Bento #370

Couscous with tomato sauce and herbs in the upper tier. Mozarella sticks, egg, cucumber, stuffed peppers and seedless grapes for dessert in the lower tier of a new My Neighbour Totoro bento box bought at SF bokhandeln.

When I make bentos these days, I often use bulgur or couscous. I find these grains very useful for bento for two main reasons, really: they are both quick and simple to make and very variable, and as opposed to rice or pasta/noodles, bulgur and couscous actually benefit from sitting out and being reheated. Most middle-eastern salads employing these grains require you to let them sit out for a while to let the flavours mingle and strengthen. As such, they are perfect for bento!
I make both in the same way: simply pour boiling water on the grains in a bowl, add salt and a pat of butter and spice depending on your taste and what’s available. This time I added a bit of tomato sauce left over from dinner and some fresh mint and basil. I chopped up the cucumbers some more and mixed them in at lunchtime, which made a nice and fresh salad.

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Bento #369

Back from summer holidays! This is a bento to get me back into a good eating habit after almost three weeks of eating out twice a day.

The box in the background holds bulgur with red onion and herbs. I made two of those boxes, one for the BF and one for me. The foreground box will be shared between the two of us. I find that three of the four layers I ordered from monbento are plenty to feed the two of us! Even a little much if you stuff two with carbs.

The foreground holds small peppers stuffed with cheese, fried halloumi cheese, asparagus, homegrown cherry tomatoes and herbs. There is some Ajvar dip in the yellow container and homegrown physalis as dessert!

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Bento #364

Chard and feta strudel, halloumi, garlic and mint yoghurt, grilled pickled peppers and an olive on parsley leaves and a bed of couscous.

Here’s a picture of the strudel on a plate. It was yum! The pink stuff is caramelised red onions, and the chard is steamed with some red wine and raisins.

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Bento #361

First bento of 2013… well first bento I post here after a long break, too. I’ve been off the wagon for too long. But I got tired of eating out.

So this is mixed rice with chopped parsley, mint and lemon balm mixed in, falafel, iceberg lettuce, (almost!) the last of my homegrown cherry tomatoes, carrots and some homemade aioli in the small container.

Happy 2013!

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Bento #360

Leftover mushroom risotto, celery sticks,carrot and cheese flowers, oregano, cherry tomato, sugar pea and parmesan decoration.

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Bento #359

Dinkel with some corn mixed in, Halloumi, carrots, broccoli, some ajvar and mayo to dip. Lemon balm decoration.

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Bento #356

I saw these the other day and just had to try making them for bento :) Sadly mine didn’t get as perfect – I shall have to work on my technique for not letting half the egg run out under the pepper, and I couldn’t let the yolk stay runny as it has to keep until tomorrow – but they certainly will be tasty!

Bulgur with spring onions, parsley, sundried tomatoes and bell pepper pieces, bell pepper ring with a fried egg inside and spring onion decoration, Brie poppers, grapes and “bamboo shoots” candy. More parsley as decoration.

BF’s box:

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Bentos #353 and #354

Swedish weather and general stress levels have had a serious impact on my bento mojo recently. When even my coworkers started to complain that they hadn’t seen any pretty, happy lunchboxes in a while I knew it was time to make some again.
Brown rice with the last of this season’s cherry tomatoes (we cut them down now and will be replanting as soon as we get reliable periods of sunlight again), cucumber, carrots, avocado, tamagoyaki and soy sauce. My box also has some quick-pickled zucchini which the BF didn’t like as much.

A small box I made sometime before Christmas already, but forgot to post.
Mushroom risotto with cherry tomatoes and herbs as decoration, white bell pepoers, more tomatoes and some chili cheese wedges in the small box.

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Bento #352

Red Couscous salad with cucumber, onion and parsley, fried halloumi pieces on more parsley and watermelon for dessert.

This is my own box. Somehow it was hard to photograph it tonight.

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Bento #342 – roasted veggie bolognese

The main attraction of this bento is spaghetti with a roasted vegetable “bolognese” sauce, parmesan and some chopped fresh herbs.
Sides are mixed lettuce (and some basil leaves) from the windowsill, carrot flowers, a radish, babybel cheese and another easter candy.
(Another great thing about easter, all the candy on sale afterwards!)

The vegetarian spaghetti sauce was quite simple to make! Basically it was born out of what I had in the fridge, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily needs refining.
To begin with, I took:
1 large-ish carrot, cut lengthwise into strips
1-2 pieces of celery, same
1 red onion, cut into 8ths
1 small bellpepper, sliced into strips
4-5 large-ish champignon mushrooms
and some garlic cloves, tossed them with salt, pepper, a tablespoon of olive oil and some dried thyme, and set everything under the broiler to roast.
While it was roasting, I set the tomato sauce base to simmer. That was a teaspoon of butter, some red chili flakes, a 500g packet of pureed tomatoes, a splash or red wine, salt, pepper and a teaspoon of sugar.
When the veggies looked just about done, I pulsed them to a coarse texture in the food processor, mixed with the tomato sauce and done. Simple!

And quite delicious.

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