#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Originally Made: Monday August 29th, 2011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.

Furikake, soboro

I had too much time on my hands today so I decided to make bento stuff: furikake and soboro!

I happened to have a bowl of shredded carrot that's been sitting in the fridge for more than a few days now and I figured that I should do something with it before it goes bad.  I remembered that Just Bento had a furikake recipe using carrot, so it seemed like a good idea to try making furikake since I had most of the other ingredients anyway.  I've been meaning to try my hand at making some since it doesn't seem that complicated and it's much more economical to make it myself than buy store-bought.



It came out quite well if I do say so myself :D  I followed the carrot and sesame seed furikake but added bonito flakes and cut up nori to my version. I didn't have any nanami/shichimi togarashi on hand so I used red chili pepper flakes instead.

Later in the day I made salmon soboro from canned salmon.  I didn't plan on making it but when I was looking through furikake recipes on Just Bento I came across the tuna soboro one, and then wondered if a salmon version existed since I had a can of salmon at home but no tuna.  I ended up finding Hapa Bento's salmon soboro recipe so I used that.



It came out pretty well but I would've liked more of the ginger flavour to come through and also for it to taste slightly more sweet/less salty.  Next time I'll make adjustments and also add another stalk of green onion for more colour :)

#9 Most colurful bento yet

Originally Made: Wednesday August 17th, 2011
The Box: GIORNO Fine Color Series 510mL

LEFT: Rice, dried shredded carrot & roasted nori bits
RIGHT: Egg muffins, bread and butter pickles, celery and lap cheong (Chinese sausage)

One of my more colourful creations~  I really had to pack that rice in order to make room for everything else.  I had some shredded carrot on hand so I dried it in a frying pan and mixed it along with some cut up nori for a sort of quick furikake. There are two egg muffins in here, each cut in half.  The celery and lap cheong stir fried with garlic were dinner leftovers.

You may notice in this bento my use of food picks (faces! ^_^) and the pink silicone muffin liner holding the pickles. I got both from when I bought some bento supplies online awhile ago...which reminds me that I still need to make a post on that ^^;;

#6 More tuna patties

Originally Made: Thursday July 14th, 2011
The Box: GIORNO Fine Color Series 510mL

LEFT: Rice with vegetable furikake
RIGHT: Mini tuna patties, blanched carrot

Continuation of Crappy Cellphone Pictures >_>  This one is actually worse than the last lol -_-"  I was in a dimly lit food court and that white bar of light (from one of the ceiling lights) at the bottom left was unavoidable >:|

More tuna patties, again three pictured here with each cut in half.  This box I'm using doesn't have any dividers and I don't usually pack my rice very tightly, so the things inside were slightly shifted since I had this placed in my bag on its side.  But nothing major so no harm done.

I bought some bento supplies online which I've just recently received in the mail, so there'll be a post on that in the near future :)

#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.