Hola Bentolings!

Tonight's bento is just a nicely arranged one... no faces. I found some odd yellow tiny tomatoes and really nice veg at M&S today. Colorful lunches are always more fun! There is a little brioche roll with veggies and cheese hearts, salad with carrot sliver rolls and the other side is rice cubes wrapped in carrot slivers and nori strips with some tasty looking strawberries and almonds.

I think I need to invest in some different shaped boxes. These bentos are all starting to look the same to me. Maybe a nice square shaped one would do the trick. I think I already filled my J-list quota for the month though.

Looking forward to the bank holiday on Monday. Can't beat a three day weekend! Maybe the weather will be nice and we can have a bento picnic out in the park. I haven't seen any baby ducklings yet this year and that must be changed. I will arm myself with seeded bread!

Hope everyone is having a good week so far!

Ahoy Bentolings!

Normally I make nice bento boxes on Sunday afternoon/evening since I have all day and can take my time. This weekend however, we actually did outside things. The sun... it burns. Snow's sis and her husband are visiting so we ended up going walking in my favorite glen on Saturday. It was so green and lush that I felt like a forest nymph and had a strange longing to play a pan flute. Unfortunately I didn't have one in my purse so I just stuck to walking.

Sunday they came around to our town and we walked all over with melting ice cream cones in hand. It generally doesn't get very hot here, but Sunday was muy scorchio. We sat in the park for a while, not realizing my flesh was burning and I'd feel like I'd been dipped in lava all day today. We ended up at the house after I walked bare foot home after an unfortunate flip-flop situation. Great day, but no time for bento'ing.

So, tonight after work I decided to whip up some panda boxes for lunch tomorrow. These are dead simple ones, salad and onigiri with nori panda faces. I was out of carrots and other nicely colored items so it's not the most glamorous bento in the universe. It will be healthy and tasty though and that's what really counts.

Not too shabby for a work night box.

Here is a shot of a lovely waterfall in Glen Maye from Saturday:

Now I'm going to go attempt to take a shower even though my seared skin will cause me agony. It takes me back to when I was little and we'd go to the ocean to visit my Nana. I would get so sun burned that I looked like a little lobster with a bowl cut. Nana would end up coating me in vinegar mixed with ice water. I'm half tempted to do this on my back, but I'm pretty sure smelling like the local chippy is way worse than burned skin.

Ahoy bentolings!

Tonight I'm going to discuss the pitfalls of a bento hobby. All over the internet you will see sites praising the magical bento and all it's many pleasures and surprises. I'm here to talk about the dark side of bento making. This is the side I'm just now starting to see through the cute nori faces and endless bowls of steamed rice.

It started as I drove home from a very long, exhausting day of work. I usually try and plan out what I want to do in my precious evening hours on the way back. My soul spent, all I could really process was how cute all the little lambs are in the fields across the mountain road. I did come to one conclusion though... I wasn't going to bento tonight. Too tired, really can't be bothered.

I get home and start tidying and begin to prepare dinner. An hour later, we eat and watch an episode of Smallville (we're watching the entire series start to finish as I've not seen it. On season 5 now). I still am adamant I won't be making bentos tonight. My brain is sore.

I figured however, I could at least put together some sandwiches for snow and myself to have for lunch tomorrow. I'd rather control what I'm eating and not have the need to go to a store and get something icky if I can help it. So, I lope to the kitchen and get out some bread. Next thing I know, I've got the paper grass out and I'm curling carrot slices and goddammit I ended up with this...

This... THIS IS WHAT ME MAKING A SANDWICH LOOKS LIKE NOW! >_<

I wasn't even going to put hearts on or anything and then the bento devil on my shoulder whispers into my ear... "what if snow worries he doesn't have hearts on his lunch? You can't have that now can you? You better fetch the cheese quick, fast, in a hurry if you know what's good for you!"

I couldn't help myself. I think I'm doomed.

*sigh*

Ahoy Bentolings!

Spring has sprung and so have all the hedgehogs or hedgies as we call them in our house. I had a discussion the other day about Hedgehog Awareness Week, which is an actual thing here. It was the first week of May. According to the Isle of Man Courier (the only local newspaper), if you find a hedgie stuck in a hole, you should not reach in and grab him/her. You're supposed to construct a tiny ladder and lower it down for them to use and climb out. Is it wrong to hope I will find a hedgehog in a hole some day so I can construct a tiny ladder and see what happens? Probably.

Anyway, the theme of today's bento is hedgies! We have a soft spot for them in our house because Yuki's favorite toy in the world is a tiny stuffed hedgehog named (you guessed it) Hedgie. She brings it into bed with us, and carries it all over the house. It's the cutest thing you'll ever see.

