Yay!!! It arrived (boooo! for the dumbass that bought it off of ebay without noticing it was coming from Japan)

When I opened it, I thought, "holy crap! Those Asian people do not eat very much." Would explain why I am fat and they aren't. Actually, this tiny little box held a perfect amount to fill me up at lunch, not be cumbersome, and not so much food that I was sleepy afterwards.


On the top layer, I packed in rice and put two sheets of roasted nori on top. On the bottom, I put radishes, a round of baby bell low fat cheese and this thingy I made up last night. I have no idea what to call it except maybe a spinach cheese roll. I cooked a big pack of spinache and put some cream cheese, cayanne pepper, salt, pepper, and some onion flakes. I mixed that all together and spread it on an egg pancake and rolled it up burrito style. I often eat my lunches cold (I like plain cold rice just fine, and I usually prefer my stir fried tofu cold as well). However, that egg pancake/ spinach cheese thing was nasty cold. Warmed up, it was delicious. I was thriiled with my lunch, my bento lunch box, and my little food creation.


( pictures under the clicky type link thing. )

someone might've posted this before, but i looked a bit.. anyway. what's one post?

i was looking for ways to go green [just joined green_future] and i found this website with this handy dandy thing:



find it here: http://www.reusablebags.com/store/laptop-lunches-bento-wbook-p-528.html

Hello all :) I'm new to bento boxes but can't wait to make them! I just signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) produce delivery for the entire summer so I will have lots of variety to play with.

Couple of questions... I made a few rice balls last night. I used sushi rice and everything seemed to work but I was wondering if I was supposed to add rice wine vinegar to it? I just used it plain and added some fillings to it.

Also, Furikake... I found some varieties of this at an asian grocery store but it all had MSG in it? Do they make it without additives and such?

:)

Nice to meet you! <3

Hello, everyone <3 I've been watching the community for a little while now and it really inspired me to actually get a bento myself. I've been aching for one for as long as I've been interested in Japanese and, specifically, the food, and since I am just starting a new job I figured it was a good time to get one.

Just today I bought this box off of ebay:

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It's cute, a decent size, comes with what I wanted and was within my price range, so I was glad to snatch it up as a beginner's bento box~ Hopefully it will be coming within the next week <3

So, I did have a couple of questions for everyone:

Any beginners advice you can give? I mean I know a lot of things are common sense, but for now, though I've been plotting and looking at other boxes, I was just wondering if there were any major dos or don'ts when it comes to bento making.

Thankfully, I will have a little fridge and a microwave at my disposal at work as well~

Also, are there any good foods to start out with that aren't from specialty/Asian supermarkets? I've been meaning to go to the one in Chicago for a while now, hopefully for my birthday, but that's a month away. Like I said before, I've seen eggs, pasta salad, fruits, sandwiches, and salads as good additions, but are there any other things that are available at local supermarkets that can spice things up a little?

I know it's going to take a lot of creativity when I do make things so I'm looking forward to experimenting. I will try almost anything so we'll see what I'll be eating five days out of the week :3 I'm not huge on cutsey bentos really, I like looking at what other people have done, but I think I'll be more practical and artistic rather than cute, so sorry if I disappoint some people with what I do come up with once I get my hands on it.

I look forward to seeing other recopies and posting my own stuff up as soon as possible!

but is there a difference in the more 'traditional' rice cookers (at least the ones i grew up with) or the black and decker etc types?


and this does have to do with bento because my rice cooker broke and i am looking to buy a new one so i can make me some mini onigiri for my new 2 tier bento. :D

Here's a picture of what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow.



Box on left:
Left upper corner: Onigiri with Aji Nori Furikake
Left middle: Outside of cucumber stars
Right upper corner and middle: Carrot sticks and the inside of cucumber stars
Bottom: Strawberry slices
Box on right: Full of chicken stir-fry which includes chicken, broccoli, carrots, baby corn, water chestnuts, kikurage mushrooms, onions, petite green beans and sauce
The little container on the top has ranch for the veggies in it.

