Meaty bento #5 - Chili and cornbread

Sometimes life gets busy and you don’t have a lot of time for planning and preparing bento lunches. This is a great example of how you can use leftovers to prepare a cute bento – any stew and bread will do.

For my bento I used:

• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 portion chili con carne
• 50g rice
•  1 piece cornbread

I used the base of the removable section of the bento box to cut a half-moon of cornbread, then cut it in half to make a reasonable portion.

Because this bento box is rather deep, and to ensure a veggie element, I layered the bottom of both sections with chopped carrot, then on one side I added the chili, topped with a circle of cheese with nori to make a smiley face. On the other, I put the cornbread (with roasted chilli stripes) and some rice. The whole thing took me about 10 minutes to put together.

An even quicker version, which I made for my friend, was two tortillas folded into triangles and placed in a takeaway box with a portion of chili topped with cheese smiley faces.

Cute and quick, see.

Mix and match bento #1

This is a mix and match bento because while my version has meat in it, it doesn’t have to. I just used what I had to hand – you could easily swap in some tofu or more veggies or whatever you fancy, or leave that element out altogether.

It’s still really grey and muggy here in London and I’ve been trying to find dishes that fulfil my need for stodge, but are still healthy enough for Weight Watchers. And on top of this, I want my meals to look summery. Yes, I am demanding!

Today’s bento has a roasted vegetable salad and a lot of protein in the form of cheese and a pigeon breast :) I need to fill up today, it's Tuesday and I have exercise planned before lunch, and an 8km walk after work (and before dinner). 

Top layer: This aubergine salad by Abel and Cole is simply delicious. I adjusted the oil quantities in the dressing to reduce the WW points and left out the red onion because I forgot, but it still tastes really good and is probably less, um, fragrant, if you know what I mean. 

Bottom layer: I dusted a pigeon breast with lemon zest, salt and pepper, pan fried it and sliced it up. I then filled the box up with shredded gem lettuce and added 30g of cheese to go with my apple for dessert. 

The whole thing (30g cheese included) came to a modest 7 WW points and I felt very full after eating it, so mission accomplished!

Meaty bento #2: Bears in the Wood

Today's meaty bento is  a quick, cute bento:

Bed of rocket - The easy part. Remove rocket from packets and spread over the bottom of your bento!
Bear onigiri - I used my onigiri mould to make rice balls in the shape of a bear's face, and my nori punch for the faces.
Venison burgers - For the bears' bodies I used venison mince mixed with a little redcurrant jelly and onion and then shaped into oblongs. I pan-fried them and placed them under the onigiri to make a body
Carrots - Bears need paws! I used small carrot rounds for this. 

Post-holiday bento

You may have noticed a lack of bentos on these pages. That. my friends, is down to the fact that I have been in France on holiday. I am now back, and back on my diet (hehe) and back to bento.

Today's bento is pretty simple. In the top layer is 100g brown rice mixed with 2tbsp petits pois (this is a great way to sneak in a portion of veg when space is limited) and topped with little stars cut from carrots.

In the bottom layer I put some purple sprouting broccoli, steamed carrot sticks, mini venison burgers (I made and froze these a couple of weeks ago) and a boiled egg moulded to look like a bunny:

The most time-consuming elements were boiling the rice (I just put an extra pan on when cooking my dinner) and making the stars, but it was still only about 35 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!  

Protein for a cold day

For today’s bento I used:

Brown sushi rice mixed with chopped honey roast ham and topped with broccoli

Spicy beef meatballs – I made these ages ago and froze them, so I can remember exactly what I put in them, but it was something along the lines of cumin, chilli and tomato puree; egg in treasure bag; daikon in soy and mirin dressing

 

The only thing I did wrong was leave it til the last minute – this was all food I could have packed last night, but of course I faffed about and ended up doing it this morning and causing myself stress!

I made an effort this morning...

I haven’t really done much bento lately as the last few weeks have been a combination of NO TIME or LOTS OF LEFTOVERS or BEING HOME SICK and eating dry bran flakes for lunch because it was a better option than getting out of bed.

However, in celebration of my lovely new bento box:

 

I decided to make an effort this morning.

So, here we have organic brown sushi rice tossed with a handful of fine green beans which I’ve chopped. On top are some cute little honey roast ham shapes.

 

On top of that I put some little silicone cups filled with daikon radish in soy/mirin dressing; olives; chopped green beans; boiled quail’s eggs, and finally, I filled a bowl with healthy broccoli tossed with a little salt and some black sesame furikake.