Tater Tots and Homemade Ketchup Bento

Inspired by Sheri's lettuce wraps, I've sliced roasted pork really thin and wrapped it with Bibb lettuce leaves on one level. Store bought tater tots with homemade ketchup and one half of a tangerine on the other level.

The back story on the ketchup is I read the ingredients on the major ketchup company label and noticed it included High Fructose Corn Syrup. So I found a recipe in my make-it-from-scratch pantry book, and now I have 2 and a half quarts of ketchup in my freezer.

Please don't tell me what's in those tater tots.

Rejected Mummies Bento

Hitting an October stride and bentoing along the way. This was my lunch for Tuesday this week.

Mandarin oranges, red grapes, container of salt for the radishes, three rolls of deli ham guarded by two happy pandas, and three radishes with their tails up high.

Next tier is a leftover chard and mushroom stuffed chicken breast, rejected mummies, and soy sauce marbled hard boiled egg.

This is one of my favorite boxes!

Elegant Bento

At home lunch on Monday consisted of teriyaki salmon, sauté shiitakes, sushi rice, and garnishes.

A staid and delicious meal to start what would be a chaotic and painful week.

The positive: I'm back in bento again. Big time!

Carbolicious Bento

This was lunch last Tuesday. Petite penne in a cheese sauce with shiitake mushrooms. And grapes, a perfect snacking food.

My First Year of Bento

On my first week of bento, my true love said to said to me,
"Seriously! Are you taking pictures of your lunch!?!"
(little did he know...)

After that, my second week of bento I knew I'd have to separate my bento life from my foodie life or else I would be overwhelmed. And back then my foodie life was and still is connected to my garden, so my favorite links are different than my favorite bento links. Oh well, another day, another blog.

So I launched Judy's Bento Box on 9/10/09, and my first post was a bento I made for The Mister to share with a co-worker.

Also in making the header to my new blog I had to add a few pictures of Si because I didn't have enough bento pictures in Flickr to make the checkered banner that I still use. I am thinking of changing the banner soon because I like to redecorate. What do you think?

My second post on Judy's Bento Box (which the title I've now learn is redundant because bento means box) was an attempt at Donburi. Seriously I don't know what I'm doing, but as usual, I'm full of it, that is, information, from Just Bento and I even link to Maki's recipe and her site.
I think I'm totally hot taters!

On my third post and my third week's worth of bentos, there were zero comments. Zero.
Bam! My little bubble went pop!

(And that's all right. I don't need comments. I don't need followers. I don't need friends. Just a pillow to cry myself to sleep.)

Turns out this past year has been super, and this little bento box community is full of wonderful people.

We have artists and fantastic photographers. Inspirational chefs and entrepreneurs. The number of bento books that came just this year is wild crazy. It feels like I've jumped on board just in time, and there's so much more to come.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing. And most of all Thanks for understanding that cute little boxes make eating more fun!

ps the bento pictured above was made in late July and the picture was altered in Flickr.

Pastys and pearls bento

I had a lot of fun making these pastys for this bento. Those are tiny mozzarella's balls (pearls) with a garlic chive flower on top and in the middle a side of cherries. The bottom box is kiwi cherries hummus and toast. Guess the shape of toast and win a book recommendation.

Hey, it's what I do best. The recommending, that is.