Fishy Fishy but Egg Salad!

This little double-decker koi bento is one of my favorites but quite challenging to pack, for some reason.

In this one for Jan, I put egg salad - one of my ultimate comfort foods; when I am on my deathbed, bring me some egg salad with capers and Kewpie mayo and I will die quietly I promise! -- and a few slices of Cure 81 ham, plus sugar snap peas and Persian cucumber pickles I made hastily and they're so good.

Just as some bento boxes seem to take in way more food than you'd expect, some others take in less, and that's my feeling about little koi. It's killer cute, but you need to be strategic. Employ strategery. That kind of thing.

'But the instructions made it sound so easy!'

Things we won't be trying again soon: making egg flowers for bento.



This sorry mess, the massacre of an innocent egg, was the result. Beneath the shards of my dignity there are nice cold sesame noodles, and the other half of Mr. Koi has raw carrots splashed with plum vinegar and couple of nice crisp olives. The vinegar will caress these carrots all morning and by noon they will be fragrant and salty and tangy...yum.

Jan is getting the koi bento today; mine has the same contents minus the axe-murdered egg, but plus Hello Kitty cookies in the lid:



And speaking of koi: the new place where I am boarding my horse John has a pond with actual koi in it!! They are orange, white, and orange-and-white, very pretty and mystical. Somehow fish create an alternate reality of quiet under the surface of the everyday. I love watching them!