Sesame beef bento

I woke up at 6am determined to get used to assembling bentos in the morning. They taste much much better (the rice and fruit) and there's no mushiness. This week I planned my food and chose to follow a recipe from Bento Love cookbook of sesame beef.

 

At first I thought I wouldn't like it because sesame oil is a bit strong for me but in the end I was sad I didn't get to eat any (I made it specifically for the bf)

The recipe is very simple and it was done in under 10 minutes (serves about 2 portions) which is a plus for when I'm still sleeping :) not too many ingredients, just toss in the pan and voilá! you have a delicious tasty meat done.

I used japanese rice topped with some sesame seeds, a kiwi (almost whole *munch munch*) broccoli and raw star, flower and clubs shaped carrot. All of it assembled in about 30 minutes, from scratch.

Bento for a long trip

I've been sooooo busy running around town and other towns over bureaucracy I haven't posted much, but it'll soon be over!

Last week I packed these bentos around 2 am to get up at 6. Due to some paperwork, I had to travel to Porto, one of the major towns in Portugal. It was a 7 hour trip. Just for paperwork you might ask?

Nope! The only store that sell bento related items is located there, by coincidence :) not like I planned it on purpose.

My lunch consisted of peach, kiwi, hard boiled eggs, broccoli, carrot and rice with flavours and nori.

 

His lunch: same thing except instead of eggs he got some teriyaki salmon with a pinch of miso.

For the onigiris I bought 3 different flavour packs:

- wakame and salmon;

- arame and shiitake;

- nori, bonito and ume.

I enjoyed them while the onigiris were warm, but while cold, I couldn't eat it.

I was very excited to go to the store because they sell tamagoyaki frying pans and powdered green tea, had actually saved up some money for wasting at the store but they had ran out of both things and the variety was a bit limited. The owner had one of those furry rabbits walking around the store, it was so adorable!

I ended up buying...

Strawberry flavoured pocky~ There was one "for men" with dark chocolate but the price wasn't worth it.

I loved the inside package :D it has a dog, a cat and a hamster.

and here's the back side:

I guess there's no other way than to order on the web.

Springy bentos

Oh lovely spring! And sweet tasty strawberries! These were my first strawberries of this year, I was dieing to get some strawberries :D

This bento was unexpectedly fun to make. I boiled a few eggs because usually either I break one, ruin them pealing or they weren't so okay. My grandparents brought SO MANY eggs I don't know what to do with them! Maybe cake or pudding?

Anyway, when I peeled them one of them got ruined so I used the egg yolk only. It suddenly occurred me, why not make chicken ou of the eggs? I've seen it made, I can always try and hope it'll go okay. Usually when I learn something I like to watch people make it and then I can recreate it much better than from reading a recipe alone. And it turned out the way it did.

Some couscous with nori on top, decorated eggs with carrot and nori and a little green to add colour. And of course, the strawberries!! I did get hungry in the afternoon but it's okay :P

I also packed one for my dear with roughly the same things:



Omelet, strawberries, carrot, couscous and meatloaf (or i think it's called that)

I thought the chicken wouldn't be such a good approach to his lunch. It's quite nice to make 2 bentos because I can make one a bit more childish and the other one a little elegant.

Also, this last weekend I made gyoza but forgot to take pictures at he final product. When I use them I'll make sure to show you ^_^

Napolitan spaghetti

It's been a chaotic week! I'm enjoying this more and more every time I make bentos :)

On the top-tier there's, kiwi, tamagoyaki (a little burnt because I used the round frying pan and mirin makes it turn brown a lot faster) some cucumber slices,cheese and ham rolls and spinach with cheese.

On the bottom tier there's the spaghetti, which I made following a recipe from a bento cookbook. It has grated carrot, onion, bacon tomato sauce and red and green bell peppers. The bf said it was like what his mum does at home :D

Since I'm not fond of bacon, I threw it to his bento and kept mine with 2 pieces of it somewhere:

My bento has exactly the same thing but instead of the spinach cheese and the cucumber, I put brussels sprouts (because I love them and he hates them).

I enjoyed making this very much, and feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it my way. I am thinking I should buy some more bento related books or japanese home foods, Do you have any suggestions?

The colour distribution wasn't all that balanced but I ran out of red things to put on the top tiers so, there's green and more green!

Roasted Salmon bentos

I said I would try not to post both lunches but I was inspired so I made them differently.

