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!

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!

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!

New bento equipment

After much debating, I decided to purchase a laptop lunch box. I figure it will be good for bigger lunches when I'm at school, and will fit in the new orange lunch tote I got at Pottery Barn over the weekend. I swear the reusable lunch movement has reached everywhere in the commercial store world. It's now profitable to be green. PB advertised their lunch tote along with resuable drinkware and glass snapware boxes like the Glasslock box that Nick has. I applaud the idea, but I think three glass containers in my lunch tote is awfully heavy.

I found out that the laptop lunchbox not only comes in primary colors like I've seen on blogs and on flickr, but also in all pink, and one with periwinkle inserts. There is even a "whimsical" color scheme. I decided on the periwinkle after much thought. I purchased it from the Conscious Cookery shop on ebay that had it cheaper than the Reusable Bags site and the Obentec site (the maker of the Laptop Lunchbox).

I was happy to receive it in the mail today! This is what it looks like:


I'm excited to use it! The book it comes with has a lot of nutritional information, tips on how to make your lunch healthy for your kids, and recipes for what to put in the box. I hope to post a lunch in it soon...

Bentos FTW! (For the week)

Since I haven't been updating this week, I'll have to recap the whole week in one post. For St. Patrick's Day we were invited to Nick's coworker James's house for corned beef and cabbage. I'd never had corned beef before, so I didn't know what to expect. Nick and I decided to bring edamame. It's not Irish, but it's green and it's a good beer snack. We ended up making spiced edamame with chili powder, salt, and oregano off of the Food Network site, and it turned out pretty well.




I got to meet some people I had heard about, and found out it's a really small world here in Davis. The corned beef and cabbage was delicious with potatoes, and everyone liked the edamame. There was lots of beer consumed (not by me) so I think it was a great way to spend the holiday.

For Tuesday's lunch I had Nick slice up leftover steak from the weekend. I assembled do-it-yourself wraps with mild red chile tortillas, ranch/BBQ sauce, lettuce, sauteed onions, and the sliced beef. Cucumbers and grapes on the side. Nick's also has a babybel cheese.

Mine was in my never-been-used garden bento that I love, but never had the perfect thing to put in it. The top tier has its own cover which was perfect for the beef and onions.


For Wednesday's lunch I went out to eat with coworkers, so I just gave myself a small snack bento with grapes, an apple gummy, and a mango jelly. Nick had leftover teriyaki pork chops and bok choy, and his side bento included cheese-its, grapes, salmon furikake, and a ferrero rocher chocolate. He decided that my putifresh yellow bento was not too girly, so I packed his in htat for some variety from his usual blue bentos.


For Thursday we both had leftovers from Jade Garden (peking spare ribs and string beans). I decided to pack Nick's side bento in the onigiri box to see what his coworkers would say. From what I hear they were fascinated by it, so that's good. Always good to give them some new eye candy! I put in leftover chicken salad, hummus, a babybel cheese, an apple gummy, and these new sturdy cocktail olive oil-flavored cocktail crackers.


I didn't even get around to eating my snack bento the day before, so I packed another tiny one with a cow's head cheese, crackers, and a small matcha chocolate. The cheese was super good with the crackers. It was a pretty good bento week, I'd say.

Chicken salad sandwiches and pound cake

I made up a chicken salad yesterday with the roasted chicken, mayo, creme fraiche, red and green onions, celery, walnuts, and curry powder. We had it on ciabatta for lunch today along with a side bento containing a slice of dauphinoise potatoes, broccoli, green grapes, and pound cake. I was very excited to use my sandwich bento. The bread was not soggy at all, but next time I think I will use sandwich ingredients that aren't quite so wet.


A few weeks back when we got the frozen poundcake, my mind was already excitedly turning out the things I could do with it for bentos. The first thought was cutting them with my mini cutters into cute shapes, so that's what I did. It might seem wasteful, but seeing as Nick and I ate up the remaining edges (and enjoyed them), I don't think it was very wasteful at all. It was fun to pop the pound cake bites in my mouth during lunch.


I decided to put them in my silicone cups for a splash of color and then nested them in the sub container with the grapes. That way Nick and I could remove the sub container before microwaving the potatoes and broccoli. Ingenious if I do say so myself.


If any of you have noticed that I changed the tagline under the title of the blog, I decided to do so because the focus of the blog has changed. While it still will feature restaurants that Nick and I eat at, with the bento lunches it has shifted generally to our experience with food. I would appreciate if any constructive comments were made concerning the change and the new color scheme. Thank you for reading and enabling my bento habit!

Indyna Bistro and Sunday cooking

We've been eating out for dinner the last few meals, and one of the highlights was discovering Indyna Bistro on E street last night. I was craving Indian food from All India Cafe back home in Pasadena, and wondering if Kathmandu Kitchen would hit the spot. See, KK has a lunch buffet that Nick and I love, and which makes it wholly not worthwhile to eat there for dinner. Plus ambiance is nonexistent.

