Update soon!

This is just to let you guys know I'm still alive! I have been faithfully documenting my bentos and just haven't had the time to blog about them. I think I'll have some time this weekend so look out for an onslaught of bento pictures. Maybe I'll just do a pictoral post...that would be easy!

First documented CSA box!

A while ago I debated getting a CSA, community-supported agriculture, box. You pay for a "share" in the local farm and in return you get a box full of the farm's freshed organic produce once a week. I decided to go with the Full Belly Farm CSA, which is located in Guinda, CA. It's $17 per week and you pay for a month at a time. I opted to go for a delivery every two weeks to see how it would be before I jumped into a box every week. I didn't document my first box because I got it the day before I left for Colorado and it was quite hectic. This past week I got my second official delivery and I was super excited.

Here is what was in my box this week:


Asparagus
Salad mix
Spinach
Dill
Artichokes
Radishes
Strawberries

I decided to make a roasted vegetable medley to go with a market-prepared rotisserie chicken (organic and free-range) and supplemented my box with some produce from Nugget market. It ended up being baby red potatoes, carrots, broccoli, asparagus, brussel sprouts, onion, and zucchini.

I searched the internet and decided on a recipe by Michael Chiarello that was adapted by the What Did You Eat blog. According to him, the secret to restaurant-quality roasted vegetables is that you have to parboil them first, brown them in skillet, and then roast them for 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven. Easy entertaining my ass!

I went for it anyway.

Some of the selection assembled

Ready to brown after parboiling

End result after roasting

I think it went pretty well, but the brussel sprouts were not cooked. I think I will stick to 101 cookbook's method of cooking brussel sprouts from now on...

Bento roundup

The rest of this week wasn't very exciting lunch-wise as I had to bring my lunch to the field every day and Nick ate out a lot. On the 7th I just had a regular turkey and gouda sandwich in my laptop lunchbox with carrots, a mango jelly, and goldfish with mushroom chocolate cookies.


The next day I switched it up with leftovers from dinner (with stuff from our CSA box that will go in the post after this one) with a mixed greens salad with ranch, rotisserie chicken breast, and roasted vegetables. I knew I needed some carbs so I added three small flower peanut butter sandwiches. I also included a small container of maggi sauce for my chicken.


I also packed a small dessert bento with a part of a chocolate walnut cookie, mushroom chocolate cookies, gingersnap granola, and a lychee gummy. Unfortunately I forgot to bring it on my way out the door to catch the bus so I didn't even get to enjoy it.


Nick had a side bento that had carrots and ranch, part of a chocolate walnut cookie, two gummies, granola, and ranch puffs. The exciting part for him was the fresh strawberries we got in our CSA box! He was very surprised!


Friday's lunch was super unexciting so I didn't even bother to take a picture of it. Here's to more sandwiches next week!

Manic Monday...and Tuesday

I forgot to pack lunch for Monday until about 11pm Sunday night. I was pretty uninspired because I was tired, but I managed to crank something out anyway. We only had leftovers for one person, so Nick took the high road and got the sandwich and gave me the leftover thit ga kho gung and Vietnamese-style stir fried broccoli with rice.


I cut his sandwich into heart shapes to switch it up. They're filled with mayo, mustard, butter lettuce, honey turkey, and sliced gouda. In his side bento I packed fromage blanc with crackers, yellow carrots with ranch, a big homemade (by Nick) chocolate walnut cookie, and goldfishes, chocolate mushrooms, and a mango jelly.


My side bento had a lot of the same things (hence being uninspired). Yellow carrots with rance, a smaller chocolate walnut cookie, a mango jelly, and goldfish. The new things are ginger snap granola and two gummies (one lychee and one apple) I ate way too much of my hot lunch and barely touched any of my side bento. Sad.


Today Nick got to bring a hot lunch in his glasslock box. I was on the ball last night! He had rice, the thit ga kho gung, and some leftover dantze minced pork noodle from the local Taiwanese noodle restaurant. In his side bento he had a chicken noodle salad (from the same restaurant) and chile-spiced edamame. in his dessert bento (isn't he a lucky guy?) I packed half a chocolate walnut cookie, ginger snap granola, ranch puffs, and two gummies.


My lunch consisted of a bigger portion of the noodle salad because I knew I was going to be hot in the field. In my side bento I had the spiced edamame, Dantze noodle, a fourth of a cookie, granola, goldfish, and chocolate mushrooms.


