Put A Tiger In Your Tank Bento

I went to the zoo. Well, actually I went to the zoo gift shop on my way home last week and bought a tiger for Si. 

In celebration of the tiger for Si, I made a mighty put a tiger in your tank bento complete with a pastrami sandwich on sourdough bread and a nice tray of berries and grape tomatoes with some lovely Bob's Blu Cheese Dressing. 

Grr Tessa

Round Up A Sammie Bento

 A couple of rounds to complete a half of ham and cheese sandwich.

The sandwich also had avocado and tomato slices.

 Celery, carrots, and radishes with a cucumber dill dipping sauce.

Cherries, berries, and white nectarine slices.

Homemade Bread with Brie and Butter Bento

As the title suggests, this bento features homemade bread, a small slice of brie, a knob of butter, peanut butter in the green kiwi container, grapes, and carrots.

All for the last day of Spring in my Springtime Totoro bento box!

Please Deliver Me Kiki Bento

A Thursday bento designed to make me happy.

And well nourished.

And satisfied.

A berry nice bento & oodles of noodles bento

A couple of bentos from last week. The top one is mini pita bread with cheese and salami slices. The little bear dispenser holds dijon mustard. The other level is strawberries, blackberries, and a small dish of hummus. Tasty!

The bottom bento is my oodles of noodles attempt. So good. Somen noodles in a vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce mixture with a little bottle on the side and sliced pork. The other level is tangerine and kumquat slices, strawberries, and blackberries, and a goofy panda pick to make me smile, although this box helps with that.

Somebody is watching me Bento

Seems like a good time to break out the Mio boxes.

This bento features raspberries on a bed of lettuce on the bottom tier. Teriyaki chicken, one half of a turkey and cream cheese bagel sandwich, and toasted seed bread cut long strips in the upper tier. A side of  lemon curd in the smallest of my stackable Mio squares.

A couple of bentos I made this week

I made the pork curry the night before with sweet peppers and shiitake mushrooms and carrots. For some reason Thai spiciness does not bother me like some other spicy cuisines. 

I really wanted a warm lunch, so I separated the curry and rice from snacks and raw vegetables using my ecobox. I was going to separate the curry from the rice with a lettuce baran, but that would make the lettuce all wilty and really wouldn't work anyways. So I used a little glass bowl instead. 

This wasn't a very successful bento at work. The whole thing was a bit of a mess.

Wednesday I woke up late and didn't have time to make a bento much less photograph it, but Thursday I put together a Mio Mio bento with my big and little Mio boxes. There's a half of a pita filled with Seal Cove brie, and the other half is plain to go with my hummus. Some radishes, blueberries, and strawberries with a sweet pepper flower, and a flower rice ball with a bottle of soy sauce.

Cute little green-eyed kitty probably wanted tuna instead.

Bentoin' all week with you

Monday ! Tuesday ! Bento Days!

Leftover panko chicken and stuffed peppers, and vegetables and brie and crackers.

Mixed salad, chicken sausage and rolled omelet, carrots and tomatoes and hummus, cookies and candy.

Wednesday ! Thursday ! Bento Days!

Tomatoes and mangoes chunked, hummus and peanut butter with bread sticks and kumquats.

Heirloom tomatoes and cottage cheese and a carrot star and thinly sliced radish, pecans and orange slices and bell pepper and carrots and strawberries

Yay!

Bamboo Bento

For the inaugural use of my Springtime Totoro bento box, I have done pandas playing in a bamboo forest made of cucumber sandwiches with carrot jewels and blueberries (which are jewels for the body).

The cottage cheese rabbit is feasting on curly kale and two radish mice are trying to hide under the bread stick wood pile.

The bamboo sandwich idea came from the very first bento, that was made by Nedalin Malle, that I put in my Elegant Bento Gallery on Flickr.

Galleries are a great way to keep the pictures that inspire you close at hand. A lot like favorite-ing a photo, galleries are more like finding a theme and building a collection. I recommend trying this fun feature in Flickr.

I plan to go back to adding and deleting (only 18 pictures are allowed to a single gallery) to this gallery to see if I can get a single representation of an elegant bento from 18 bento artists.

The Groundhog sees his shadow bento

And that means 6 more weeks of winter. It also means winter is over half-way done. So yay! Happy Groundhog Day!

This groundhog was made with peanut butter and nutella (Oh btw Happy Nutella Day is today!) and that's buttah for the whites of his eyes. I really envisioned something a little different than this. But this is what came out. It's all on my homemade sourdough mini loaf. 

