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!!

Mr. Bento Monday MashUp

Today's Mr. Bento (again just one, for Jan, since I am still stuck in my technology workshop which provides sad little lunches for all the inmates I mean participants)is a bit of a mashup.

It included an omelet with bacon, toasted blueberry bagel with foil-wrapped cream cheese, a lovely satsuma with a lime wedge to squeeze over, and sushi rice rolls with shrimp, ginger ribbon, soy bottle, and slices of bitter melon.

Bitter melon is new to me; we visited our 'oriental grocery' on Saturday and as soon as the proprietor learned that Jan is diabetic, she insisted that we learn about bitter melon. She prepared some for us, she showed us her lunch salad which included it, she gave us two for free, and she even wrote down a recipe for a nice bitter melon salad to try at home. She was so kind and lovely and generous to us -- it was like an angelic visitation.

In case you are not yet jiggy with bitter melon, here's what they look like: space alien cucumbers.

Inside is a spongy center with large black seeds - very pretty to look at.

The spongy part and all seeds are scraped out, then you cut small cross sections and do whatever you like but no cooking! That destroys the benefits. I included some raw pieces with Jan's sushi rolls and hope they aren't too intense all alone. We made a salad Saturday night according to the grocer's recipe and it was dynamite.

Good start to the week of Bento adventure!

Mr. Bento and My Search for Meaning

Here you see Mr. Bento in his original package. You will also see the perfect existential paradox it presents: the box is covered with information but all of it in Japanese! Isn't that just like life? The message is very rich, but the medium is opaque unless you have learned the language.

Undeterred, we wander about the internet forest and pick up clues. How these clues assist me in my Quixotic drive to create the perfect Bento lunch, this blog will reveal over time. My husband has type 2 diabetes being managed with diet, and so he must be somewhat careful about what he eats. I wake up early by nature, and enjoy pottering in the kitchen before daylight. And I love a nice lunch & hate junk food...So careful little micromanaged lunches are perfect for us.

I have been known to cheat on Mr. Bento with this 'laptop lunch system':

This little cutie is designed for schoolchildren and is especially loved by families whose children have food intolerances that rule out school lunches. But given what is served in the typical school cafeteria, I think all children can benefit from a box lunch with real food inside. I enjoy all the little compartments this one has, and its neat carrying case:


We also have some achingly cute little Japanese sauce bottles (labeled "Mama's Assist") with animal heads & shapes; I like to dream about Japanese Bento-Babe mamas in the dim light of early morning, filling their little darlings' sauce bottles with soy for their onigiri of the day.

All around the world, people loving each other through home-made lunches...