Inarizushi or...??

5 a.m. this morning found me making my first attempt at inarizushi, those little pillows of goodness which have fascinated me since I first saw them on someone's bento blog.

I had purchased 'fried tofu pouches' in Madison WI at Brian's graduation, and froze them. Now they were thawed and ready. First I read a bunch of recipes on the internet and developed a sort of average idea from all the variations, mostly in sauce ingredients.

The tofu pockets first get rinsed in boiling water to wash the oil off, then poached in a flavoring sauce of soy, mirin, sugar, salt, broth, etc. Here is where a lot of differences come in.

Then they are drained and dried, then stuffed with sushi rice and whatever else you like.

So first off, my tofu pouches were more like blocks, so I think I bought the wrong thing. They had to be cut open with a knife, whereas the recipes all say "gently press open with your fingers", and there would have been no way to "fold over the end like an envelope after filling"; these brickies would just have broken.

However! I had fun toasting black sesame seeds for the first time - they pop like crazy!! and I also used my onigiri press for the first time.



This works really swell, especially if you remember to dip it in water between uses. I made some really honkin onigiri, each one having an ume plum in its middle; maybe they are too fat really - you might need a nap after eating one of these for lunch.

Black sesame tastes great but does present that dental hazard: the smile of black spots! That would really liven up my office hours. "Hello!" (big smile)-- Student leaves in a hurry...

Hello Salad Kitty!

This salad bento features home-grown sprouts, carrot flowers, white radish bundled into the carrot flower cutout rings, a babybel cheese with the flower cutout, walnuts, plum vinegar bunny, cucumber pickle, sesame tofu, and Andy the Axe-Murderer (hard boiled egg).

I don't know why making a simple friendly egg face always gets me this type of scary result.

This furoshiki with little rabbits frolicking or staring at the moon is my favorite. Why do rabbits frolic in the moonlight on so many Japanese art works? Is there a rabbit mythology?

There's a "moon viewing festival" in Japan and there's a rabbit on the moon:

"O-tsukimi:

The festival of 'O-tsukimi' is the moon viewing festival based on the Japanese Folk Tale of 'The rabbit in the Moon'. From this Folk Tale the Japanese people have believed since long ago, that rabbits lived on the moon. Even today in Japan, the moon is pictured with the scene of a rabbit or rabbits making mochi (pounded rice cakes).

During this time the moon has a special name 'Chuushuu-no-meigetsu' which in English means 'the picturesque moon of mid-autumn'. This moon occurs during July, August and September in Japan on the lunar calendar. During the months of September and October, the weather in Japan is clear with few clouds and the moon is all the more beautiful, perfect for 'Otsukimi'.

The Japanese people celebrate 'O-tsukimi' by making 'Moon viewing rice balls' and collecting 'Aki-no-nan' which are the typical flowering grasses of autumn. These are bush clover, pampas grass, arrowroot, fringed pink, patrinia palmata, agueweed and Chinese bellflower. After the rice balls are made, and the 'Aki-no-nan' collected, they are offered to the gods to pray for a good harvest on their crops for a year.

The story of 'The rabbit in the Moon' is a story about the Old-Man-of-the-Moon who one day looked down into a big forest on Earth and saw three friends sitting together around a fire. These three were a rabbit, a monkey and a fox. On deciding to find out which of the three is the kindest, he goes down to Earth and changes himself into a beggar. He asks the three friends to help him and that he is very hungry, on hearing this they all run of to find him some food. The monkey brought back a lot of fruit to the man and the fox brought back a big fish. However, the rabbit is unable to find any food for the man, and so asks the monkey to gather some firewood and the fox to build a big fire with the wood. Once the fire was burning very brightly, the rabbit explained to the beggar that he didn't have anything to give him, so he will put himself in the fire and when he is cooked the beggar could eat him. Just before the rabbit jumped into the fire the beggar turned back into the Old-Man-of-the-Moon and told the rabbit that he was very kind, and that he shouldn't do anything to harm himself. Because he decides that the rabbit is the kindest of the three, he takes him back to the moon to live with him.

That is why the Japanese people believe that if they look carefully at the moon when it is shining brightly, they can see the rabbit there, where the old man put him so very long ago."


(This info comes from Latrobe University Australia's website, from what looks to be a student project on Japanese folk tales. Thanks Elisha Brooks and yay for student mythology projects!!)



So maybe these little bunnies are celebrating Otsukimi!



Or maybe they're just happy that It's Friday!! YAAAAY!!

Hasty Bento for a Thursday

Jan's bento for today had to be fast, because we were up late at his birthday dinner and watching "Flatliners" to celebrate. How appropriate for his X0'th birthday, to watch a movie about people visiting the afterlife! That didn't occur to me until this morning...

Anyway I had wanted to make inari zushi but that is going to have to wait. (I bought some ready made tofu pockets in Madison and froze them; we'll see how they do after freezing.)

Anyway one of my favorite hurry-up bentos involves tortilla wraps in whatever way. today they have cream cheese, soy vegetarian "taco filling" which is amazingly good, and spicy sprouts. I stuffed little sugar snap peas in amongst the pinwheels, and added a container of hot chili sauce.




I also made him some white peach and lime salsa which smells heavenly, and put in some celery for dipping. Peanut butter pretzels with a few recreational wasabi peas, in the lid of bear bento and he is ready for the day!!

