furikake (this was awesome, and quite frankly the best frozen peas I've ever had, and I like frozen peas quite a bit really). There's also a hard boiled egg, some mandarin oranges, and a couple Chessmen. I must not have wrapped the Chessmen very well with the plastic wrap. Some of the juice from the oranges got in and made the edges a bit soggy. They were still edible, and yummy at that.
In case any of you are curious, and reading this far in (I know this is long, I'd probably just be looking at the pictures at this point...), I thought I'd explain the improvised tomato sauces. When I'm cooking just for myself, or making a smaller amount of food for our lunch or something, I usually don't want to either open a full jar of spaghetti sauce or a large can of crushed tomatoes for one of my home-made sauce recipes. So what I do instead is really easy. I'll saute some minced garlic in olive oil. When they start to turn a bit dark I add some diced onion (usually we have some already diced on hand since I try to chop more than I need when I cook and either freeze or just refrigerate whatever I don't need, though I should warn you, from some bizarre reason freezing onions seems to make them stronger in my experience). When the onions are semi-transparent I add a can of diced tomatoes, meatless meatballs (If I'm including them; if you're using real meat you should probably add them with the onions. The meatless meatballs just need to be heated up), and whatever spices I feel like. Cinnamon is surprisingly good. Usually I just use salt, pepper, and dried basil. Once the meatless meatballs are heated through, and most of the water from the tomatoes has boiled off (about ten minutes) taste the sauce. If it's not awesome add a bit of butter.
Week Four:
For this week the challenge is to focus on making bentos for other people. Which I pretty much completely ignored. The only person I have to make bentos for would be John, and frankly he's a grown man who can fend for himself at meal times. Plus y'know, I'm the breadwinner at the moment, so why should I take on a house-wife role as well? But the basic challenge is just to continue to make bentos, so that's what I did.
A bout of soul-crushing despair nearly made me give up on a bento for last Wednesday. But having this to eat at work really do make me feel better. It's like at least I'm doing something to take care of myself. So it does feel more important to make these when I'm feeling low. But I hadn't done any of the usual prep work. I had nothing planned, the kitchen was a mess, and I'd failed to go to the store so our food supplies were a bit spotty. Looking around the cupboards, I realized I just happened to have everything needed to make a very basic hummus. I'd never done it before, but it turns out hummus is ridiculously easy to make. Sorry the picture's so dark. The silicone baking cup on the lower right hand side has the hummus, with some sun dried tomatoes and olives on top. For the vegetable I have some broccoli (which I buy frozen by the way; Trader Joe's has some really good frozen foods, their frozen broccoli isn't all stems like most frozen broccoli), and there are mandarin oranges for the fruit/dessert. I added a hard boiled egg to make sure there's enough protein. For the grain I have the last of the Naan cut into hearts with that mini cookie-cutter.
The soul-crushing despair continued for a few days, which did prevent me from making a Thursday bento this week. But I was back to making them on Friday. I bought some Nori Komi Furikake from the Japanese grocery store near my apartment. It may be tied with the carrot furikake I made in week 3 for my favorite thing ever. It's just salt, seaweed, sugar, and sesame seeds. I love seaweed, and this is definitely my new favorite way to eat it. For this bento I made rice with the Nori Komi Furikake, lentils, carrots with more of the miso-nut paste and some peas thrown in for good measure, and peaches for the dessert.
Here we have rice and meatless meatballs, broccoli, tamagoyaki, and mandarin oranges. I tried to save time by mixing up the egg stuff while I was frying the meatless meatballs, which is why they're so dark on just the one side. Not the best bento yet, but not bad overall.
Sometime between Friday evening and Sunday morning the bulk of the soul crushing despair lifted (and has thus-far managed to stay away), so I had more energy for cooking. I made more of the sweet pepper and onion confit Sunday night with some help from John. We had it with veggie burgers for dinner that night (I was right, it is very good on burgers), and saved the rest for this bento. It's under the carrot kinpira I sort of impulsively made when I was poking around Just Bento and realized I had all the ingredients for it. The kinpira was pretty good, although to be honest I think it could have used a touch of sugar (or possibly mirin, but I don't actually know what that is so it's hard to say).