Gamene over at bentozen requested the sourdough recipe, so I might try to post it someday. I sort of do it differently every time. Also Gamene is throwing an outrageous give-away, if you're into bento, check it out.

The rest of this bento is a deviled egg (I know - my old stand by) and bacon. For fiberous fun I added a sliced purple carrot and a little yellow carrot cut into sticks. And tangerine juicy jellies. Actually it looks like the groundhog is eyeing the candy in this pic.

Lasagne bento

Leftover lasagne was the anchor dish in this bento. I make my own sauce with black olives and bell peppers, onion, garlic and herbs, and use three cheeses, ground beef, and spinach for the layers. The bundle of spinach that I purchased the very same day as I made this dish smelled off. So I tossed it out. If experience has taught me anything, it has taught me to trust my instincts and my nose.

The ham and cheese puff pastry was a fun addition. The mini sweet peppers were stuffed with shiitake saute in butter. Half mini bagel with cream cheese, dried apricots, radish, and two hard boiled quail eggs filled the second tier and were left out of the Mr. Bento thermos (because everything was hot in the thermos).

This bento serves as breakfast, lunch, and snack in a very cold building. Although the building does warm up with the heater blasting, it takes awhile.

orange bento

Bon Jour! Chicken salad sandwich bento

On whole wheat with fresh fruit and a Bubbies pickle wrapped in plastic so my fruit doesn't taste like a Bubbies pickle. I think The Loaf is eyeing my bread box.

oh no egg salad bento

One egg was used. Cut in half and yolk removed. Bottom half of white mashed together with yolk, mustard, and mayo. Toast was cut in an egg shape and cracked in the middle. Sesame eyes and carrot beak on the face, and it is all laying on a bed of baby greens mostly red and green oak leaf lettuce.

Breakfast for Lunch

The lessons I learned making this bento, my my, I will tell you.

After feeling like a pile of crap for many days, I awoke to a slight headache and full of energy. The headache went bye bye after a nice hot shower, and I was ready to begin the day.

The first order of busy-ness was a pomegranate. Now everybody knows that seeding a pomegranate is a zen-like experience. It might also be helpful to be stoned. But rather than fall down that slippery slope first thing in the morning, I decided to let my *yawn* first blush of the day ease me through the task.

I cut open the monster (the pomegranate was as big as a grapefruit) and the puddle of blood oozed out on the cutting board. I cut each half again in half again and rub the jewels into a container, all the while jabbering on to The Mister about my plan of the day.

I want to do a Cute Bento, I said. Of course, that is a redundancy, I continued, hahahahah.

He said something like huh-ehh (fart).

Yes, I said, a Cute! Bento.

Hmmm. An acute bento, he said. Sounds like a disease.

So we were off and running as they say of the day. Many of my favorite bento artists were using pomegranate in their daily bentos the week I non-commissioned. Inspired by my growing stash of shiny gems, I envisioned using my new pink single story box and filling it with breakfast food that I have been craving.

Really pink and girly with no Halloween-y to detract.

Then I thought well maybe a couple of ghouls with big eyes hiding in the back, but everything else - pink bows and pink elephants and pink flower cups.

Lesson 1. Keep the creative process open.

Maybe the french toast could look like an old dead tree, I thought. That would be cool. Like the trees in OZ that threw apples at Dorothy & Co. With eyes and mouths and arms. And if I have an old dead tree, I might as well have a graveyard. Yes indeed the bento was being transformed.

What I didn't expect were the owls. They were ghouls poking their heads up from the ground. When I went to put eye on them, they became owls. You can't see the wings, but that doesn't mean they don't have them.

Lesson 2. Working with Nutella is a bitch.

Since this was to be a edible bento by me for me straight away, I wanted my eggs hot. Cold eggs are okay, but today they had to be hot, or at least warm. So I had to be quick with photos plus no stress on the details and perfection. Ah yes. The heat of the eggs melted the Nutella which was also the glue that held the eyeballs on the owls and they started to slide down.

Meanwhile The Mister started to bug me. Not now, I cried. I've put too much into this piece!

Oh the Drama!

In the end I had to change lenses. Nutella on everything. Yuck! But I ate my Breakfast for Lunch bento and it was really good.

Lesson 3. The unexpected pairing that was superb - pomegranate and bacon - yum!

Oh and the milk bottle (bats eyelashes) that's maple syrup.


Now for a couple of blog items:

I have a giveaway in progress. You must go here to enter. Please do. The more, the merrier.

I have a new Flickr group, Bentoland, and I'm the only member. I tell you that is sad! I know there are lots of bento groups out there already, but I'm really open to suggestions to make this a fun adventure!