Fish bento #2

I am very tired today, so my bento is basically just the contents of my fridge thrown together.

• 50g rice – typically, I only had a half-portion ready-frozen
• Egg in treasure bag – left over from earlier in the week
• Namuru – you can’t see this very well as it is under the sardine
• Steamed broccoli

The only thing I had to prepare this morning was the sardine, which I popped in the grill. The whole thing took about ten minutes.

Meaty bento #1

Today’s bento is in my little panda bento box, which is apparently for kids, but in my opinion it is deceptively small – you can pack a lot of food into it.

The top layer contains rice with petits pois. I froze the rice last week and put it into the box frozen with a tablespoon of petits pois on top which is why it doesn't look very neat. When it’s time to eat, I just pop it all in the microwave for 60 seconds. 

The bottom layer has quite a few different things in it In the panda’s ears are some portions of namuru. I also made mini meat wraps filled with broccoli stalks, a radish and some broccoli. Yummy!  

Vegetarian bento #2

I always have at least one entirely flesh-free day every week, and at least two flesh-free bentos. If I'm honest, I mostly do this for variety in my diet and because preparing meat and fish can be a bit of a hassle, but of course I am also keenly aware of the environmental impact of fishing and meat farming.

Today’s bento is a little less interesting than the others I did this week – but it is very colourful and also meat- egg- and dairy-free. I wanted to keep it fairly light as I am going out for pizza tonight - but not so light that I end up feeling hungry. 

There is some honey in the dressing, but that can easily be replaced with sugar if you need everything to be vegan. In fact, using white sugar in the recipe is actually more accurate. I also used some leftover pasta salad from the weekend that I wanted to use up, and it’s so colourful I thought it would combine well with my bright green Ojue bento box.

On the top layer, I’ve put the pasta salad:

On the bottom layer, I have a little chick filled with sesame dressing (1 tsp tahini, 1 tsp soy, 1/2 tsp honey or sugar), purple sprouting broccoli to dip into the dressing, tofu stuffed with carrot and ginger salad, and some radishes with panda picks.

Fish bento #1

This week I got a haul of new stuff from Bento & Co – so I have lots of new goodies to experiment with. Today I decided to use the Toji box. 

I like this one because it is very elegant – and it was inexpensive, too.

Today’s bento is fish-based. The main component is one of my favourite recipes by Jamie Oliver. I filled the shallow layer with 100g brown rice, which I topped with a grilled mackerel fillet. It looked a bit plain and brown, so I added an umeboshi for prettiness.

In the deep layer, I included a panda pot filled with the delicious dressing from Oliver’s recipe, some radishes spiked on cute panda picks, some purple sprouting broccoli, a portion of namuru, and some sliced poached carrot.

The only slightly annoying thing is that the panda's ears stick up too high for this box, so it didn't fit together as snugly as it should. However, thanks to the elastic band, it all held together well. 

Vegetarian bento #1

Over the weekend I bought a new lunch box. I couldn’t resist it because it’s shaped like a LEGO brick:

As a result, I was very excited about packing today’s lunch. It’s a much larger box than I usually pack, so I have used lots of low-calorie filler like radishes. 

• Namul – this is a salad made with blanched greens, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds and salt. I have topped each portion with a radish spiked on a panda pick to make it cuter and more colourful.
• Chopped radishes – to nibble on and to take up some space in the bento
• Egg in treasure bag – this is one of my favourite recipes of all time. I like to make a few at the start of the week and have them in bentos or slice them into soups.
• Poached carrot – this is just carrot that has been poached in the dashi/mirin/soy combo I used for the eggs
• Multi-coloured rice – I’m not sure the effect comes off that brilliantly, but there is supposed to be one layer of white rice and one layer of green rice. I’d say it is lightly green, and I have added some petits pois to enhance the effect. The green tinge was achieved by boiling the rice in the water I used to blanch greens for the namul

Friday bento

If you’ve read my last few entries you’ll be aware that I’ve been making a big effort to eat up my food stash over the past few weeks – I used up everything except a tub of homemade pasta sauce. Last night I made some venison burgers, and a few portions of venison stew made with mushrooms and port.  The burgers in particular are perfect for bento and are really easy to make.

Quick venison burgers

(makes 4, which is enough for two bentos)

100g minced venison

½ small red onion, chopped finely

1 button mushroom, chopped finely

1 tsp redcurrant jelly

Salt/pepper to taste

I find getting my hands dirty is the best way to make these! Put all the ingredients together in a bowl and combine well with your fingers or a spoon. Divide into four patties and cook in the grill or a non-stick frying pan – they take about three minutes on each side, but cook them to your personal preference.