I was at the store today, getting some food items for making lunches, and I found a couple of stacking boxes that I can use for making bento box lunches. I can even stack them to make three or four tier. Here are some pictures.



The two on the outside are the stackable boxes, called Snapwear and the little ones in the middle are Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids containers. Those I will use for sauces and such.



Here is a picture of the stackable boxes three high.

I'm going to be using this until my bento box comes in the mail and also when my bento box is dirty. I'll probably switch them from time to time, like every other day or every couple of days. Better to have more than one bento box so you don't have to be doing dishes every day and so that you have something different every day too. Well, I would do dishes a couple times a week, or every day anyway, that's how it's done in my house anyway. ^_^

Today, being my long 8-6 day, required a more fruit-filled bento than usual. Don't get me wrong, I'll sit there and wolf down fruit all day just to keep going, but today's bento was more of a "snacking" one than anything else. I had chicken lo mein for lunch!

( Anyway, onto the bento! )

I'm really on a roll this week.
Here are a couple of delicious-nutritious selections from my meatless menu.

 

Today's lunches
Cheated a bit today - we stopped at a local Empanada shop while in DC last night - and I had a meal (8 WW Pts) and desert (4 WW Pts) empanada left over, while my wife had only a desert one remaining.

Her lunch added:
1 spaghetti cup (2 WW point)
1 hard boiled egg (2 WW points)
cherry tomatoes and a few strips of bell pepper

My lunch added:
Just the extra veggies

I hope to get the camera fired up soon, though once I do I suspect that the pictures will lag a day or two behind the meal's "eaten on" date.

( Added an LJ cut for the Poll portion of this post... )

I've been on a couple of communities now where I see people are cross posting (putting the same content on two different, but similar, communities).

An example of this is that I am in multiple bento communities:

eat_my_bento
bentolunch
my_bento

Click here for instructions on a good way to cross post

I really enjoy sushi rice and made some 2 weeks ago. The smell has kept me from making it again. When I heat the rice vinegar, salt, and sugar, it smells like I am cooking a hobo's sour feet. It took a whole day to get that smell out of my house. 

What in god's name did I do wrong? Is there a way to do it without heating up the vinegar? Would it be okay to heat the sugar and salt in a little bit of water and mix that in with the vinegar?

I wanted to try adding umeboshi to my onigiri in my bento. Unfortunately my poor little American palate found them way too salty. I drained the jar, rinsed the plums, put them back in the jar and filled it with plain water. A few days later, after a second rinse, I find they are still salty, but I can eat them.

I tried salmon furikake on my scrambled egg this morning. It was good!!

Hello

I read on some bento blogs that you could do japanese "thin" omelette in the microwave, so i decided to try.

Disaster.

It looked like this when out of the microwave:



Not to mention it was all dry and sticked pretty hard to the plate it was on...
(Black things are sesame seeds and i added a spoon of teriyaki sauce to the eggs, as well as a small amount of chinese hot sauce). Was good, but the consistency was gross.

What went wrong?

I was more lucky with my rice balls!

Alright! I said my last bento was number 7... but it wasn't. I guess I can't count!

What happens when you make your bento @ 1 a.m.?

Bento under the sea!

(as always, click images for larger view)



( Close Ups Here! )

Main content: 2 spinach filled steamed buns (I drew on them with food markers)
Legs are made of fake crab sticks.
some pepper starfish and shells ^_^

Sides:
Left side: Kiwi and Dolphin&Friends snack crackers

Right side: cherry tomato and pepper skewers. A hard boiled egg (sliced with my egg slicer). The pink container is filled with fat free chipotle mayo (take mayo and add a few drops of Frank's Red Hot, mix = yummy chipotle mayo) to mish with my egg for a quick egg salad with a kick.

There you have it!

P.S. Moddy Modress? Can I get my own tag?

This is sort of bento ish...
i made Gyoza (frozen, not home made, sorry) on a bed of rice with some carrot shreds for garnish, and while its only in a bowl the arrangement came out well. i thought if you had a round type bento you might like the idea.