Bento #187

nilmandra’s 3 mushroom rice (only that I had enoki, shimeji and champignons to use up, so that’s my mushroom combination) in the big box. If you don’t know Nilmandra’s blog yet, I encourage you to go take a look – she takes the most beautiful bento pictures! The rice is also lovely, it has a subtle flavour that is very addictive.
Two dumplings, steamed broccoli, cherry tomatoes, half an egg log, a fishy of soy sauce and avocado in the small box.

No BF bento picture today, because the camera’s batteries gave up after snapping this picture.

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Bento #180

Upper layer: Inarizushi, beansprout kimchi, carrot kinpira, lettuce, vinegar fishy, a yellow tomato and fudge.
Lower layer: Salmon teriyaki, sushi rice onigiri, cherry tomato on lettuce.

BF gets something similar, but mixed wild and roundgrain rice instead of the onigiri.

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Bento #179 – inarizushi

Big box (background): 3 Inarizushi, avocado, 1 red baby plum tomato, 1 tiny yellow tomato that grew on my windowsill, fishy with soy sauce.
Small box (foreground): 2 leek dumplings, stirfried snow peas with szechuan pepper and soy, raw carrot strips with sesame and a fishy with Chinese vinegar and sesame oil dressing on lettuce.

I finally got around to making inarizushi. And I made enough rice to stuff some for a bento and possibly some more for freezing/later bentos! (There is still a cup of rice or so unused in my fridge, but I got tired of making sushi.)

BF gets the same, but his box is less organized. There’s also some raw cucumber, and no condiments because he eats it at home anyway.

And a gratuituous sushi photo. Drool!

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Bento #170 – vegan challenge(d)

I regularly cook vegetarian, but I very rarely cook vegan. Since this October is Vegetarian Awareness Month, I thought I would challenge myself to create a complete, nutritious Vegan meal.

The bento contains the results:
1 Tofu “yakitori” spit, 1 kimchi dumpling (egg-free), grilled zucchini slices, some tiny purple potatoes that grew on my windowsill, 1 slice of tomato and some cubed mango with cinnamon and almond splinters in a silicone muffin cup.
Rice, spring onions, black sesame and another tomato slice in the upper layer.

The BF gets the same, but two more spits. He liked them better than I did!

Here are the spits fresh from the grilling pan. The sauce is homemade. I thickened it a little using potato starch after I had marinated the tofu cubes in it.

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Bento #166 – Furikake frenzy!

Two plain rice balls, one covered in egg furikake and one in umeboshi furikake. Four dumplings, some microwave egglog, panfried green beans with soy sauce, homemade kimchi, a bottle of dressing for the dumplings and one yellow cherry tomato.
Oh, and two pieces of fudge for dessert!

BF gets the same, with a red cherry tomato instead of yellow.

I got new furikake at the Japan store on Saturday! So I decided to make rice balls covered in the stuff. Mmm. Pretty!
The pink furikake are supposedly umeboshi flavour, but I can’t really taste it. They do contain bonito though, so I can’t mark this bento as vegetarian. Boo.

On the upside, when I popped out the box at lunchtime, my colleagues asked me if I was only eating candy today because it looked so pretty! ;)

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Bento #159

I have absolutely no explanation for the design of this bento other than a)it is late, b)my foot is hurting from an aikido accident and c)did I mention it was late?
I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go to work tomorrow, but if I do I’ll have a bento.

It’s vegetarian chirashizushi anyway – sushi rice with some black sesame, carrots, half an avocado, tiny tamagoyaki rolls, chopped leek, wasabi and mayo.

My own also has a pickled ginger rose. Maybe I should have made it a flame-like structure instead. Ah well. I go sleep now.

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Bento #158 – delayed post

I made this bento from Sunday’s leftovers, for my BF to eat on Monday.
Myself I’ve been eating out all week – we’ve been delivering some software and it was buggy, meaning lots of overtime trying to get it to run and no time for making bentos!
As you can see by me not even posting this bento until now.

The box contains two different types of kimbap-style maki rolls – one filled with avocado, cucumber, steamed spinach with sesame, omelette, and carrot, the other with avocado, cucumber, carrot, leek and mayo. I know some people here are of the opinion that mayo in sushi rolls is a sacrilege – but I happen to like it :)
There is also a bentoturf pocket with some wasabi and a fishy of soy sauce in the corner.

Here’s to hoping the next week gets better!

And now for some extra pictures:

I learned a good trick for cutting maki rolls from the sushi chef of my trust:
Dip the tip of the knife into a bowl of water. When you lift it up again, let a drip of water run down the edge of the blade. Do this before every cut, or every other cut once you get practice.
Cut with a smooth motion, not applying too much force but rather moving the knife diagonally.

Of course it goes without saying that you should use a sharp knife – actually, you should always keep your knives sharp in the kitchen. It makes everything much easier and, contrary to intuition, safer.

Mmmmm…

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Bento #156

Top: Rice with a dab of sambal oelek, stirfried tofu and green beans.
Bottom: Leftover teriyaki salmon, bottle of teriyaki sauce, blue/lingon/raspberries, bear cup with pickled ginger.

The colours are kinda meh… it’s all leftovers, anyway. The tofu and green beans are really tasty, I had this craving for a dish like that so I had to cook it – it got a bit brown due to the soy sauce, sadly, but I assure you it’s still healthy.

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Bento #148 – two donburis

Two identical donburi boxes of fried leftover vegetarian dumpling/wonton stuffing (tofu, mushrooms, cabbage, rice vermicelli and egg with garlic-ginger-soy sauce), scrambled egg, and spring onions over rice.
Going to meet the BF for lunch tomorrow to watch the partial eclipse, which is what the design on the boxes is supposed to symbolize.

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Bento #145 and a new box!

Back from vacation with a bento to sweeten my workday tomorrow in a pretty new box!

The upper layer (in front) contains stirfried Japanese broccoli in soy and pad thai sauce, miso flavored tamagoyaki with spinach, breaded tofu and a fishy with chili, vinegar and soy dressing for the tofu (which didn’t get salty enough in my opinion – going to have to try marinating it next time!).
The lower layer contains a mix of brown and jasmine rice with egg furikake and black sesame, handpicked raspberries and red currants from the garden.

Here’s the box closed. It’s a 2-layer HK box I picked up in a Sanrio store in Vienna (Stiftgasse 27, called Kitty World). I also bought another of the square HK boxes with the cutlery compartment in the lid in red, since I like to use them. The store has several more models and even bigger picknick boxes, and seems to change stock ever so often. Quite recommendable if you can stand Hello Kitty.

The BF’s bento features a starfish onigiri (made with a sandbox set I bought a while ago and have been itching to use ^^; ) and the same food as mine, but he gets a bunch more tofu and slightly less rice than me.

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