#10 A 2-tier bento

Originally Made: Monday August 29th, 2011
The Box: Lube Sheep URARA 580mL

TOP: Egg muffin, rice with furikake
BOTTOM: Watermelon, chicken, cha siu, bitter melon and (more) chicken

I have a few bento pictures on backlog >_>  I need to procrastinate less on posting as I start to forget details -_-"  This is my first time posting a two-tier bento.  I wasn't used to having all that space in the upper tier ("bottom" in the above pic) so it wasn't filled very densely or high. I'll need to work on that.  This is a the first time I added fruit to a bento.  Before getting silicone muffin liners I didn't have any good way to separate fruit from other foods, plus I generally I'm slow at cutting fruit so I didn't put any in my bentos.  But there was some cut up watermelon in the fridge around that time so I just cut it up even smaller to fit in this box.

That egg muffin was the last one left in the freezer, and the furikake was homemade.  The rest was all leftovers.  We have bitter melon fairly often at home (we also grew some in our backyard this summer), and so I had some here in a stir fry with chicken breast.

#8 Egg muffins

Originally Made: Monday August 15th, 2011
The Box: Lock & Lock 460mL w/divider cups

LEFT: Rice, bits of roasted nori
RIGHT: Egg muffins, string beans, chicken breast (hidden)

Finally, not a crappy picture lol.  I made egg muffins for the first time, loosely following this recipe.  Mine included sausage, chopped string beans, chopped chives, and shredded carrot. I changed the egg to milk ratio though and added more milk, which I think was what made them more moist than I preferred.  I ended up heating them on a frying pan after baking in order to get rid of the excess moisture inside. Then I proceeded to burn myself on the edge of the pan but that's another story >_>

The string beans cooked with garlic were dinner leftovers.  I cut up some nori and sprinkled it on top of my rice to make it look more interesting (ran out of store bought furikake).  There's also a few small pieces of chicken breast underneath the egg muffins.

#7 Corn and green beans

Originally Made: Friday July 29th, 2011
The Box: GIORNO Fine Color Series 510mL

LEFT: Rice with corn
RIGHT: Chicken nuggets, string beans

My camera was low on battery, so another crappy cellphone picture -_-"  I felt like having corn that day so I heated a can of peaches and cream corn and then mixed some it into rice.  The beans were leftover from dinner the day prior, cooked with garlic.

#3 Pretty carrot, chicken nuggets

Originally Made: Thursday June 23rd, 2011
The Box: Lock & Lock 550mL w/divider cups

I decided to be a little creative with the carrot and use some cutters that I had (which I originally bought to use as cookie cutters).  Of course, I didn't think of it until after I had sliced the carrot so the thickness of the slices weren't exactly even -_-"  But lol it's not that obvious from the photo, right? ^^;;  More greens and chicken nuggets.  Truthfully, I probably could've done with just three nuggets but *shrugs* I like meat lol. That stuff in the bottom right corner is a bit of almond-peanut nut cluster snack thing.

#2 More carrot, pickle, pork...now with chicken

Originally Made: Tuesday June 21st, 2011
The Box: Lock & Lock 550mL w/divider cups

Like with my first bento, more blanched carrot and dill pickle.  There's a certain sweetness that comes out in carrot when blanched that I like.  The meat and the greens were leftovers.  The darker meat is marinated pork cooked with garlic, while the white meat is chicken, also cooked with garlic.

The greens...sorry, I'm not actually sure of what they're called >_>  I have a hard time remembering the names of all those different leafy green vegetables...gotta make an effort to learn the names ^^;;  But they're from my family's garden, I know that lol.  My mom always grows vegetables in the summer months.  I mixed a bit of vegetable furikake (store bought) in the rice for some variety.

I experimented with cupcake liners by putting everything on the right side in their own liner to see if it made packing easier or look nicer...not really lol. I mean, clean up was easy but that's about it. It was a bit fiddly trying to work with more than one paper liner.