Wootiwoot woot New Bentos!!

The killer-cute Koi bento and its little friend the Black Sheep Shinzi Kato arrived yesterday from the EBay seller TokyoSamurai, located in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan. I highly recommend this seller because after I ordered these items TokyoSamurai refunded a chunk of my shipping because the online shipping calculator had overcharged me. It was a small amount and I would never have noticed, but I admired their attention to detail.

The Black Sheep fascinates me. A group of white sheep are near the top of the design, and one black sheep right and lower down. A caption reads,

It's a nice day!
Where are you going
Such Beautiful day?

Is this the black sheep talking to the group or vice versa? All around the edge of the top a line of text runs: "How about we go shopping today? We'll buy delicious fruits. How about you? Do you want to come? Sounds good! I will go to shopping!"

I love the endlessly looping shopping plans, and I love worrying about the black sheep: if she is making a friendly overture, will the white sheep really go shopping with her or will they ditch her in a cruel manner? Like, lose her in the mall?

In all it is an open ended story, my favorite kind. Anything could happen!

Today's bentos:

Jan has sushi I made last night (you have to imagine the cursing and swearing as I acquire this skill through painful epic failures one after another) with quail eggs jammed in there too, a ribbon of ginger and a froggy soy bottle; gyoza (frozen from the Asian market); salad, and a brownie.



I have an onigiri (plain, with an umeboshi on top), some sushi, gyoza, cucumber wedges, soy quail eggs, and red pepper strips. Me and the black sheep have a date later, maybe go shopping; it's a beautiful day.

Obento or Bento?

Which is it? Somewhere in my internet wanderings I read that 'obento' is more respectful. Well far be it from me to disrespect Mr. Bento or his little (rapidly growing!) family of bento-babe boxes...

Here's Jan's Mr. Bento of the day:

Chicken salad with red grapes next to baby greens; polenta wedges fried in a little hot chili oil and sprinkled with nanami togarashi; tomato slices with skewers of dill pickle and sweet pickled peppers; and sweet potato bread with a chocolate coin.

My bento is similar:

but with Mr. Honey Tangerine added, for the monkey in me!

It will be a long day beginning with Nietzsche and ending with a budget meeting. Give me strength, bento!!!

Bigger Better Bento

Three things I love about this bento box:

1. It's so pretty! Inlay butterflies on the lid!

2. It has 3 fixed or molded compartments in the lower tier so having yogurt, or anything else saucy or runny, will be easy to do and not need extra paper cups.

3. It's BIG. For those days when I don't get to eat breakfast before running off to work, this one is going to be my buddy.

I had: sesame noodles with chicken slices, raw beets with ume vinegar (yum), sugar snap peas; then baby greens salad, a Babybel cheese, cashews, strawberries, grapes, and 2 lovely pink mochi of unknown but delicious ingredients. Woot. I needed a nap after this lunch. It was a party on my desk.

TGI Leftovers Again!

The Chinese take-out is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Today Jan gets the rest of my sesame chicken, the 'mystery-meat' dumplings which we both love and worry about, some fresh veggies, a fortune cookie and some fried won-tons, and a mango pudding.

This is not exactly great nutrition but I woke up yesterday sick as a dog. Now why do we say that?! Dogs are normally the picture of health and so resilient - I need a better metaphor. Anyway I could not talk at all and so of course, not only did several people from work email for a meeting that very day but also it was the vet visit for horsey inoculations and spring wellness check - which usually requires at least some conversation even if it is somewhat cranky.

So I struggled through the early part of the day and then sat on the couch and watched 2 back-to-back episodes of "Wife Swap". !!! What a bizarre show. In my fevered state I could hardly bear the suspense, when a pampered and spoiled rich wife was sent to a dairy farm/penal colony to live for awhile, as her counterpart the worked-to-death farm woman assumed the position of sleeping until 3 p.m. and being brought breakfast in bed with flowers, but at the cost of dealing with incredibly spoiled daughters who regarded riding the school bus as a fate worse than death. Wow; TV has gotten really good while I wasn't watching! Or maybe it was the cold meds.

Leftover Take-Out Bento

There's a great Chinese take-out down by the lake, and we have to ration our visits there because this food is not exactly the most wholesome. But one neat thing is the leftovers; you get an extra dinner or two lunches out of each entree and the cost is so low I wonder how they make a profit? Except for the fact that they are always busy - it must be the sheer volume of platters of sesame chicken that the students consume down there.

Jan's bento has his leftover Hunan shrimp and scallops with the small amount of rice he's allowed with counting carb units. He also got sesame seaweed salad from the Asian grocery we visited in Madison this weekend - golly that is good! - with daikon radish butterflies on top; yogurt with blueberries and agave nectar; and a fortune cookie with a couple chunks of sweet potato date bread.

My bento has leftover sesame chicken and rice, sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes with a daikon butterfly, sweet potato bread, yogurt and blueberries, and a chocolate from my Valentine stash.

When Life Sends You Lemons...

I had a feeling that shaping a hard boiled egg was not going to be easy for me. So when Mr. Egg cracked under interrogation, I had to turn him into a demonic dragon/PacMan with a pea for an eye. This should excite merriment among Jan's lunch bunch. Also a few quietly raised eyebrows as in "What is the matter with her really?"

He is resting on sesame noodles. Jan also has tuna-tofu miso burgers with key lime for squeezing over; salad leftover from last night; and sweet potato date bread with cream cheese hearts on top, and orange sections, for dessert.

This sweet potato bread is super. I've never made it before and got the recipe from Taste of Home, my all-time favorite home cooking type recipe magazine. If you end up with extra sweet potatoes I can wholeheartedly recommend turning them into a quick bread - this recipe is fast and they bring a ton of moisture (just like carrots in carrot cake). I had a slice with a glass of cold milk for dessert last night and it was perfect.



My bento has an umeboshi onigiri surrounded with carrot slices and a soy bunny; hard boiled egg with cheese hearts and a cherry tomato; sweet potato bread with orange sections and almonds. Not enough vegetables really but the bread takes up a lot of real estate. Maybe I'll pack some more carrots on the side.

Tuesday Bento: Arrgh Maties!

Jan has tuna-tofu-miso burgers from JustBento's recipe page. In the same container, wasabi mayonnaise and a key lime half. Then: mixed seaweed salad from the Asian store in Madison (yummm!), an umeboshi onigiri from Sunday evening's batch, along with a little soy bottle; carrots and snow peas with a baby cheese; and little chocolate 'mushroom' cookies with M&M's.

My bento has most of the same stuff but arranged differently:


I wish I'd bought a case of the little mushroom-shaped cookies! They are not only cute, but they have the right proportion of chocolate to cookie: about 2:1.:)

These onigiri are the best batch I've made so far. The salty plums give them a snap and the rice was just right for molding together. I had meant for this batch to last all week but some pirate is raiding the supply. Nervously looking sideways for someone to blame.

And yesterday I found a new place to burn excess money: www.furoshiki.com. Great history of the furoshiki (cloth wrap for bento, a gift, or anything else you want to wrap nicely in a pretty cloth) and of course a wide range of gorgeous furoshiki for sale. Care and tying methods also explained on the 'about' page. I ordered one called 'Rabbit Moon'. The image of a rabbit staring at the moon must have some significance because it turns up on so many Japanese things. To me it just stirs vaguely sad and lonely feelings but also makes me want to buy it...strange.