Deviled Eggs and Salad Bento

Rub a dub dub

New gear, new year!

I purchased some adorable little containers for bento and filled them with salad-friendly accouterments. 

chia, salad dressing, and cashews

Mixed organic salad greens, deviled eggs, a squeeze of lime in the yellow part. From the garden last summer some dried Juliet tomatoes, and cabot cheese with the animals in the green part. Honey crackers, and a couple of hard Jolly Rogers candies in the beige part. 

Put it all together and what do you got?

 

Deviled eggs and salad

All wrapped up in a Burger Box!

Hamburger Bento Box!

Two New Bento Boxes and One Cute Cat

Merry Christmas from Judy's Bento Box!

Thank you for sharing your bentos this year, and I hope we will share and eat more delicious cute bentos in the coming year.

This is my new Book Bento. Shaped like a book so I can cleverly hide my lunch at work. 

 I love the details of this cover. I didn't even notice them until I took a picture. 

Really?

And this is my new Sushi Bento House. It looks like my favorite sushi restaurant.

Here's the layout. Bottom floor with lid. Top floor with lid. Cool gel pack (Cool!). Roof.

Ruff.

Happy Halloween Bento

Happy Halloween! My Bento Ghouls

Potato skull with brown gravy looked even more spooky smashed with the lid on.

yikes.

I'm coming to pick your brains!

A delicious rat's nest salad on the side, please.

All in my new happy and welcoming Black Cat Bento!

Stars and Stripes Forever Bento

Titled "Swimming Upstream"

because sometimes

 getting

 anything

 done 

around here 

feels like swimming upstream.

So when the inspiration comes 

to make 

star shaped 

grilled cheese sandwiches, 

I jump 

up 

and

 down

at lunchtime.

Stripey stripe green bell peppers, 

tangy mango salsa (a go go),

walnuts (7 a day),

and

a sweet treat, Hi-Chew.

(bless you)

Be Couscous Bento

The Mister likes to roast Cornish Game Hens, and we always make too much couscous. This makes a good leftover bento. In addition, we had a ton of baby red potatoes, so I made an German-style potato salad with sliced dill pickles. Apples and berries square out the new indigo rabbit bento box with cloth bag.

New Indigo Rabbit Bento Box

Comes with a red dish

and an indigo carry bag.

Kokeshi bento with BACON!

My Kokeshi doll bento is so cute!

Here with Miso Soup - me so hungry! Left over Malibu chicken, rice cubes (!), BACON, and kiwi, pickled radishes and carrots and pickles. 

Super Fly!

Blackberries and Chard Bento

This bento was made with Valentines Day leftovers - the chicken and the ribs and the risotto, and fresh salad and blackberries. I'm really digging blackberries as of late. So sweet and juicy!

The boxes are my Mio collection. Love the hearts!

New Bento Gear

Kokeshi Bento Boxes

Kokeshi Beckoning Cat in parts

Sakon Bento Box

A card that came with the bento box

Sakon looks like Clancey

Dog and Elephant touch noses

Dog and Elephant bento box by Katoh

Pretty blue band

Deconstructed Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Bento

I'm back in the groove of making bread, so for lunch this past Wednesday I decided to bring various spreads and crackers and bread. Black raspberry fruit spread, peanut butter, and marmalade in one box, and hummus in its very own container box so as not to taint the others. 

Chocolate-covered almonds from a local nut house, and chocolate-covered raisins, Brazil nuts, and raspberry newtons occupy another box. This box lasted three lunches. 

Nesting boxes are particularly handy when some items should be kept chilled while other need not be. They are also handy because the sweets and nuts box can come to work everyday to ward off the 3pm hunger monster. Believe me that candy box is not my daily portion!

Don't forget the tangerine.

Two Boxes

I received some new bento gear from Japan the other day. These two lovely boxes are just the right size for a small lunch for me. The fish came with a cute little fork and the upper tier has a snap down lid like tupperware. The round flower came with a padded velcro strap presumably because an elastic band would slip off too easily because of the roundness.

