Mr. Bento for the Soup Win Again!!

When you need soup for lunch, nobody does it better than Mr. Bento. The containers never leak, the outer tube is insulated, and miso soup that starts out blazing hot in the morning is still tasty-warm by noon.

I also had some lemongrass ramen with some of the new crop of bean sprouts I grew in my kitchen window, my little winter farm:



They are so snappy and good! They make a very nice addition to a sandwich, omelet, or tortilla wrap.


Everybody bento!

Green Curry and Thai Sprouted Rice

Green curry is not beautiful. I tried to dress it up with spring onion 'flowers'. But to make up for its humble appearance, this curry is awesomely good. I made it using a small can of curry sauce concentrate that I bought at an Asian grocery in Madison. It requires mixing with a can of coconut milk. It has just the right amount of heat and a wide spectrum of curry flavor. Plus it made my house smell divine for 2 days.

Red Thai sprouted rice goes with it so well.

Jan also has some broccoli lightly steamed, a citrus salad with coconut, and a super-dark Belgian chocolate seashell from Trader Joe's. This will be a good bento for a winter's day.

Sprouted Rice is my New Obsession

Red Thai Rice, sprouted 5 days

I have always loved growing my own sprouts, but never tried rice until this batch.

In the past my mung bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts have been grown in old pickle jars, with happy success. This Christmas I bought myself an actual 'sprouting jar' with mesh draining lids of varying density for smaller or larger seeds.

Sprout growing takes me back to my hippie days in Gainesville Florida, where my first-ever health food restaurant meal was a grilled cheese sandwich with alfalfa sprouts and a mango smoothie. Aahhh that was an experience. Because it was in the early days of health food, this sandwich also had fake bacon bits, probably made from petroleum products. But it was awesome. "Far out" even.

I have been reading about sprouted rice and other grains, and at www.sproutpeople.com there is a ton of information and encouragement for home sprouting.

This red Thai rice has a sweet nutty flavor and cooked up beautifully with the little sprouts still attached, in my fuzzy logic rice cooker. It is going to be dinner tonight with green curry and coconut orange salad.

Here's my sprouting jar from the SproutPeople:



It's flat-sided, so it rests nicely in your kitchen window on its side to give the sprouts a large area to air themselves; and it's nice and large so that you can grow a big week's worth batch for bento delights!

I am now soaking mixed beans and grains, also purchased from the SproutPeople and guaranteed to send my health quotient skyrocketing into the New Year!!

Live food, just as Nature intended it....maybe. I don't know about the nutritional magic but fresh sprouts are certainly tasty.

Roasted Yams for the BOMB Challenge!

"BOMB" equals "Best of the Month Bento" and it's a challenge offered by HapaBento. To enter, you just have to roast something for a bento, and send a link of a photo (or just email a photo) to HapaBento. The winner is selected at random so I have a chance of winning *--*

Today I roasted yam slices and carrots for Jan's and my bentos. To roast yams, which are awesomely sweet when prepared this way:

--Preheat oven to 425 or quite a hot oven
--Scrub and slice yams
--Place slices in bowl and sprinkle with olive oil and salt; stir to lightly coat.
--Spread in one layer on cookie sheet
--Roast for 10-15 minutes or until soft to a fork piercing.

The carrots were done the same way. Orange and yellow vegetables have some awesome nutritional value that I can never remember, but it's important.

To complete the lunch Jan has a sandwich made with Boca-burger (vegetarian) and egg and cheese on a thin low-carb bun, some broccoli, a pickled mild jalapeno, and a chocolate.

Slightly Mexican Bento for a Frigid Tuesday

We so cold! Minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. My dogs hate going outside in this and I can't blame them.

Jan's bento has a whole wheat tortilla wrapped around egg, jalapenos, and cheese, lettuce and broccoli, pinto beans mashed into frijoles, sour cream, salsa, and some pretzel pieces. In the carry bag is a clementine and a fortune cookie.

Demonic Survivor of Apple Massacre

It was a terrible scene. Pieces of murdered apple lay everywhere, and this ghastly icon was the only thing left standing. It just shows that sometimes having an evil expression on your face really does help you survive.

To all of you who can carve apples into lovely bunnies, or checkerboards, or suspension bridges, or harpsichords, my hat is off.

To be more precise, I resent you a lot. In fact when I think of you, I get an expression on my face that is a lot like the demonic apple wedge above. How the h#!! do you do it?

Jan's new panda bento for back-to-work today has ginger pork, sticky rice, spicy green beans, a demonic apple wedge, carrot lime slaw, a clementine, and a ginger caramel.

May the Eye of Mordor not fall upon your lunch today.

