Saturday, August 7, 2010


"What IS that?"

I made this bento when my mom and sister were in the kitchen, and when I sat down with the final project, I got two blank stares. (My sister likes to snort obviously as she passes me in the kitchen when I'm making a bento-lunch, and I have to admit the halfway point does look pretty ridiculous.)

Maybe it was the blue rice :)

This lunch:
  • Rice
  • Little Tuna rectangles (they came out uneven)
  • Veggie sticks, carrot sticks, grapes, animal crackers.

Pretty standard for me. I'm not really a 'cute' packer (understatement of the century) and right now I'm not even a good packer, really....Maybe the cute will come out in the future.

xx

Friday, August 6, 2010

Bento on the Go

A really good friend of mine was in a scholarship pageant recently (Miss Teen PA), and I went along with her parents on her interview/formal wear day to help do her hair and lend some moral support.

I wasn't sure when or if we'd be stopping for food/eating lunch, so I packed a little container with loose animal crackers, goldfish, and veggie sticks (not pictured), and then a quick and easy lunch, which I ate in the dorm room she had stayed the night in.



  • lots of grapes, carrot dividers, animal crackers
  • Soft Pretzel Bites (love these! 30 seconds to microwave and pack. Another thing I use in place of rice sometimes)
  • Butterfly tuna sandwich

xx

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Fail.

I made a nice bento for dinner (band camp!) but was in such a rush out the door after a hectic day that I forgot to take a picture of it!!

Let me tell you. After being outside spinning a flag for 2 hours, it TASTED just as good as I think it looked :)
So, here's an old-ish bento pic I'm not completely fond of:

But MAN I do love me some turkey wrap. I think it's the mayonnaise, which I know is bad. But I love it anyway.

Anyway, in this sloppy sloppy bento:

  • Turkey/Mayo/Romaine/Swiss wrap. I just pick the leafy romaine pieces out of a bag of salad we have, because iceberg doesn't taste good in a wrap (AND has little or no nutritional value that I know of)
  • Leftover baby ear of corn on the cob!*
  • Hash Browns! When I don't feel like rice, I have these instead. I doctor 'em up with seasonings so I'm not using a ton of salt.
  • pretzels and baby animal crackers

*My dad works with a woman who has a small farm, and she was selling them $3/dozen - which seemed like an okay price until we started husking them. Some had been ruined by bugs (EW) some were too sparse to be worth anything, and the rest were all short and small. Of course, I exclaimed in delight at the 'short and small' because of course my mind was screaming 'BENTO MATERIALLLLL!"

(Today my mother mentioned that Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and my response was 'Good. I can use all the extra turkey in my lunches.')

xx

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

a family staple - Penne

Alright, I feel a little bad. The closest the food in this next post will ever get to a bento would be on the off chance that it's served as leftovers (and the rare chance that we actually HAVE some left over) - and I have a nagging suspicion it's not very healthy either.

Not sure what exactly you'd call this - in our house, we just say "Let's make penne-broccoli!" and everyone knows what that is :)

What's in it?

  • 8 oz penne
  • 8 oz shrimp or chicken (tonight we used shrimp because we got some when it was on sale at the store)
  • as much broccoli as you like (I usually end up eating most of it)
  • Cream of Chicken soup (we always use Campbell's, because it's easy and it was from one of their advertisements that we got the recipe)
  • 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese, like the kind you would sprinkle over spaghetti, we sometimes use less
  • enough milk to thin out the soup (what we do is put the milk into the soup can so we can get the last of the soup out of it too)

Whew! That was a lot of parenthesis. I used to get in trouble in English class for using parenthesis too often. And trite phrases. Well, a lot of things.

Now an up-close to make your mouth water?

xx

Flower Power

For holidays/birthdays/etc, I usually make a gift of sugar cookies or other sweets, so I've got about 20 or 30 of those Wilton cookie cutters. Some of the shapes are questionable (the hand and foot digits look more like claws) but there's always the standard heart, circle, flower, whatever.

Anyway, so I dug them out of the closet (haven't used them since shamrocks for St. Pattie's Day I think) and attempted to cut a flower out of the sandwich round:

Didn't go as well as I had hoped.

In today's lunch:
  • tuna flower sandwich
  • more leftover egg roll! yum! We make a bunch and freeze them so I can just thaw them for lunch. I'm attempting to do this with a lot of things in prep for the school year. Suggestions?
  • the usual baby carrots, veggie sticks, animal crackers, and grapes.

In other news, I just ordered an actual bento box from JBox. It was only $3.50, and holds the same capacity as the tupperware I'm using! Holy Cow!

It should come in 2-4 weeks. (I want it nowwww!)

Monday, August 2, 2010

Getting the hang of this?

My third attempt is my favorite so far! I read on another blog (or maybe several, I've lost track) that some people add food coloring to the water they make rice in. Usually for themed lunches, but I figured the last time I made rice it looked so...boring! So I added some color :)

In this lunch:

  • Food colored rice with some left over plain chicken
  • Leftover egg rolls (home made! but also deep fried, so still not very healthy, hehe) cut in slices
  • Baby Carrots
  • Animal Crackers under Veggie sticks
  • Grapes, yum!

xx

In other news:

I don't really make any bentos over the weekend, because I often eat with one or both of my parents, depending on how busy we are. So, weekend posts will either be sans bento, or bento for special occasions/catch-up bentos ;)

And perfect opportunity for actually getting a packed lunch out of the house: Band Camps!

I do not wear a plume or play an instrument, but I do spin a flag (you are never ever allowed to tell a member of our color guard that they 'twirl' anything; they will hurt you with their six foot flag poles).