Top tier:

in the silicone cup there's spinach with fake crabmeat. Next to it there's some carrot bits, a shiitake mushroom and a cucumber and tomato salad.

Bottom tier:

Roasted salmon mixed with rice and pieces of nori. Decorated with nori and cheese hearts and on the corner chopped coriander.

There's the same thing on the top-tier as the first one but I didn't mix the rice with the salmon here. I separated the rice and topped it with furikake. With the salmon, I put along a slice of roasted onion and some coriander. The lettuce was just for a little colour.

I've been feeling extremely tired lately, so it's very unlikely I'll do anything else this week.

I'm going to bake something for a friend and his wife in thanks for bringing me the bento boxes, I'll try to post it when it's done.

Meatballs & mashed potatoes

One of my experiments that went great!

I always do meatballs with tomato sauce but I wasn't much into tomato sauce today. We've eaten Ikea's meatballs with mashed potatoes and they're tasty and no tomato sauce, that's where I got the inspiration for this try out.

You can't see from the picture because of the sauce but I made a little "fence" for the meatballs putting them in the center with mashed potatoes around it and sauce on top. on the left there's oven baked sweet potato, carrots and broccoli. Mine had spinach purée instead of the carrot.

The taste turned out great, tho next time I'm going to stir-fry the meatballs alone first so they get a little golden brownish colour.

We dined out today so I don't know if I'll make something for tomorrow. *craves for her japan stuff*

Salmon Teriyaki #2

I just finished the big stock of teriyaki sauce I had in the fridge:

We bought a more expensive salmon and I was worried it might be just that, but it was of great quality and tasted wonderfully. I had to bathe my cat so I didn't do anything fancy but the salmon teriyaki was simply delicious!

Not being able to heat my food is a bit of an issue to me, specially with fish because I hate cold fish. Even so, I took lunch for me too and by the 3rd bite I got used to the room temperature fish.

After I took the picture, I put some teriyaki sauce over the rice, the bf loves and I don't argue with that.

Lately we have been playing an MMORPG which makes us sit at the computer until bedtime :D

On another issue, I am almost positive I'm cursed (or doomed)! The friend who brought me stuff from Japan met with me on Monday, but  things were still packed so, he said he'd go home and be back later with them. By then I couldn't care less what he gives me; been waiting on this for 2 years now and seems I did not get any luck. I ended up not meeting him thus not getting my stuff and not being able to take pictures and blog about them. I will do it when they're in my hands!

Yakitori

First skewered try:

I really like the blue tupperware but I'm not sure why.

It was a shame I didn't have fresh leek to add here. Even being breast chicken meat, it didn't get dry or chewy because I cooked them very slowly. This is a great thing for parties because it looks and tastes good and it's easy to grab. The rest was just some quick assembling and it's done! There's couscous, carrot, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and cucumber. It had to be fast and simple because I've been avoiding the kitchen a bit: I have washed the dishes for 3 weeks straight now *cries* and I really hate it. Hopefully I won't have to wash them today (since I begged my bf to wash them for me)

I've been wanting spring to come for a while now, I miss the colorful fruits and bigger variety of vegetables. I'll be taking a trip on the weekend and borrowing the car again! (no more 2km of walking with shopping bags YAY!) Hopefully I'll be able to take some "springy" photos of the scenery and maybe some typical food.

Omurice

I've done this before but not for lunch ^^

I messed up the ketchup but didn't have time to re-make it :P

For veggies, there's cucumber, carrot, broccoli and cherry tomatoes. For the omurice I followed another Cooking with dog recipe which works quite nicely. I messed up at first, forgot to mix the rice >.< with the rest.

There's something I want to try for a bento but I'm not sure how to get blue colouring, not using artificial food colouring.  Do you have any advice about how, and what to colour to get a nice blue colour?

Thanks for reading :D

Ponyo

We saw "Gake no Ue no Ponyo" this weekend and I really wanted to do something related to the movie. This is what it turned out to be:

Red bell pepper for the body with a hard-boiled egg, turkey ham for the face, carrot for the hair and tongue, nori for the mouth, nose and eye. Underneath it there's shrimp rice. I found it funny to stuff the cherry tomato with broccoli inside :D

At first I wanted to do the girl version but I wasn't sure how to but after scrolling through the movie a few times, I came across one of the parts where I wanted to squeeze the screen.

I was planning to make something for Valentine's day and join the valentine's with red colours to try and enter this month's B.O.M.B Challenge, but something came up and I won't be able to do anything for Valentine's, so I made this. Hopefully you'll be able to recognize it as Ponyo xD.