Happy Holidays Bento Pals!

Not much bento activity these holidays; we had 2 feet of snow and spent a lot of time doing this:



(that's me with the snowblower at the end of my driveway)...

...and this:



Santa did bring me a nice new bento box though, so I look forward to many happy-lucky lunches in the New Year!!

Happy New Year to everyone and here's wishing you health, love, happiness, and bento in 2010!! Itedakimasu!!

Super-packed Bento

Upper level: jasmine rice and umeboshi, broccoli with rice vinegar and mirin, sesame tofu.

Lower level: Kiwi, cherry tomatoes, clementine, baby carrots.

I stir-fried the broccoli in a tiny bit of sesame oil; then for the last 3 minutes of
cooking I poured about 2 teaspoons of rice vinegar and 1 tsp of mirin over the broccoli and just simmered that. It was so good!

I've been wrapping bento box Christmas gifts (share the obsession!) along with copies of Susan Yuen's lovely Hawaii's Bento Box Cookbook for all my friends who have expressed even the tiniest interest in bento. I hope that in 2010 more of us will be sharing the love of bento!

Darling Clementines!

Is there anything better on this earth? These sweet and tasty naturally bento-sized fruit are packed with nutrients and enzymes for health.

Something about winter and snow makes me yearn for citrus. When I was 4 years old, I used to ride my tricycle to my grandfather's house every morning. I think I was a little pest. But Grampie always welcomed me with a smile and he always made us each a glass of fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice. I can still see his old man's gnarly hands and the green ceramic juice thingy. And his sweet smile.

Food, love, memory.

Love the Salad Rolls!

Jan's bento today has: fresh veggie-tofu salad rolls, carrots and broccoli, a few rounds of roasted golden yam with cheese stars in between them, spinach and lettuce lining the bento box, and skewers of fresh shrimp. Kitty holds spicy peanut sauce, and another little container of wasabi mayonnaise is included for the shrimp. In top of the furoshiki I added a clementine and a mini-Snickers bar.

When I first was learning to cook, I followed recipes slavishly. I was even one of those fools who would go out and buy the specific brand of baking soda recommended by the baking soda company who were presenting the recipe, in a magazine say. I was so literal!

Now I finally have the courage to change things around and sometimes it doesn't work, but it is much more fun. These salad rolls are a little wacky:



I used soba noodles instead of rice noodles, because soba is better for Jan's diabetes. I had no mung bean sprouts so that (actually my favorite ingredient!) is absent. I used a food processor to shred the veggies, which resulted in too finely chopped cabbage tending to fall out of the roll unless you exercise extreme care. I added radishes for color and spice. And I cut little tofu planks to lay along inside each roll. But they taste wonderful!! I tested them thoroughly last night. *-*

Breakfast Bento and a Pomegranate Tip

Friday I had to get to work extremely early so I brought a breakfast bento.

In the top container, yogurt, blueberries, and some nuts.
In the bottom container, a toasted mini-bagel with peanut butter, a clementine, and some pomegranate seeds.

Now here's a neat way to get your pomegranate seeds out & separated without producing a bloody mess on your counter.

Slice just barely through the pomegranate skin from the outside, in quarters, like this:



Then peel the skin down gently along the slices, to reveal the seeds in all their glorious little compartments:



The seeds can then easily be removed and you don't smash them, as you would when cutting the whole fruit in sections first.

Usually when I make a great discovery like this, it turns out that everybody knew it already...so forgive me if this tip is already general knowledge!

My New Favorite Bento Seller on EBay

Oh my...I have been browsing unnecessary bento boxes on EBay and I found a new favorite seller: priesjapan. They are located in Japan but have pretty reasonable shipping, and a 'new buyer' offer of two shippings for the price of one.

I feel a bit guilty in telling you about their bento boxes because...they are so cute!!
And their descriptions in killer-cute Engrish are even better. I just bought the one above. Here is part of the information from their ad:



And there's more, about size of bento boxes:

"Most failure at the purchase of a lunch box is size differences.
Even if size is describing numerically, you should not have feelings.
If this is seen, you can realize a size, as it had a lunch box in the hand.
Your failure is defended!"

I feel much better.

"A Lunch Box is a casket of lunch.
All the menus are settled in one.
A full-course lunch starts at the moment of opening a Lunch Box.
Let's enjoy Japanese Lunch Box Menu using this Lunch Box!"

OK!! I'm in. Even if you aren't shopping for bento boxes, go look at their collection. They are the real thing!

I admit I also bought this one, even though it was a bit $$$:



I could not resist the inscription" The sheep is saying, "WHY AM I FEELING SO COLD?" Haha; too perfect for this frigid winter day.