Some of the bentos this week haven't kept me full quite long enough. I've noticed it seems to depend on the protein. If there's not enough protein, I'm starving by the end of my shift. So here I have edamame and a tamagoyaki. The edamame are a good easy way to add protein (I buy shelled frozen edamame, so you just have to boil them until they're heated through), but they are rather difficult to contain. When I got out of my car to go to work I heard a plink, and sure enough when I opened the box to eat there were edamame everywhere.
Also included are rice with that seaweed furikake, and mandarin oranges with a couple peach chunks.
Remember how I said I mostly ignored the whole making bentos for other people thing? By Monday I was feeling generous enough that I did make John an extra tamagoyaki, and assembled it with the left over confit and kinpira to make a small bento-ish thing:
It has no grain, so he was sort of on his own there, but it does have the egg, some veggies, and even some mandarin oranges and peaches.
There's only one week left in the challenge! I'm already off to a start with the focus for week five. I'm so glad I just went ahead and did this. I'm definitely going to keep making bentos after the challenge itself is over.
Week Three:
This is the week we're supposed to focus on money saving aspects of bentos. Given that I was already packing most of my lunches, and the days when I didn't I was eating veggie subs at Subway (not exactly an expensive food), I'm not sure how much I can really save with bentos.
Not that I think JustBento woman is making up the money saving possibilities, it's just sort of like how vegetarianism can save you money, sometimes. It depends on what you were eating before, and what you start eating after. If you go from eating knock-off highly processed meat products to fresh vegetables; going veg will cost you money. If on the other hand you go from nice fresh cuts of meat to, say, frozen vegetables, you'll save money. Since most of the food I'm making here is either stuff I was eating before just arranged differently, or stuff I have around but I didn't eat as often before, I don't think much will change here. I did try to stick to food I already had around.
Anyway, on to the food!
I still had some of the smashed chickpea salad left, so I have that here. I cut the Naan bread into hearts with a small heart-shaped cookie-cutter I bought after Valentine's day a few years ago. Since I'm eating at my desk most days, and the keyboards are communal, I try to avoid eating with my hands. Colds and such spread through the call center like wildfire. I'm certain it's because we're all eating at the same desks. The previous week's bento with Naan bread was difficult to eat since the Naan was in a large sheet. Cutting up the bread made it easier to just use a fork.
I added an egg (tamagoyaki style), and the vegetable is sauteed carrots and asparagus. We were almost out of fruit, but I'd managed to go to the Peppridge Farm outlet store to get bread and two boxes of cookies (one as a house warming gift for my sister who recently moved), and come back with two loaves of bread and five boxes of cookies (in my defense it was due to a sale and not a general lack of impulse control on my part). So we had a lot of cookies on hand, which I used for the dessert. Those are mint Milanos, which fit neither the healthy aspect from last week nor the inexpensive aspect of this week's challenge. Even on sale at the outlet store those cookies are a bit pricey for something I shouldn't be eating anyway (having said that, I regret nothing).
Thursday's a short day for me; it's only five hours. Usually I get a flat bread from a cafe in the hospital near where I work. I eat it before work, and I'm good for the rest of the day. Unless they're out of the flat bread. Since I started this challenge I have gone to the vending machine once, and that was the Thursday of week 2 because there was no flat bread. So week three I made an effort to make a smaller bento. I made the whole wheat rotini with cheese and carrots on Wednesday for lunch, and managed to keep John from eating the left overs. The trick is to make a lot of it so there's some left overs he can eat. It was quite simple to put together since it's just the pasta and some Chessmen.