Tomorrow I'll have another sandwich. Ahh, the "perks" of field season... I'll try to update more often so I don't have to load 10 pictures in every post!

Time to play catch up

Hey everyone (all 5 of you, and that's being hopeful), sorry about the lack of posts since the end of April. I have been faithfully documenting my bentos photographically so I suppose now is the time to let you know about them!


On the 23rd we just had regular side bentos. Nick's blue happy balloon bento box has in the top tier cabaret crackers, breakfast cheese, a laughing cow cheese, three chocolate wafer cookies, and some suger snap peas. In the bottom tier there are some more sugar snap peas, colored goldfish crackers, sliced carrots, ranch dressing in the small container, and a matcha chocolate.


My bento that day had in the top tier sugar snap peas, carrots, some garlic chicken pasta salad, and ranch dressing. In the bottom tier there are chocolate wafer cookies, a laughing cow cheese, colored goldfish crackers, and some grapes.

The next day I left for Colorado to visit Lyndsay so I packed an airplane bento for myself and a side bento for Nick. I used my spiffy new lunch kit that has a main container, two side containers, an ice pack, and the cute blue flower insulated carrying case. Inside I had a salad made with carrots and spring greens (from our very first CSA box!), some homemade balsamic vinaigrette in the little sauce pig, a mango jelly, grapes, crackers and cheese, and colored goldfish.

For Nick I used my new yellow monkey box. The cover is hilarious. I used it because it's deeper than my other boxes which was perfect for the amount of salad I wanted to give him. His vinaigrette is in a cute blue whale. Apparently his coworkers thought this was way too much, haha. He also had grapes, an apple pastry, a passionfruit truffle, a lychee gummy, and a matcha chocolate.


Since I was having a great time in Colorado, no bentos were made until I got back and went to work on May 1. Nick went out to eat for lunch. Since I knew I was going to be out in the field, I opted to use my laptop lunch box in my orange carrying case with an ice pack. I made two wraps with red chile tortillas, honey-roasted turkey, butter lettuce, and Bellwether Farms fromage blanc. They were alot better than I expected considering they were in the fridge overnight. Alongside that I had organic yellow carrots, ranch dressing, grapes, a mango jelly, and crackers with cheese. The crackers are from Fort Collins, CO but they might be available in Whole Foods markets.


My new coworkers were very intrigued by my lunch which made me excited. It was also cool to see what they brought for lunch. One guy, Ben, brought half of a red cabbage and proceeded to eat it like an apple. Interesting! He also offered me some of his packaged baked tofu.

Yesterday (Friday) I made a bento for each of us. Nick's bento has some gio, yellow carrot sticks and ranch dressing, colored goldfish, a mango jelly, and these funny little mushroom-shaped chocolate cookies. I thought they were so cute that I had to have them.


I had a laptop lunch again since I was out in the field in the morning. I have a feeling this will continue for a while. I had a sandwich of butter lettuce, honey turkey, fromage blanc and mayo. On the side there were yellow carrots, gio, and a snack mix of colored goldfish, mushroom chocolate cookies, and ranch-flavored corn puffs.


I hope I will be on track from now on with posting my bentos like I was before I went on a whirlwind plane tour of the United States!

Some April bentos

I just came back from my trip and I got back into bento mode by making a lunch for me for my first day of work in my laptop lunch box. Nick also got a side bento so that his coworkers know that I'm back and still in top bento form! Haha...so I am a little rusty.

I decided I didn't want to make a sandwich so I whipped out our musubi maker and followed these instructions posted on the Serious Eats blog written by Kathy who writes her own blog that I already follow. So in my lunch we have: two spam musubi cut in half, some golden-crusted brussel sprouts, breakfast cheese and a laughing cow cheese with crackers, grapes, and a mango jelly.


I was excited because it was my first full lunch in the laptop lunch box, and I also got to show it off to my new coworkers who were very intrigued by the concept. I ended up finishing everything but one spam musubi and the laughing cow cheese.


Nick got one spam musubi, garlic chicken noodle salad from Nugget, and grapes in a pig-shaped silicone cup. Simple and clean. It came back empty so I guess he liked it!

Today I packed a side bento for myself, since I had leftovers and Nick was going out to lunch with his coworkers. I had a lunch time lab meeting, and it turned out to be a great way to let them see my bento. I am excited because they are excited about it! It was especially colorful today, too.