Soba Bento

O how I love soba noodles!

Did you know soba are lower in carbohydrates than most other types of noodle? Important for diabetics and dieters. These lovely buckwheat noodles stand up to a sauce, keep their texture, and are very satisfying in a bento lunch. They always get a high score on the NHAB Scale: Not Hungry Again Bento.

So today, in the midst of a cold snap (it's 1 degree F. outside as I write!), my bento has:

Spinach sauteed briefly in olive oil, sesame soba, carrots and 'egg rolls' (flat omelet rolled and sliced); then in the other tier, sugar snap peas, clementine, and blueberries.

Stay warm everyone!

"How Have You Been?"

I love it when my lunch talks to me.

Especially in a helfpul, slightly enabling manner.

This little bento is willing to bring me anything, anything! I could ask it for rubies, or a horse property in Kentucky. A new saddle! Or maybe this bento box has magic powers and could make it not be Monday.

As it is, it is bringing me 3 fat umeboshi and black sesame onigiri, soy sauce in the bunny, ginger pork meatballs, and veggies, with a nice pear tied up in the furoshiki.

What more could I want really?!

NQBR: "Densha Otoku: Train Man" You must seee!!

Continuing my digression about movies, you have got to see "Densha Otoku: Train Man" right now!!!


Don't delay. Just rent it, buy it, find it on NetFlix, whatever you have to do. Watch this movie as soon as possible.

You will love it I guarantee and I stand behind my guarantee 100%.

"Train Man" is a geeky young Japanese man who has never had a girlfriend in his 22 years of life. A random encounter with a belligerent drunk on a train causes him to come to the aid of a pretty lady, and the movie unfolds from this situation.

But this does not begin to describe the cuteness of this movie. Train Man is a member of some online community, and the film flips back and forth from his online advisors, many of them as geeky and inexperienced as he is, to his actual situation: seeking advice about what to do with a prospective date.

Train Man changes his appearance on their advice: haircut, new clothes, shaving, etc.


A trio of hysterically funny online friends who happen to be the geekiest men in the universe completely captivate you and make you want to date all of them. "NAAAHH!!! She is inviting him to her house!!!! It's the ultimate defeat for all of us!!"

Absurdly comic scenes involving them are the most crazy/cute moments of the film.

As here they are depicted involved in a fantasy trench warfare situation. They may be gaming or they may just be thinking about their crazy online lives without dates.



The female lead looks a bit older than the male lead and I found this refreshing. Nothing in the film addresses it. She just is who she is: a youngish woman still living with her parents, no boyfriend until Train Man comes along.

The film has so much cute detail and so much visual beauty that you will certainly enjoy it. And without giving too much away I hope I can say: it looks like happily ever after is what's promised at the end.

Anime Fun!! "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds"

It doesn't usually take me 20 years to see a movie but with this one, it did.

OK I am little behind the cultural trends. "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds" was released by Studio Ghibli in 1984, based on a manga series that ran from 1982-1990. I got it from NetFlix with special features including a history of Studio Ghibli that was...not terribly exciting, except that it showed how many cigarettes Japanese men can smoke in a day - the overflowing ashtrays, the guys talking with cigarettes dangling from their lower lip, it was apparently a very smoky era for the anime movie.

Nausicaa is a great role model for girls, except for the fact that she appears to have given up wearing underwear.



She talks to trees and animals, she is utterly fearless, she collects botanical samples, she hates violence, she flies a glider with the skill of Luke Skywalker, and she saves the world.

The creature with the multiple eyes up above is called an Om, and when angered its eyes glow blood-red. The Oms on the march in this movie are visually stunning, as indeed is everything else about it. It is old-style drawn animation and has a peaceful beauty about it that digital animation lacks.

Set in a post-nuclear world like so many other films, this one shows a fragile culture kept non-toxic by the gracious winds which sweep in from the sea, and by a forest of trees who are hard at work cleansing the earth of toxins. The forest is misunderstood and feared by everyone except Nausicaa, who finally discovers its secret and thereby the key to saving human civilization.

There's a sad quality to the film: Nausicaa is battling against the inherent violence and aggression of humanity, and she almost loses the fight. We get a sense that another time, it might have gone differently, and we would all drown in a toxic sea of hatred and environmental poisons of our own creation.

Very pretty movie though and the award-winning sound track of ghostly themes and haunting songs is lovely too.

Studio Ghibli (pronounced zhee-blee, as they carefully explain, because "Gibbly sounds like a noise your stomach makes!") also produced many other blockbuster anime films in the 1990's including "My Neighbor Totoro", "Princess Mononoke", and more.