Here we have rice with Trader Joe's meatless meatballs and another Tamagoyaki. I'm getting pretty good at that one egg tamagoyaki recipe. It's actually a bit faster than boiling the egg, and tastier too. I have some broccoli and carrots with that miso-tahini-nut paste. The recipe made a lot of it, and I froze most of it. So it's become a pretty easy way to add a lot of flavor to the veggies. I used the last of the mandarin oranges for the fruit/dessert. Last minute I thought it wasn't enough fruit and added a few small frozen strawberries. They look a little weird here because they're still frozen. I take the pictures before I leave in the morning, not at lunch, because I'm using my laptop as a camera.
The strawberries were a bit better whole like that than they were when I sliced them. Still not as good as fresh, but not bad in a pinch.
This was my favorite bento so far. It's also the one that held together the least well in transit! There were edamame and furikake in my peaches, but it all tasted wonderful. I've been a bit intrigued with furikake since I watched Hana Yori Dango. One of the characters freaks out when the main character offers her a rice ball because she thinks it's covered in mold. But it's just furikake. Anyway, I made the carrot sesame furikake recipe, and it's my new favorite thing. I made a half batch, but even that was a lot of furikake. But like I said, it was Amazing! I'm not used to eating plain rice, but this style of lunch packing does generally work better with rice. Furikake makes that rice awesome. Just a warning though, the carrot sesame furikake is a bit spicy. I like spicy things (and oddly find I crave sweets less when I've been eating spicy things) so it was all good. I think it would still taste good if you left out or cut down on the red pepper flakes though.
Also included are edamame, asparagus with red onion, a hard boiled egg, and peaches. One of my co-workers complained that the onions were making her eyes burn. Which seems kind of incredible to me since there's like less than a table spoon of onions in there, and I couldn't even smell them, plus she was technically in the other room (there's no door but there is a short corridor between them). I guess some people really are more sensitive then others.
This week I actually made six bentos. I only work five days a week, so why six bentos? On Sundays I meet with a friend (sometimes more!) to just hang out and do some artwork. I usually get hungry, and there is food at the coffee shop where we meet, but it's both expensive and not very filling. So made a bento for that. Of course the week I got it together to do that, we ended up canceling due to illness. Nonetheless, the bento at home was quite tasty. I was quite tired of asparagus and the only other vegetable we had were frozen peas. So this is frozen peas on the bottom, rice on top with more of the carrot furikake, another tamagoyaki, and peaches. The peas were a bit bland since I just boiled them. But over very good.
This is the last of the six. I wanted to go back to my more usual food again as sort of a rest from the more Japanese style foods I've been eating. So I made penne with an improvised tomato sauce and meatless meatballs. I still wasn't feeling like asparagus again, so I made peas. To make them more flavorful I cooked the frozen peas in butter and some of the carrot furikake (this was awesome, and quite frankly the best frozen peas I've ever had, and I like frozen peas quite a bit really). There's also a hard boiled egg, some mandarin oranges, and a couple Chessmen. I must not have wrapped the Chessmen very well with the plastic wrap. Some of the juice from the oranges got in and made the edges a bit soggy. They were still edible, and yummy at that.
In case any of you are curious, and reading this far in (I know this is long, I'd probably just be looking at the pictures at this point...), I thought I'd explain the improvised tomato sauces. When I'm cooking just for myself, or making a smaller amount of food for our lunch or something, I usually don't want to either open a full jar of spaghetti sauce or a large can of crushed tomatoes for one of my home-made sauce recipes. So what I do instead is really easy. I'll saute some minced garlic in olive oil. When they start to turn a bit dark I add some diced onion (usually we have some already diced on hand since I try to chop more than I need when I cook and either freeze or just refrigerate whatever I don't need, though I should warn you, from some bizarre reason freezing onions seems to make them stronger in my experience). When the onions are semi-transparent I add a can of diced tomatoes, meatless meatballs (If I'm including them; if you're using real meat you should probably add them with the onions. The meatless meatballs just need to be heated up), and whatever spices I feel like. Cinnamon is surprisingly good. Usually I just use salt, pepper, and dried basil. Once the meatless meatballs are heated through, and most of the water from the tomatoes has boiled off (about ten minutes) taste the sauce. If it's not awesome add a bit of butter.