I had sugar snap peas with some ranch dressing (in the container), grapes, a matcha chocolate, three chocolate wafers, and some colored goldfish crackers. It was delicious! I ate everything in that side bento, and a majority of my leftovers. I guess since I am doing more physical work at this new job, my appetite has gone way up. Now it is time to pack tomorrow's lunch!

A pair of airplane bentos

This past week I jetted off to the east coast to visit Duke University as a prospective grad school. There are no direct flights there so the prospect of no food for over 6 hours was an unhappy one. So, who to step in but my trusty laptop lunch box?

Flight to Durham:


I amassed a lot of food for this bento. We have roast chicken, fresh boiled corn off the cob, green bean goma ae, two mango jellies (frozen as ice packs), a boiled egg, one sliced Japanese cucumber, pistachios, flavored seaweed, a cookie, and a chocolate. Not pictured is a salmon onigiri and some honey wheat rolls. I ate almost everything but the green bean goma ae (I decided I didn't like the flavor) and the onigiri (too full by the time I got to it).

Flight back from Durham:
This one was harder because I had to make do with what I could get my hands on during the last day of the visit. I ended up grabbing a crudite pack from UNC's student store (yes i visited Duke's rival) and included my leftovers from the barbecue we attended.


Here we have celery, carrots, and broccoli, ranch dressing, Carolina barbecue pork (spicy and vinegar-y), one hush puppy hidden under the ranch dressing, a mango jelly, and a chocolate. Not pictured are the cookies and seaweed I had stashed from last time. This one just kept me from not starving until my connection in Vegas where I had a taco and chips and salsa. I don't think it's too bad for having been scrounged from unknown supplies.

First kid bento

Okay, so I found an opportunity to blog about bento sooner than I thought! I had told my sister about bento and that I thought it would be a great way to appease her daughter Annika, who is a very picky eater. She's not even three yet! On my trip home I brought a few small bento boxes, some cookie cutters, some disposable coated muffin cups, and a reuseable tiny container.

I was very excited to find out she made one for Annika the very next day which was Friday so I had to take a picture of it. Here it is:


It contains a heart-shaped ham and cheese sandwich, plain rotini pasta, and some corn. Not bad for a first try! My sister and her husband aren't foodies like Nick and I, so I didn't expect anything way out there. It will hopefully get better as she gets more used to the medium. I'd like to think I'd have a lot of fun with Annika's lunches if I had all my stuff down here with me, haha.

I'm trying to see if I can find any more bento supplies while I am down here. I'll let you know if I do!

Airplane bento and more

This will be the last post for a bit. I made myself a lunch bento to take on the plane since I will be at the airport at 9:30am and in the air from 11:40am to 1pm. I was too tired to think exactly about what bento things I wanted to take with me since I'll also be packing bentos for my cross-country trip to Duke next week...so I just opted for the laptop lunchbox system.


In it, we have two heart-shaped cream cheese sandwiches stacked on top of each other, eight pieces of gio, flower-shaped pound cake bites, an apple pastry, garlic-roasted pistachios, a lychee gummy, a mango jelly, and a matcha chocolate. In the upper coverable container I whipped up a no-mayo cabbage slaw. I lined it with plastic wrap so that the acid in the dressing didn't permeate the plastic and leave a smell.

I'm pretty excited about my first airplane bento! I will try to post the ones I take on my trip next week.

Nick told me today that he sometimes feels weird eating for the whole lunch hour while his coworkers are long finished. I guess having a big lunch and then a big side bento in addition can do that, since he is a very meticulous eater. So for tomorrow I gave him a small dessert bento which has pound cake bites, an apple pastry, a lychee gummy, a mango jelly, and a matcha chocolate. Maybe he will miss his side bentos so much while I'm gone that he'll want them back!

Two days of bento

For yesterday's lunch Nick had leftover roasted pork and broccoli rabe with rice. The pork recipe is an old standby we have for pork tenderloin and it came surprisingly from Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals show.

I made him a very small side bento with lentil salad, a strawberry truffle, an egg pudding jelly cup, and two gummies (one apple and one lychee). It was pretty sad looking, but I packed it after I made a special cheese bento for him to share with his coworkers.


In the cheese bento I packed cabaret crackers and also these new 34 degrees brand crack pepper crispbreads. They are very spicy and good, but you can't eat too many of them. The cheeses were our triple creme brie, the Appalachian, and the specialty breakfast cheese from the Marin French cheese company which is my personal favorite!

I packed this bento to thank them for the nice comments, but it came back with quite a bit of it intact, so Nick and I had a small cheese snack before going out to dinner with friends.