Years ago my younger son went through an anime phase and "Princess Mononoke" came and went through our lives but I paid no attention. What was I thinking? I missed a great chance to connect over Japanese films and lady heroes.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May you have many anime days.

Hello Kitty Hello Sandwich!

It seems that packing a bento in a single-section container has its own challenges, more difficult than the two level containers with dividers. I'm slowly figuring out that if you really pack i.e. place everything right up against something else, the food arrives at noon in better condition - not shaken up and falling apart.

Here I made Jan a sandwich out of kalamata olive flat omelet, lunch meat, and cheese; then I stuffed a fresh sweet pepper with green olives and stashed that in the lower level. Granny Smith apple with peanut butter in the center, a pack of mystery snacks from the Asian grocery, sugar snap peas, mustard Kitty, and a small white chocolate pudding topped with chocolate chips. I put wooden picks through the sandwich layers to hold them together in transit.

My goal was to have the pudding arrive upright and sandwich still holding together and: Mission Accomplished.

Here's a photo of the types of picks I use. Jan is particularly amused by the somewhat phallic koala bear. The long slender ones are great for sandwich integrity.



These are all either from EBay sellers or J-List and are quite inexpensive.

Bento Invades Dinner!!

Help! Bento is taking over my life.

Here you see yesterday's dinner, which I decided to put in the sectional flat bento boxes I haven't otherwise used much. I got home from work early and started making small amounts of: steamed broccoli splashed with mirin, winter Delicata squash with a bit of rice vinegar, sticky rice cylinders, shrimp quick-fried in hot chili oil, shoyu tamago, and (packaged, microwaved) yakisoba.

It was really a fun supper. Unfortunately we watched the news while eating it, which I hate doing because nothing ruins a good meal faster than world news.

Here's Jan's lunch from 2 days ago:



The top container has folded flat omelet, sugar snap peas, and cold sesame soba noodles; the lower container has a mini-pepper stuffed with feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, grapes, and a tiny white chocolate pudding with a gummy octopus attacking it. Apparently the octopus was outmatched, because some ingredient in the (sugar-free fat-free) pudding began dissolving the poor guy before lunch time arrived.

BLT Bento

This year my friend Laura and I attended the Harvest Festival in our town. We wandered around the food booth until we came to a beautiful family: mother with blond braid down to her waist, holding a beautiful blond apple-cheeked baby; 3 other blond children all radiantly eating dried apricots, and quiet blond dad. These were the owners of a local dairy that was selling cheeses and hog shares.

Laura and I are both increasingly worried about our contaminated food supply, so we circled back to the family again and read their hog share pamphlet. Finally we broke down and reserved a hog share (40 pounds of assorted chops, steaks, bacon, roast, ham, etc.) each.

The pamphlet described blissfully happy hogs, who wander in sunny pastures all day long and dine on whey "The Perfect Food for Hogs" left over from the cheese-making process. It was a little strange to think of our hog, so happy in the autumn sun, blissfully not knowing about his upcoming trip to the butcher in St. Cloud and eventual fate in our freezers. I named our hog "Socrates", after John Stuart Mill's claim that:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

Philosophers debate whether the pleasures of a pig are equal in value to the pleasures of a human, and Mill says no. Our hog Socrates might have disagreed.

Anyway even though it sounds weird, this little hog-share venture has so far paid off in the best-tasting bacon in the universe. So I made BLT's for our bentos on Monday.

I do have mixed feelings about meat eating. I've spent several years being a vegetarian off and on throughout my life. Currently I think there's a place in the moral universe for humanely raised meat animals. A short life on a farm eating whey among pretty children in sunny pastures might be life enough. I don't know...

Bento with Carrot-Tangerine Salad

This bento for my husband was a little high in carbs on the right-hand side: sticky rice, curried black beans and lentils, octo-dogs, pickled sweet peppers, jello-jigler in cup and gummy octopus...so I wanted something for the left side that would be light and veggie-nourishing.

I invented this super good salad:

Carrot-Tangerine-Coconut Coleslaw with Blood-Orange Infused Olive Oil Dressing

The name is almost longer than the recipe!!

Grate two raw carrots. Peel, seed, and chop one medium tangerine. Toss together with a generous sprinkling of grated coconut. Drizzle with the olive oil and if you don't have the blood-orange infused kind, which I stumbled upon in Madison, just use plain olive oil and a squeeze of orange or lime juice. Toss together and refrigerate for a bit. Pack into bento and go!

This was so good; the coconut balanced the sharpness of the blood orange flavor and the tangerine, and altogether it was a very awakening lunch side dish.