Week Four:
For this week the challenge is to focus on making bentos for other people. Which I pretty much completely ignored. The only person I have to make bentos for would be John, and frankly he's a grown man who can fend for himself at meal times. Plus y'know, I'm the breadwinner at the moment, so why should I take on a house-wife role as well? But the basic challenge is just to continue to make bentos, so that's what I did.
A bout of soul-crushing despair nearly made me give up on a bento for last Wednesday. But having this to eat at work really do make me feel better. It's like at least I'm doing something to take care of myself. So it does feel more important to make these when I'm feeling low. But I hadn't done any of the usual prep work. I had nothing planned, the kitchen was a mess, and I'd failed to go to the store so our food supplies were a bit spotty. Looking around the cupboards, I realized I just happened to have everything needed to make a very basic hummus. I'd never done it before, but it turns out hummus is ridiculously easy to make. Sorry the picture's so dark. The silicone baking cup on the lower right hand side has the hummus, with some sun dried tomatoes and olives on top. For the vegetable I have some broccoli (which I buy frozen by the way; Trader Joe's has some really good frozen foods, their frozen broccoli isn't all stems like most frozen broccoli), and there are mandarin oranges for the fruit/dessert. I added a hard boiled egg to make sure there's enough protein. For the grain I have the last of the Naan cut into hearts with that mini cookie-cutter.
The soul-crushing despair continued for a few days, which did prevent me from making a Thursday bento this week. But I was back to making them on Friday. I bought some Nori Komi Furikake from the Japanese grocery store near my apartment. It may be tied with the carrot furikake I made in week 3 for my favorite thing ever. It's just salt, seaweed, sugar, and sesame seeds. I love seaweed, and this is definitely my new favorite way to eat it. For this bento I made rice with the Nori Komi Furikake, lentils, carrots with more of the miso-nut paste and some peas thrown in for good measure, and peaches for the dessert.
Here we have rice and meatless meatballs, broccoli, tamagoyaki, and mandarin oranges. I tried to save time by mixing up the egg stuff while I was frying the meatless meatballs, which is why they're so dark on just the one side. Not the best bento yet, but not bad overall.
Sometime between Friday evening and Sunday morning the bulk of the soul crushing despair lifted (and has thus-far managed to stay away), so I had more energy for cooking. I made more of the sweet pepper and onion confit Sunday night with some help from John. We had it with veggie burgers for dinner that night (I was right, it is very good on burgers), and saved the rest for this bento. It's under the carrot kinpira I sort of impulsively made when I was poking around Just Bento and realized I had all the ingredients for it. The kinpira was pretty good, although to be honest I think it could have used a touch of sugar (or possibly mirin, but I don't actually know what that is so it's hard to say).
Some of the bentos this week haven't kept me full quite long enough. I've noticed it seems to depend on the protein. If there's not enough protein, I'm starving by the end of my shift. So here I have edamame and a tamagoyaki. The edamame are a good easy way to add protein (I buy shelled frozen edamame, so you just have to boil them until they're heated through), but they are rather difficult to contain. When I got out of my car to go to work I heard a plink, and sure enough when I opened the box to eat there were edamame everywhere.
Also included are rice with that seaweed furikake, and mandarin oranges with a couple peach chunks.
Remember how I said I mostly ignored the whole making bentos for other people thing? By Monday I was feeling generous enough that I did make John an extra tamagoyaki, and assembled it with the left over confit and kinpira to make a small bento-ish thing:
It has no grain, so he was sort of on his own there, but it does have the egg, some veggies, and even some mandarin oranges and peaches.
There's only one week left in the challenge! I'm already off to a start with the focus for week five. I'm so glad I just went ahead and did this. I'm definitely going to keep making bentos after the challenge itself is over.