Bento Cookbooks

I have been acquiring some literature to better understand how to improve my bentos. Of course I can look for so many things on the Internet, but there's that something about it being a book and not a screen. I know of no one in my country that makes bentos.

Kawaii Bento Boxes and Bento Love are written in English and were ordered. Mes petits bento was a gift with some more bento things :) I am currently waiting for Makki's book from Just Bento to come out so I can order it together with some other. I'll post more books when they get here!

Salmon filled Onigiri

Now that I have a rice cooker, making onigiri has been so much easier! I used to make it in a normal pan but since it took so much time and timing it, waiting,washing, I used 1Kg of rice and froze in batches.It was okay but sometimes the rice would over-cook and there'd be a LOT of overcooked rice to eat because I couldn't just throw it away.

So we finally got a little extra money and bought the rice cooker.

It comes with another section to cook veggies so that helped a lot as well  and it's super easy to wash. Thus meaning I don't feel so lazy to wake up in the morning and make/arrange lunch, it actually motivates me because I can concentrate on the rest  while the rice and vegetables cook and it's 2 pans less to monitor.

I usually make onigiri in the morning but it was our dinner too so I had a little more time to grab my camera:

I am so happy for being able to photograph white food! It was impossible with my old camera...

I'm still getting the hang of the size of the onigiri... Sometimes they come out too small, others too big. What would be your advice for finding a good size for them? I' ve seen a japanese friend make them very big and smaller so I'm not sure what the "regular" size is.

This time I filled them with this:

Salmon, green onions, some salt, mirin and soy sauce. I've also tried i with canned tuna and it works great. Maybe next time I'll try putting some meat inside. For now *nom nom nom* these are just wonderful :D

Unfinished bento

I wanted to make more of this but I was too sleepy.

I have discovered the wonders of boiled eggs again. :D I have never really liked boiled eggs, scrambled with anything are my favourite but they always leave me hungry for more. It doesn't happen with boiled eggs. Last week, I did the same thing and I felt "fuller" with 3 eggs than I would with a handful of rice. It makes me rather happy because I have a BIG appetite which doesn't go along with my not so big body. I can eat as much as my bf does if I want to, but I don't have his metabolism, so instead of using it, my body stores anything it can get, thus making me grow round (someday).

If you pay closer attention to the eggs, I wanted to make the right one a Daruma doll and the middle one a bunny using the broken one's pieces, but I was simply exhausted. I still managed to put the nori on the onigiris but that was it for decoration.

On the top tier there's a slice of pudding some cut carrots and the tasty brussels. I still haven't gotten the hang of planning the vegetables I'm sure I'll get there one day.

There's something that's been bothering me a bit: I'm posting weekly... and I really didn't want to do that! It's just the time is a little off I need some thinking and focusing on myself. Once I'm done with it, I'll start posting more often and more wonderful food so keep watching from time to time. At least I'll post weekly (I won't allow any more laziness than that :) )

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 ^_^

The Inarizushi experience

The title says it all:

I found them by accident in the Asian store I buy most of the things, and just because I always fear for not having enough I bought 2 packs.

It seemed like something fun to do and not too messy to eat because I was gonna eat in public the next day, (this was done on the 30th March but I'm only posting now because I was unsure to do so) therefor no messy food that could dirty my clothes was allowed.

I opened the package and the ones inside and tasted a bit of the liquid that protected the inaris. I took one out carefully because from what I read they're very delicate.

Gently opened it and started filling with rice and then half with tuna and onion filling, half with fake crabmeat. After I filled them all, and packed them, I remembered to give a bite on one of them...

The result was... very unexpected. The sweet taste of it just made my stomach twitch and turn. I'm not sure if I did something wrong by not washing it from the pre-packed fluid or something but it tasted horribly. Luckily the bf managed to eat around 8 of them before he had enough.

I really dislike wasting food and trashing it but this was a bit too much for what I can stand. After that I have been refusing to cook (actually getting excuses) because a few days later I had terrible stomach pain followed by nausea and remembering the inaruzushi or any kind of food on that day was plain torture.

I did make Teriyaki chicken on Monday but the camera didn't have any battery and I was too lazy to bother with the pictures. It was quite delicious.^^

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.

First use of my bentos

Made from dinner's leftovers:

It's not the healthiest but we had people over for dinner and I didn't have a vote on the matter (the deep fried thingies).  This is my box and on the picture it does look huge to me, not in real life. Most people whom I've shown the boxes to say "it's so small!" and  "you'll be hungry!" and many other related things to small and not enough food. Bento boxes are not known in my country (at least not by 98% of the population) and portuguese, the most traditional, don't rely on food measurements but on making sure no one at their table will get hungry. This is a reason why when I'm with my grandparents (and having been taught to always clean the plate) I put on weight. It's not that the food is unhealthy; they just put too much food on the plate and then we "can't leave anything to waste"

My love's lunch box. He didn't want eggplant so he got some empty space on the bottom tier. We'll see if he gets hungry eating this, I doubt I'll be hungry with mine.