I made the hedgies out of hard boiled eggs dyed brown with soy sauce and soy rice, with egg paws and nori faces. There is a bit of rice in the "garden" with veggies. The other side has chicken rolls and steamed broccoli with salad. The chicken rolls were a recipe that Pikko was nice enough to share with me. I modified it a bit, but it's pounded out chicken with baby spinach and fresh basil. You roll it up and bread via flour, egg then Panko. Pan fry in a bit of olive oil and holy crow... talk about delicious! I tried making enough for two rounds of boxes but snow ate every left over piece.

His

Mine

It was fun but slightly challenging to get the hedgies to work. I think they're pretty cute though. It's not exactly what I had in mind, but the rice wasn't cooperating like I would have liked. Also, my new favorite condiment is Furikake. I got some with my last Jlist order and it's so incredible, I'm sprinkling it on everything in site. I can't describe the taste, but it's really divine. On rice, it's absolutely perfect. There are loads of flavors, but this is the one I use. Here's a pic of the bottle:

I'm starting a nasty cold so, I'm not sure how bentotastic this week will be. I'm loading up on vitamins and juice so fingers crossed it just goes away before I'm curled up in bed feeling sorry for myself. I'm off to a date with the Night Nurse™ <3

Evenin' bentolings!

Tonight's bento box was fairly easy. The only reason I was in the kitchen for an eternity was because I made loads of onigiri and some special heart shaped ones for the boxes. That and the fact that we have no dishwasher. It took me almost as long to do all the dinner/bento dishes as it did to cook and prepare everything. I actually daydream about owning a dishwasher again. Now that's sad. The homes here just aren't really designed for one, unless of course you're willing to put your washer/dryer in the living room, which I am not. Some day though... oh yes, you will be mine shiny dishwasher. ALL MINE!

Back to the box. I found these adorable mini wholewheat pita breads at M&S while out shopping at lunch time. They are TINY! So, I carefully filled them with a bit of turkey and ham and some cucumber slices. The other side has some heart shaped fried rice style onigiri, lightly steamed asparagus and salad. I didn't use any oil fry up the egg/veggies, just a really good non-stick pan. I want these lunches to be as healthy as possible. There is also a wee side car of blueberries and the token Happy Panda cookie because my husband expects one in all his bentos now. They really are delicious little cookies.

Mine

Snow's

I have some ideas I want to try this weekend. One that if I can pull off, it will be amazingly cute. Fingers crossed! I managed to hunt down some super mini cupcake foils at lunch time, and some other odds and ends. I'm going to try the sweet potato puffs, but I'm confused because I don't think the recipe I have calls for the orange/yam type of sweet potato, because they're white in the picture. I'll have to do some research. Last resort is red potatoes because they're yummy and taste good in any potato recipe I think.

I'm glad I made them tonight. I took the night off last evening and today I looked at my manky old ham sandwich and thought, what's the point? I'm spoiled now and want to eat with my eyes as well as my mouth. That's the way food should be I think.

Ahoy civilians!

Sadly, no bentorific pic/update this evening. I don't think I can do them every night for fear of burning out. Tonight was a big work out night and I have a few books I'd like to look through and get some recipe ideas going for the next ones. I really want to try these sweet potato puff thingies, but I need to find very small cupcake papers to put them in. *glee* I plan to venture out into the world tomorrow and hunt some. There really isn't enough time in the day when you work full time.

It's an odd week. Work is feeling like that song you hear in the circus when all the clowns get out of the clown car and there's just colorful, kind of scary chaos all around you. The bento'ing and blog re-design have helped tame the stress though. Speaking of which, looks different in here doesn't it?

Snow and I have been working hard getting things up and working properly. I'm pretty much just drawing silly things and playing with colors and he's doing all the MT wacky back end voodoo to make it work. It's coming along nicely I think! Still needs some tinkering and a lick of paint here and there, but progress always gives you that warm fuzz. I will warn though, that during builds or code botches (most likely by me) the site could look totally broken, if showing at all. We're trying to get comments up and running too.

Previously when comments were allowed, the server got hacked so badly it was a miracle it made it back alive. So, my ninja is trying to come up with a secure way of doing things. Hence the silly captcha in the email link in the bio. Last night he put a security protocol on the server so strict that I couldn't even add a new entry. You'd think I was trading government secrets for nazi gold it's so locked down. Seriously, it's just a site about my lunches, cats and dreams about ducks.

Stay tuned for more bento fun tomorrow, and hopefully the server doesn't explode.