In today's lunch I put some more effort into a side bento for Nick that I packed this morning. He has quite a bit of meat-heavy leftovers for lunch gathered from our dinner at Indyna Bistro (basmati rice, tandoori chicken, and one piece of naan) and the last of the pork and broccoli rabe from yesterday.

The side bento:
The top tier contains a small container of the rest of the lentil salad, two inarizushi (from my freezer stash), four organic carrots from the farmer's market, and a small container of ranch. The bottom tier has cabaret crackers and two cracked pepper crispbreads, a chunk of triple creme brie and two pieces of Appalachian, and some Loacker chocolate bite-size wafer cookies. It looks much better than yesterday's side bento!


I plan on doing one more bento for his lunch tomorrow and then that's it from me for a while!

Back to Bento

Finally, another bento post! The bentos this week are just for Nick, as I'm out of work and get to stay home while he makes the big bucks, haha. Since we were gone this weekend out of town we did not have any leftovers available to pack, so Nick got another sandwich...with lettuce!


In the laptop lunch box I packed a whole wheat turkey-muenster sandwich with mayo and mustard cut into fourths for variety. I used little picks to keep the two top pieces in place. He got a lentil salad from the Cowgirl Creamery cantina in Point Reyes Sation which is delicious and nutty. I also included a small cheese sampler of what we got during our trip with some Cabaret crackers.

I ID'ed the cheese with colored picks so that he would know what everything was, and wrote a little note. He thought it was so cute he took a picture of it.


I also packed a small side bento with a miso soup ball containing cilantro, green onions, and dashi soup granules, napa cabbage, and abura-age tofu. What you do is add hot water to the unwrapped ball with the other ingredients and ta-da! Instant miso soup. I apparently forgot to pack a bowl so Nick drank it out of this tiny container.


This week is the last week that Nick will get bentos for a while, as I'm going out of town on Thursday and won't be back until the 18th!

Petaluma Eats

Nick and I traveled to Petaluma and Point Reyes this weekend and had some really great food. There's so much that I can only provide a snapshot of each restaurant so that this post doesn't go on forever!


Up first was Sea Modern Thai, which is located conveniently next to the hotel we stayed at, the Metro. We ate a late lunch there, sharing a pan-seared scallop appetizer (don't they look delicious?) and each having entrees that come with rice and a small organic salad with roasted peanut vinaigrette. Nick had the angel eggplant with chicken (pictured) and I had the curried grilled prawns.


Everything was delicious and service was great. The Thai waitress even had to deal with slightly racist and condescending remarks from the two men in the table next to us, with questions like "If I told you you would live 10 years longer here in the US, would you still want to go back to Thailand? WHY wouldn't you want to stay here?" and "See that's why you don't want to live here; you don't have a boyfriend." I was so mad, but she handled it very nicely.

For dinner we ate at Le Bistro, which is the same name of the restaurant we liked in Hawaii. Here it was a tiny restaurant, with only nine tables and everything cooked by the chef/owner himself. The food was so delicious, Nick and I ate until we couldn't move. He had the soup of the day, a creamy tomato and red bell pepper soup, and almost licked the plate. I had the bistro salad with tiny diced veggies and a dijon vinaigrette.


For our entrees I had the parmesan-crusted prawns in a champagne butter sauce (sorry for the blurry photo; lighting was dim). It was so good despite the fact that I had prawns earlier for lunch. Nick continued his lamb trend and got the grilled lamb tenderloin. The vegetables that came with our entrees were great and so were the potatoes! Dessert for Nick was a flourless chocolate cake and they brewed decaf coffee just for me.


The next day we traveled to Point Reyes and ate at Drake's Beach Cafe, which is right on the beach. I was sad we didn't get to eat there for the fancier dinner, but lunch was casual and good. Their clam chowder was delicious, and my veggie quesadilla was huge and stuffed with roasted peppers, onions, and wild mushrooms. Nick liked his chicken sausage sandwich, but it wasn't that special.


Saturday night's dinner was on the main drag in Petaluma at Central Market. It houses a big open kitchen and we played our version of the Ratatouille game: "Which one is the chef? The sous chef?" Imagine our surprise when the head chef, Tony, comes to talk to us and to pour wine and water for other tables, and even serve them their food!


