Stars Under My Lid!!

I was ridiculously happy to pack these little carrot stars into the lid of my bento on Friday. I sprinkled a little salt over them and they were a wonderful treat alongside the other things: two onigiri, some furikake (this one has just black sesame seeds and some kind of puffy salt particles, and is very yum), veggies, two dates, walnuts, a babybel cheese, a soy hard boiled egg which had apparently been through mortal combat and just barely survived, and a brownie bite.

We get eggs from our Food Farm and they are so fresh - they've usually been laid the day before or even that very day, and by happy hens who have a hen playground and dine on organic vegetables, kind of living in Hen Heaven.

The down side of fresh eggs is they really aren't the best to hard boil. Even when I wait until the end of the week to boil up some eggs for bento, they can still be the dickens to peel. They taste great though.

Jan's bento had chili from the night before, basmati rice (so fragrant! I love basmati), skewers of celery and little cubes of cajun smoked gouda cheese, sugar snap peas, a few M&M's and a brownie bite. I am always trying to keep his carbs low for the diabetes so this chili had very few kidney beans, and a lot of meat - not my style of cooking ordinarily.

You can see both these bentos are short on veggies. It's interesting that's the thing I leave to last and Oh! can't fit it in. I need to readjust my priorities! I'm thinking these are too protein heavy. I dunno - I am still working on the classical bento formula: "Traditionally, bento includes a wide variety of both textures and flavors, split in a 4:3:2:1 ratio (rice, side dish, vegetables, dessert)".

My own substitute would be: 4 parts dessert, 3 parts fruit, 2 parts rice, one part protein. Probably not a good idea!!

Preparing for the Bento Week Ahead

Jan bought me this lovely spicewood cutting board and pink-handled knife in honor of our commitment to Mr. Bento lunches in 2009. The cutting board is almost too pretty to use and so far, I have not been able to bring myself to cut anything on it.

This morning I rose up outlandishly early as usual and rather than immediately go out to shovel snow (we got a foot of it last night), I started preparations for the lunches of the week.

First was jello in tiny portions; I bought these little containers at a dollar store last year and they are handy for fitting into Mr. Bento:



Then I found a nice recipe for lowfat ginger cookies on the internet; it uses molasses and applesauce instead of oil or butter.

I highly recommend this recipe, especially for anyone baking with little helpers. It makes a very tasty cookie with a slight crunch on the outside and a gum-drop texture inside. It is very easy, and there are no dangerous steps like melting.

So you see I have the dessert taken care of for the week, and need only the actual lunch! This is pretty much the way I think -- what's for dessert?? The caboose drives the train. My diabetic husband also does like a sweet taste, so the little portions of jello are great for him - and one cookie will do fine.