Fortunately, the night before we ate at Zen Toro and spied Indyna Bistro on the second level of the same center. BTW, Zen Toro was as good as ever, even though we had to wait on a busy Friday night. Nick suggested Indyna when I told him about my craving and we checked out the reviews on Daviswiki. They were mainly positive with most of the negative comments about decor or service. Since Nick and I care mainly about the food, we decided to give it a shot.

Stepping inside the modern space I immediately catalogued it in the "nice casual" category of Davis restaurants. Casual enough to wear jeans to, but with an environment much nicer than your average fast food/sandwich place. Thai Bistro falls into this category as well. I liked it. The service was pretty nice, with the host asking us if the table he selected for us was all right.

The menu was pretty standard, except for the curry selection. You first picked what meat you wanted, be it chicken, lamb, or shrimp, and then what sauce or curry you wanted. Nick and I decided to go for the chicken thighs and legs with the tikka masala sauce. My favorite Indian dish has got to be aloo gobi, which is a cauliflower dish. We ordered this as well. Each entree there comes with salad, and your choice of naan, brown rice, or basmati rice. It can also be made into a dinner set, with soup, naan, rice, and a side dish. Nick and I also opted for the garlic basil naan.

I wish I had brought along the camera to show you the dishes we got. The presentation was simple but nice. The portions were small but turned out to be just right with the amount of basmati rice they gave us and the naan. The chicken in the tikka masala were tender, with just a bit of charred flavor, and the cauliflower was nicely spiced and served with peas and potatoes. However, I couldn't really tell the difference between their chicken tikka masala and Kathmandu's chicken makhani. Maybe the sauces are similar?

The only thing that was sort of a miss was the garlic basil naan. The basil was of the dried kind and very sparsely spread on the naan. It also came out to use somewhat cold. Well, not cold really, maybe room temperature...but I like my naan warm. Next time we'll try the aloo paratha and some other sauce for our meat.

Price was around $30 for the two entrees with rice and salad, the naan, and a mango lassi for Nick. The service was great. Everyone there was super nice, and they even apologized for letting my glass of water sit empty for maybe 5 minutes. It wasn't too full in there, and I hope that they last here in the cutthroat world of Davis restaurants.

In other food news, Nick decided to bring out the cookbooks and make steaks in a parsley-mustard sauce and dauphinoise potatoes. I decided to make a chicken salad for lunch tomorrow from the Barefoot Contessa to use our sandwich bento boxes, which involves roasting my own chicken breasts. And since I got the chicken breasts anyway, I threw in a recipe for parmesan-stuffed chicken breasts from our Great Food Fast cookbook to be cooked and frozen for another day when we don't feel like cooking. You'll get to see the chicken salad in tomorrow's bentos.

Here are some photos:

Dinner

Closeup of dauphinoise potatoes

Parmesan-stuffed chicken breasts

Friday Bento

We went out for our biweekly dinner with Winnie and Jerry and had the fabulous spanakotiropizza at Symposium along with their peasant salad, some dolmas, and an eggplant dip and zatsiki.


Since we had some leftovers, I just made small bentos for us to take to work. Plus I admit I was wracking my brain for fillers. I ended up putting some gio and sugar snap peas in for both of us. Nick got some cold roasted purple potatoes and pistachios, while I got cheese-its and a babybel cheese.

In the top part, where the chopsticks usually go, I put a thin flat cookie that I found at Nijiya Market on Sawtelle. I have no idea what couque d'asses is, but they're pretty yummy. I've made a rule for myself, that whenever I find a treat at a Japanese market, I have to buy two packages because who knows when I will see it again. I hope I find these again after I run out because they are addictive. They're way better than the similar Milano cookies from Pepperidge Farms, at least taste-wise. Since I can't read the language on the box I'll just let myself think they are healthier, too.

New bento box

I just realized that I deleted the pictures of the bentos we had yesterday, oops! They weren't too exciting anyway. We just had sugar snap peas, with cheese and crackers for me and four bean salad and apple gummy for Nick.

Anyway, I have been dying to try out my new onigiri bento box that I got at Ichiban Kan, but didn't have the opportunity until today. My coworkers laughed at its shape during lunch, but I think the winking monkey is super cute.


Inside, we have cold roasted purple potatoes (with a ginger-scallion oil) and pistachios. In the top onigiri part, I put a small container of hummus and mini chips. In the lock and lock box for Nick I packed the roasted potatoes, a mini pecan tart, a bigger container of hummus, the mini chips, and an apple gummy.


Oh, and Nick has now been made the official blog photographer. He can somehow make his pictures of the same exact things brighter than mine, and attributes this to camera settings and other things I could care less about. Hopefully we'll be trying out new backgrounds and lighting so that the pictures will look even better.