Today’s bento is:

• Mini venison burgers
• Radishes
• Steamed savoy cabbage and broccoli stalks
• Carrot and ginger salad
• Sushi rice

You’ll notice there isn’t actually any rice in the bento box – I decided to use up some of the rice I froze a couple of weeks ago. It has to be reheated in the microwave and I don’t have one at home, so I take it into work in a sandwich bag and reheat it at work.

Leftovers can be yummy

One thing I notice when visiting various forums is that A LOT of adults waste food because they refuse to touch leftovers. 

Well, today’s bento is constructed from the FINAL odds and ends in my fridge, and I hope you'll agree that despite being a collection of leftovers, it still looks pretty yummy:

•    Chopped leftover chicken in hoisin sauce
• Chopped leftover tofu puffs in soy
• Leftover pink rice topped with carrot furikake
• Steamed savoy cabbage
• Mushrooms marinated in hoisin sauce

The only things I had to prepare from scratch were the steamed cabbage and the mushrooms. The rest was all ready and waiting. 

To make this totally vegetarian, all you would have to do is leave out the chicken and toss the mushrooms with the tofu.

A fairly cute bento

I haven’t really been going out lately, and the advantage of this is that I’ve been able to devote a fair amount of effort to my bento. 

For today’s effort, I wanted it to be cute, but I had limited ingredients – I am running out of stuff. I get most of my groceries delivered and the next delivery is tomorrow, so I am trying to use what I have and not buy anything extra. So, this is mostly composed of odds and ends I had in the fridge or freezer.

Top layer:

• A bed of shredded savoy cabbage, tossed in rice vinegar and black pepper
• Chicken marinated in hoisin sauce. I used biscuit cutters to cut the chicken into Tigger and Piglet faces

Bottom layer:

• Pink, bear-shaped onigiri, filled with carrot furikake. To make the rice pink, I added chopped beetroot to the pan before I put it on to boil. While warm it looked orange, but by the next morning it was a cute pink.
• Sliced broccoli stalk simmered in water and soy, with a few chilli flakes. I used to throw broccoli stalks away until a friend of mine recoiled in horror when he saw me doing it. They taste pretty nice!
• Beetroot salad – staple feature of my bentos!! 
• Tofu flowers with little rabbit faces cut into them – I used my sando stamps from Bento & Co for this

I had some of the elements, such as the pink rice and tofu flowers, left over from the weekend, so this bento didn’t take me any longer than usual to make. I just had to simmer the veg and cook the chicken.

The Accidental Bento

Today's bento came about because I had a cooking accident. On Sunday, while making up my beloved beetroot salad, I tipped in way too many chilli flakes. I scraped off what I could, but the result was still super-fiery.

On Monday, I took it along to work in my bento as usual - my eyes watered and my tongue burned!!

On Tuesday, I took a smaller amount and stirred it into my rice - but at that rate there was no way I was going to use it all up by the end of the week.

For today's bento I hit upon the idea of stirring it through pasta with a bit of yoghurt to cool it down, and judging from my initial sample I *think* it worked. Fingers crossed, and if it has, I will make the same again for lunch on Saturday.

Also in today's bento are some carrot sticks, some broccoli florets, and an egg.

Shopping the freezer

This month I booked a couple of holidays so funds are low and I am trying to save money/avoid waste by using the food in my freezer before buying anything new.

A quick nose round my freezer yesterday revealed the following:

• A chicken breast
• A beefburger
• Two chicken legs
• A chicken thigh
• A tub of chicken stock 
• Abag of rice stuffing (the kind of stuff you use to stuff tomatoes or courgettes)

So my next six bentos are going to involve using up that little lot...

Party girl bento

Today’s bento only happened because I did all my cooking for the week yesterday afternoon. I made:

• A batch of carrot and sesame furikake
• A batch of my spicy beetroot salad (raw grated beetroot tossed with sesame seeds, chilli flakes, honey and rice vinegar)
• Tamagoyaki for this morning
• Boiled some eggs for later in the week

I also remembered to take a portion of rice out of the freezer and the end result was that despite getting to bed after 3am, I was still able to pack a bento because all I had to do was pan-fry a burger and arrange everything in my box.

Not too shabby, eh?