I had the chicory salad, which was okay, and Nick had the chorizo buns with housemade vegetable pickles. For our entrees I got the scallops (no surprise there) with a fall vegetable hash and some broccoli di ciccio on the side. Nick got the seared Angus hanger steak with a mushroom-leef bread pudding. We both agreed we really liked out entrees. The broccoli reminded me of Chinese broccoli at a Chinese restaurant, though.


After dinner I approached the chef and asked him to sign the day's menu for us. He was so excited to have been asked, let me tell you. He even handed me his business card with his cell phone number and email on it.

Brunch the next day was had at the Tea Room Cafe. It's order at the counter, fend for your own table, and bus your own table kind of place. That's fine, but it got kind of wonky when people didn't know the system. I chose the baked eggs with ham, spinach, and pesto, with a soy decaf latte, and Nick got a traditional eggs Benedict with ham.

Food was pretty and delicious, and my latte was served to me in a bowl. How weird is that? Okay, maybe not so weird, but I had never had it that way before.

All in all it was a great food-filled trip! I'm too lazy to list all their contact info and hours here, but it's easily searchable on Google and yelp!

Debut of the Laptop Lunch Box

Nick was the lucky one that got to experience the laptop lunch box for the first time. We went out to dinner last night and didn't have any leftovers, but Nick said he would be fine with having a sandwich again. Since he didn't get a new lunch entree, I gave him the chance to use the new lunch box!


He had a turkey/chicken/muenster sandwich again, this time with dijon mustard and mayo on whole wheat. To make it fit I sliced the sandwich into three pieces. He also got a mini cornbread muffin, some brown rice crackers, a string cheese, pound cake bites, a mini apple pastry, and an apple gummy. I also included some edamame with a small container of chili powder salt left over from St. Pat's day, and a small packet of fake KFC honey for the cornbread. After writing that list, I realize this lunch box can hold quite a lot!

It comes with a fork and spoon that fit perfectly inside and this morning I rearranged a few things to accommodate the spoon for the yogurt I decided to include in his lunch.


I just brought a frozen dinner (haven't had one of those for lunch in a while) with two bento containers for lunch. In one I put my leftover mini sandwiches and some sugar snap peas. In the other I had the edamame with a tiny container of chili salt, a mini cornbread muffin, mini apple pastry, pound cake bits, a matcha chocolate, and a laughing cow cheese. Since I didn't have much time for lunch because I was out in the field today I didn't finish that much of my lunch, which is very sad.

I hope we'll have better lunches tomorrow. Wait, Nick had a pretty good lunch...well I wish I have a better lunch tomorrow!

Korean and sandwich bentos

For Monday's lunch we both had leftover Korean BBQ that we made with our friends Winnie and Jerry over the weekend. We made spicy pork, bulgogi, soon dubu (spicy tofu stew), soybean namul, soy sauce-glazed potatoes, and green onion pancake. It was fun! And we got to eat the delicious results. However, for lunch we had smaller portions and no soon dubu.




I packed the banchan in our lock and lock boxes like last time. We had the soybean namul, potatoes, and pancake with dipping sauce. Our side bentos had olive oil crackers, garlic roasted pistachios, mini corn muffins, fudge from the Candy House of Davis, and a babybel cheese and mango jelly for Nick and a laughing cow cheese and matcha chocolate for me.



We both ended up not eating all of our side bentos because of the big portions of meat and rice in our main dishes. So, I ended up repacking some of it for today's lunch. Last night we had pan-fried chicken that yielded no leftovers. This made me decide to go with our second full sandwich bentos. We both had sliced turkey and chicken with muenster cheese on whole wheat with mayo.


We also each had side bentos. Nick's side bento had an apple-shaped peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, roasted asparagus, and carrots and sugar snap peas with ranch. I repacked his fudge(!), crackers, and mango jelly. I changed his cheese to a laughing cow cheese to see if that would actually persuade him to eat it.


My side bento had three flower shaped mini sandwiches: two cucumber-cream cheese and one nutella. It also has sugar snap peas and carrots with ranch, and the rest of the roasted asparagus. I also included an apple gummy and chocolate cookie in the top part where the chopsticks go (not pictured).


I'm happy to report that Nick finished all of his bento today, so that means he found it enjoyable. Also, his coworker Karina thought it was beautiful. I do think the positive comments he gets there motivates me to make his lunches more aesthetically pleasing than mine. I always work on his bento first when I have the most creative energy. I do think he'll miss it when I won't be here in April (off to visit grad schools) to pack lunches for him. Maybe I will persuade him to post some of his lunches while I'm gone. We'll see!