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...

Late riser bento

Just because you've woken up late doesn't mean you have to buy a sandwich for lunch!!

I try to have a couple of items prepared in advance for the whole week. Rice is always one of them - I cook it and freeze it in bento-sized amounts. This week, my other item is the beetroot salad you've probably seen cropping up again and again (I made it last week, too, I love beetroot!).

The other advance prep I did for today's bento was taking a chicken thigh out of the freezer to defrost in the fridge.

This morning, I leapt out of bed, put some porridge on (low heat) and tossed the chicken in some harissa. Once washed, I leapt out of the shower, gave the porridge a stir, popped the chicken into a frying pan and ran upstairs to get dressed.Once dressed, I flipped the chicken over to cook the other side, stirred some salt and a few grand of dark chocolate into my porridge and chopped some chard while it cooled. Once the chicken was cooked, I quickly stir-fried the chard (3 mins max) with some sesame oil and soy and popped it into the bento box with the chicken on top.

Ok, so I forgot my miso soup, forgot to put the laundry on and left the washing-up until this evening, but I think it was still a pretty good effort :)

Chicken and broccoli bento

Today’s bento reflects the fact that I woke up earlier than usual this morning, hehe. 

• Rice sprinkled with furikake
•  Chicken breast marinated in balsamic vinegar and soy and sprinkled with sesame seeds. This is one of Makiko Itoh’s recipes, only I forgot to roll the meat in sesame seeds before I fried it, so I just sprinkled them on at the end.
• Stir-fried chard
• Steamed broccoli
• Broccoli stem kinpira

The whole of this, by the way, comes to a total of 7 WW points, so that is a very light lunch indeed!

Quickly, quickly

I woke up late today, so today’s bento isn’t particularly imaginative. In fact, it’s three rather hastily composed columns of leftovers from earlier in the week, and took me a total of two minutes. Spend five and you’d get the columns straight!

L-R:

• Sushi rice
• Stir-fried chard with soy and sesame
• Chick pea stew

This post is useless without photos

I wasn’t organised enough to photograph today’s bento, but it tasted so nice I thought I would document it. 

• As usual, 100g (cooked weight) brown rice
• Pea shoots with ginger: This si so easy and so delicious! I made a few days’ worth by heating 1tsp of olive oil and 1tsp of sesame oil and adding two crushed garlic cloves, half a finely chopped onion and a chunk of ginger, also finely chopped. Once these ingredients had softened, I added a bag of fresh pea shoots and cooked until wilted. The bottom of my bento was 50/50 rice and pea shoots.
• Easy carrot salad: grate carrot, drizzle with soy
• Lazy cucumber salad: slice cucumber, drizzle with rice vinegar. For a really flavoursome experience, you could marinate the cucumber overnight
• For protein: two hard boiled eggs

Quick, easy, lazy, but one of the nicest bentos I’ve ever made. I should be home earlier tonight, so tomorrow’s effort will be a bit more impressive…

Back to bento

I haven't been doing bentos lately as the dark mornings have made it increasingly hard for me to wake up early enough. But I got such lovely things in this week's veg box that I was eager to use them.

Today’s bento is fairly simple – I was pressed for time. Still, I think it looks pretty!

Part 1, easy: brown rice boiled and then doused with rice seasoning

Part 2, easy; boiled egg, sliced in half and decorated with nori pieces

Part 3:  Four of my colourful chard leaves and chopped the stalks. I then softened them in a few tablespoons of water with onion, slices garlic, salt and pepper. This works just as well as frying, but without the fat. At the end, I stirred in a teaspoon of butter – not enough to soften the veg or push up the calories, but enough to add a great flavour.

End result: yummy.