This was my second attempt on making a character and I will remind myself to either get a surgeon's knife next time, or never cut things out of bell peppers again. It took me about 40 minutes because I messed up the bellpepper and cut it in the wrong direction (the hand should be on the upper part and the eye on the lower part, not the other way around. Then the ham on her face ripped about 2 times so I put 2 slices instead of one and I could go on complaining more but it's pointless. Before posting this I asked 2 friends of mine to tell me what it was, and they guessed it right, so it can't be THAT bad.

I've got the rest of the week planned already so I'll be sure to post some more foodies ^^ Have a nice week!

Torihamu & Eggplant

There are two items I have done for the first time here:

I had two eggplants sitting in the fridge for about 3 days and I wouldn't be able to use them this week so, I used a recipe from Just Hungry which turned out delicious (even though I messed up by forgetting the chillis).  My bf didn't like ti so much, so I only put a little bit on his luch (just to tease him :D) it's the little dark thing on the lower right.

The other first try is the Torihamu I made a few days ago. I will try this recipe again sometime soon because I let it dry too much/cook too much and since my oven doesn't measure ºC, only "max" and "min" I will re-adjust the temperature with special attention.

The rest: some plain rice with furikake on top, snowpeas (I always mess these names up), carrot and oregano for aroma. I added the carrot because it lacked colour and I have still to find decent tomatoes at the supermarket :(

Here you can see the difference without the carrot:

I also put some brussels sprouts on mine because I LOVE them and the bf hates them but I refuse to not eat them. Also you can have a better look at the eggplant.

Korokke lunch

Continuing with the spree! It's lasting more than usual:

There's 2 korokke with raw finely cut cabbage, carrot "fingers" 1, 1/2 tangerine and some white rice. The bf said it was wonderful, he didn't even complain about the raw cabbage.

It all went fine until the evening, when I was supposed to cook the Torihamu from Maki's recipe on Just Bento after marinating it. I got distracted with studying for my exam... resulting in slightly burnt torihamu. It's still good tho, but I'll give it another try sometime later:

And there's a little something from yesterday night. It's been rather cold here so I tend to sleep with 3 cats on top/ below me. I was reading before bed time and one of them cuddled with me under the bed covers:

Fast and simple

Since X-mas we've been trying to reduce protein and sugar incomes so our bodies don't suffer anymore than they already did.

This was a fast to cook and assembly meal and I just added the carrots for extra vegetable/color

There's beef with onions and tomato sauce on top of a leaf of lettuce. Then there's broccoli carrot and rice. We had the same thing for dinner along with a tomato soup bowl.

I'm looking forward for next year's experiments. I hope I finally get my bento boxes (you have no idea how many setbacks I had on getting these >.<) and might buy some bento books. Where I live there's not one single store that sells anything bento related in the whole country.

So, some of my year's resolutions will be:

- Assembling proper bentos;

- Improving my photos of food & background;

- Losing the extra weight from christmas;

- Getting my cat fully healed (she's getting better really slowly and I'm stating to worry if her belly's fungus will ever disappear);

- Get the car back!!;

- Finish my degree so I can get another one;

and some more I just don't feel like writing for now ^^ Wish you all a Happy new year and hope all your resolutions come true!

Cabbage leftover

Yes, we did have too much cabbage left from saturday and I didn't know what to do with it. This is what I turned out to make:

 

I sauté'd it in a pan with sausage added some soy sauce and voilá. I was too sleepy and my fridge was a mess! (It wasn't really, but the things were not on my usual places so I got lost. Never mess up a woman's fridge, it'll give her headaches!) I defrosted some japanese rice, cut some carrot slices on top and tried making a tomato flower, which didn't work but I still put it there.

We still have cabbage leftovers >.< We'll see what I can used them in.

Bunny & it's Carrot

No, I did not cook rabbit. But it's probably gonna be embarrassing for a 20year-old bf to take for his lunch!

 

This came out of nowhere I hadn't planned for the bunny. When I thought about adding color to this, I found this little carrot in the refrigerator and the bunny idea came to mind. I looked over the web for various drawings of bunnies and ended up making my own cute bunny.

It's made from:

- Cheese;

- Turkey ham;

- Tonkatsu sauce and ketchup;

Underneath it there's:

- Japanese rice;

and under the raw carrot there's

- beef with tomato, onion and zucchini.