Which Bento Boxes are Microwave Safe?

OnceUponAnEquine wondered about bentos and the microwave.

All these bento boxes are microwave safe to 140 degrees centigrade, which seems to be a common threshold -- that applies to the container and not the lid. Most lids are not recommended for microwaving; Hello Kitty in the picture has an inner seal around the edge of the lid that shouldn't be heated, some of the other lids have inlay, painted designs, or a lacquery finish that shouldn't go into the micro.

So my bento for today:



has a non-microwaveable outer and inner lid but can otherwise be heated. I love this little blue bento! It has a lift-out divided compartment for small amounts of something wet; today I put ginger jam and honey chestnuts in that, and yogurt beside it. The big section has chili hot beans, jasmine rice, tofu stripes, and miso zucchini.

The top of this box has the most wonderful little slogan:



"SO MUCH, IT REACHED THE POINT WHERE YOU CAN SWIM!"

This applies to many life situations, such as academia, where I work, and where the BS factor often suits this slogan; or happiness, which sometimes just floats up around us that much...the little seal and fishies are slightly 3-D and the texture of this box is satiny.

Finally here is a photo of my 2 exhausted poochies, after their morning constitutional today:




Poor Gabey is trying to hold onto his favorite chair, but Rufus is trying to butt him out; very typical.

June is Spa Month at Casa Mia

So I have declared June to be a month of health and exercise and right eating, in which bentos will play a major role. It's spa month! I'm going to start every day with a juice of the raw things pictured above: carrots, a small apple, fresh ginger, a small lemon, and some rhubarb. this is very tasty - I'm always surprised how much sweetness that one little apple contributes.

Then I have a few other "include" resolutions, such as dark green leafy vegetables as in today's bento:



Kale sauteed in sesame oil, a chicken andouille sausage with dill pickle sections on lobster skewers, some neat hot sauce in the little container, cute mochi, pink grapefruit, and wasabi peas.

Sriracha hot chili sauce is my latest craving; I wake up thinking about it. It's great on greens, chips, meat, celery, eggs, you name it. Not firy hot, and very flavorful.


And then there's:


My new exercise coach Jillian... 30 Days of Shred! At the end she says 'You have just been shredded". Jillian is just sinister enough to be intimidating, as in "Don't you dare think about taking a break!" I love it. There are 3 levels and I will probably content myself with level 1 for quite a time; it is enough.

Also plan to take the dogs for a one hour walk 4 days a week. Plan already being implemented; doggies exhausted the rest of the day.

Daily bento, some cooking experiments, and drink lots of water.

So that's my June Spa Month plan. Hope I stick to it.

"Bento for My Horses!"

This is not as crazy as it sounds. Today I packed a bento box lunch for my horse. Well I guess that is actually pretty crazy. But:

On a longer trail ride I like to bring a few treats for my horse. His faves are: granola bars, grapes, and carrots. So the usual thing is: stuff the snacks in the saddle bag, drag them out all crushed and broken hours later, feed him mushed grapes and broken up granola bar, etc. End up with wadded plastic bag that might or might not get taken out of the saddle bag at trail's end and if not, end up with moldy mush a few weeks later.

Today I was going out for a 2 hour ride so I packed him a bento snack box.

Here it is:


I also packed myself a bento so that I could skip breakfast and have a bento brunch out on the trail:

Yummy organic pink grapefruit, fried basmati rice, and peanut butter pretzels.

As always with horses, the question, "What could go wrong?" is not rhetorical. I had no sooner stopped for lunch and placed the bentos on a log:


...than my horse John decided that red thing was interesting.

He was merely following the #1 Commandment of The Horse:

If It Looketh Interesting, Thou Shalt Try to Eat It.

Faster than I could say NO, JOHN!, he had the bento belt off, the compartments separated, the contents available and half of them eaten.

By this time I was thinking bento box rescue, so I dived in and did an intervention between his moochy lips and the container. He was unable to open the granola bar HA HA NO OPPOSABLE THUMBS!! and so I was able to defer this much of his gratification at least.

It then devolved upon me to help him get the carrot bits out of the brushy ground cover and offer them up to His Highness;


That took care of his snack, with a bit more drama than I'd expected. Now it was time for me to eat my own bento brunch.

This was tricky as I had brought one tiny slippery pair of chopsticks, and I had to hold his lead rope while eating. Plus, John decided that fried rice was something he had not yet enjoyed in life and that was a crime against equinedom.

Why did I not tie him to a tree, you may well ask?

Well that was because I had put his cute bear bells on his neck today, and I knew that if he had a tree to rub on he would follow Equine Commandment #2:

If Possible, Thou Shalt Break It.

So I juggled horse, chopsticks, and bento container as he alternately munched grass and loomed his big face into my space to beg for fried rice.


I gave up on the grapefruit sections and they are sitting in the fridge even as I write, a snack for a later more peaceful time. The peanut butter pretzels melted in the saddle bag:

..although you can see I ate one of them anyway, big mistake as the scent of peanut butter makes John revert to Hungry-Hungry-Caterpillar mode.

I think that horse bentos are a thing that needs some work. I believe I am a person who can take on that work. The ideal sequence of events may be: tie horse, eat one's own bento while horse noshes on grass, then feed horse his bento.

"What Could Go Wrong?"