From now on I will post only 1 of the 2 bento boxes depending on how good they look, (if they both look good, I'll put them both :D) some things fit better on the rectangular, others on the oval bento box, simply the rectangular one belongs to my love, the oval one to me.

I'll leave you with a scenery of Portugal - Setúbal, Arrábida.

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.

Inspired meals

I had a wonderful weekend on an ongoing project of mine, I guess it reflected on the kitchen. I even made my lunch!

My bf's lunch.

There was some chicken leftovers (I was so happy when I saw I didn't have to cook meat!) which I de-boned and but into bite-sized pieces and put then on a lettuce bed. Next to it there's some broccoli, sliced tomatoes, cucumber and couscous. The problem about having couscous at home is that since it's so fast to make, we make it until there's no more. I just put some couscous on a pot and cover it with boiling water (about 1 finger above the couscous) put the lid on and go finish other things. When I'm done with all of the preparations, I uncover the couscous and it's done!

Surprisingly I wanted to make my own lunch too but didn't want to eat any meat so I experimented a little:

My lunch.

From left to right there's cucumber, hijiki with lettuce underneath, some cheese rolled, olives, sliced tomatoes and broccoli. In the silicone cup underneath the tangerine was a little treat for after my exam :D some pumpkin home-made sort of jam. I don't know the name of the pumpkin in English but in Portugal we call it Gila. It's very stringy and I love the sweetness of the pumpkin itself. It's one of my favourite things to eat since I was a little kid.

While I was eating it I realized these tupperwares are perfect for salads, I've tried eating other things here but I get too full and end up eating more than needed.

I haven't posted so much recently because well, I'm kind of waiting for my things to arrive (which should arrive next month by the 22nd) so I can start improving. I am also waiting for another bento book and when I have it I will post about the books I got on X-mas all at once. Until then, I hope I keep my inspiration up and will to cook wonderful meals!

Snowman

I still haven't given up! Turns out I looked at the ingredients and by instinct did it:

There's not much to say to it, but the fact that made me happy to create something out of nowhere. I steamed the veggies, cooked some couscous, fried a chickpea burger and put some fresh cheese on top of the couscous.

Unfortunately my bf couldn't eat it all because of X-mas excess of food. His body is refusing any more to get absorbed.

In the meantime, since the year is almost finished I thought I'd start thinking of next year's resolutions and To-do's. Do you have any you'd like to share? I'd love to see what resolutions you have for 2010. I'll post mine a little later on the week ^^

Onigiri

As I was making dinner for myself, I entertained myself doing tomorrow's lunch, about the third one I make for myself:

half an egg, some sauté'd vegetables, fried shrimp with garlic and the last piece of japanese rice I had in the freezer. It was kind of...not cute whatsoever so I shaped the rice and cut some nori. Next time I'll remember to cut the nori but not to put it in there before morning! But now it's done, I guess I was in a rush to take the picture and forgot that part. I didn't fill up the tupperware because it's quite big (about 1000ml) which I don't fill for my bf, so I put in a little less for me than his usual.

Let's see if I keep the "cooking for myself" mood :D I'm quite enjoying it.

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.

Kirby

Something I do not own but tried to make it out of an image:

 

First of all I had no idea what I was going to do because since last week was a bit busy, I couldn't manage to get all the ingredients for what I planned, so I had to adapt something and remembered this image I wanted to do some time ago. You can still tell I was missing stuff like the nori. I tried making Kirby's eyes with some egg but they looked too weird so i grabbed some Tonkatsu sauce and a fork and "painted" them on the ham.

Here we have:

- Pasta;

- Turkey strogonoff;

- Egg for the stars;

- Turkey ham, carrot, tonkatsu sauce and ketchup for Kirby;

- Cucumber.

That's all for today!

Bento lunch

I've been wanting to do this for a looong long time, and I didn't do so bad.

 

Please ignore the yellow broccoli, I completely forgot about it while I was cooking the rest so it overcooked

From left to right we have:

- Shrimp with tomato sauce and lettuce underneath to make a change of color from the silicone cupcakes;

- Red cabbage with a pinch of salt and vinegar;

- Tamagoyaki (without the dashi because I haven't found it in my city yet)

- Broccoli;

- Rice with carrot on top.

Also, this week I have planned all week days with food so you should expect some new posts this week. (last week I completely forgot to plan, so i had to think on the clock, it didn't turn out well)

Lasagna

My bf was asking for lasagna for a long time, so we decided to make some this week.(I'll post more about that tomorrow!) There are also some other fans of my lasagna but unfortunately they're too far to taste it. *grin*

I still had to finish some grapes and sweet potato we had, so I put them on the tupperware.

Spinach Quiche

This took very little time to assemble, i just cut the quiche slices and wash up some tomatoes, cucumber and carrot and slice/arrange them.

The whole quiche

sideways 

It's a pity it doesn't last much in the house. Me and my bf keep sneaking into the kitchen to grab a slice until it's over!