I don't know if you can tell but in the upper right-hand corner is a sesame seed grinder, well it is the box that the grinder came in. I've already used the grinder on teri-chicken. However I think I'll toast the seed first for a stronger flavor. It is a handy device although a mortar and pestle would work too.

The boxes are from J-List and the grinder is from Japanistic.

Winnie the Pooh Sandwich Bento

Winnie gets lost in a pretzel bamboo forest even though his friends have left flags showing him where Pooh home and Pooh garden is. Winnie doesn't notice. His brains are cream cheese and peanut butter. Where is that pot of honey?

A single layer box with a tight fitting top.

Cute bag carries the lunch.

C'est un nomade...

This is a wonderful little box. I love the pale turquoise and yellow combination and the little backpack the bear wears. The bear is not happy or sad, just traveling dot dot dot.

I used to walk everywhere when I was a child and young adult. That's quite an accomplishment growing up in Southern California. I knew all the routes that didn't have mean dogs. I'd strap on the pack, wear comfortable shoes, and get cruising dot dot dot

Here's one of my lunches last week. Ham and cheese on baguette, lettuce, mango, radishes, celery, and a plum.

Three Amigos Bento

Last Thursday I took this nutritious lunch to work with me. It really was a jungle out there!

The sandwich box, the yellow one with the holes, had whole grain crackers, whole wheat bagel with PB, a donut peach whole, donut peach cut up, and a piggie in a blanket.

The front box had pickles, carrots, celery, jicama, hummus, pecans, and my three amigos holding pieces of white cheese in the shape of a star.

They're really cute with their covers, aren't they?

both of my polar bear boxes bento

These are my two polar bear bento boxes. The white one has a cool gel in the lid that you freeze to keep a small box of, in this case, cut up watermelon super cool. The aqua color case has lock down lid with a polar bear wearing a striped t-shirt. In that box, I packed vinegar rice on the bottom and teri-chicken with a bottle of soy sauce and a few dill pickles in the top.

The background is my dreary desk, so now you know why I need my lunchtime smile. 

I did another polar bear bento way back near the beginning of my bento career. It's fun to look back at my attempts to be innovative with bento. Though sometimes it just comes down to time. 

Shinzi Katoh's Alice in Wonderland nesting bento box

This is the latest addition to my stash of bento boxes. Along with some other adorable panda picks and chopsticks, I scored these goodies at JFlair dot com. What a fun place to shop!

I had seen a Shinzi Katoh box that had bunnies riding in a car, and I thought How Cute! So I started hunting around for anything of his and found the very current Miss Alice and the grumpy Queen.

(I haven't seen the movie yet, but I will soon.)

They are really quite charming and the lids snap firmly into place. I don't think they are microwaveable, but that doesn't matter since I don't nuke any of my bento boxes.

They do need a bag however. They only nest when they're empty. And I saw some Alice in Wonderland fabric at my local sewing shop the other day, but I would loathe to battle the traffic this weekend as we are in the middle of yet another wine celebration, the Zin Fest.

For those of you that don't know - I live in the Central Coast region of California and vineyards have taken over. Every direction I look grapes are growing. What use to be cattle and hay fields, now cab, zin, syrah, etc.

So wineries throw festivals and everyone (in the world) comes here and gets drunk. (And the coppers make some dough too.)

I wait till they all go home.

Not that I have anything against wine. I am enjoying a glass of 2003 Brunello di Montalcino this very moment while I cook up my pizza. ( Guess I'll blog about that over on Foodie. )

Look what else I found at JFlair! Due Mugs! by Shinzi Katoh. Tea kept warm with dish for snack. Love the birdie on the branch!

Welcome Spring!

Hajime's cute cats come on bento boxes now YAY!

This charming little box was sent to me by accident. Originally I had ordered the larger "picnic" style box with five cats on it. I liked the box above, yet I wanted a bigger one to share snacks with the Mister when we drive around this spring to look at the wildflowers.

I ordered this one (below) on Amazon, which redirected me to JVS.

This box cost about ten dollars more than the one I received. Of course, I emailed JVS to let them know of the mistake. And no, they didn't get back to me or refund the 10 dollars. Bummer!

So I guess I'll just live with the error. The little guy kind of grew on me anyways.

Reminds me of another little guy.