What are you packing?

Red Bento #4

2007-02-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

Bento #4 is actually from Wednesday's lunch for Valentine's day! It's leftover's from the night before's supper and the bottom tier is a snack bento. So this bento is yet again nothing special or fancy schmancy. Top tier contains a small portion of white rice, lo mein noodles and garlic chicken with mushroom, onions and broccoli; everything was delicious!! The great thing about this bento is that the picture is taken with my new digital camera that hubs bought me!! It's kinda like my Valentine's present from my hubs. Our older Sony Cybershot died on us a few months so now I have an Olympus Stylus 710 7.1MP Ultra Slim Digital Camera!! I just LOVE, ♥ , LOVE my new digi cam. It's great, compact and takes great pictures. This time around I can't complain about picture quality, but more on my lack of knowledge of knowing how to take great photographs. Hopefully I'll get better! :D

Red Bento #3

2007-02-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

This bento was lunch for Friday. I was feeling extra lazy so I went for something quick and easy. Top tier(second picture) contains a baked potato halve and chicken nuggets, baked potato has butter and chives. Third picture contains the same thing as the top tier but the pink whale contains honey mustard sauce. The two small little packages to the left of the bentos is orange flavored marshmallows.

Red Bento #2

2007-02-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

This bento is from Wednesday's lunch. First picture shows the whole meal entirely. Besides the two tier's is two mini egg custard cups for dessert. The second picture shows the top tier with pork fried brown rice, garnished with green onions. Third picture, the bottom tier holds fried chicken drumstick(KFC) with more pork fried rice. The brown rice consisted of brown rice, Jimmy Dean's breakfast pork sausage roll, green cabbage, red cabbage, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce and oyster sauce. The pork fried rice was a big hit for lunch on Wednesday!

New Red Bento

2007-02-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

My brand new red bento arrived in the mail last week and I was very eager to use it. This bento meal is actually from last week, but just now getting to posting in on here. This bento is so adorable and I just ♥ it! The meal was super yummy and I enjoyed it very throughly!! :D The first picture shows the whole bento meal. Second picture shows the top tier of my new bento. The top tier container holds brown rice with furikake(ebi fumi flavor) flakes on top with fried cornmeal crusted tilapia!! Yummmy stuff! It was a big hit for supper that evening. The third picture holds stir-fried garlicky ground turkey with broccoli & carrots and more brown rice.

More bentos

2007-01-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

I've neglected to post a few bentos I've made so I'm posting a few I've made since my last post. The first picture is my attempt at octodog which really didn't turn out that well. The octodog is actually a smoked sausage and chicken & veggie potstickers.

Second picture, hubs attempted to decorate his bento for lunch the following day. He had cut some SPAM into strips. Included with the brown rice and strips of SPAM is stir-fry ramen noodles.

Third picture has two containers; container on the left has 3 mini meatloaf patties with brown rice and onion soup gravy and the right container holds crinkle heart-shaped cucumbers marinated with Italian dressing, garnished with chopped green bell peppers.

Fourth picture is actually for tomorrow's/today bento(Wednesday) for hubs. Contains 3 chicken & veggies potstickers, steamed veggies(carrots, sugarsnap peas, mushrooms & onions) and brown rice. Also included is two mini egg custard cups for dessert.

A day late, but not a dollar short

2007-01-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

Monday has come & gone and this bento was hubs lunch for yesterday. This past weekend I had myself a potsticker wrapping party. Hubs suggested that I use corned beef as a filling for the potstickers and so I did. Besides the corned beef I used shredded caggage, shredded carrots, lots of chopped green onions, some soy sauce and oyster sauce. It was simple enough to mix together and wrapping them into envelope shapes was not as tedious as I had imagine it would be.

Left: 2 chicken potstickers, 4 homemade corned beef envelope potstickers and cut up pieces of smoked sausage.

Right: Green beans, baby carrots and wannabe octodog on a bed of brown rice.

Yummy greens

2007-01-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

This was hubs lunch for Wednesday afternoon! It also happened to be what hubs had for dinner Tuesday evening; me too minus the udon noodles.

Left: Small round container filled with sliced steamed zucchini seasoned with Mrs. Dash's Garlic & Herb and a splash of soy sauce.

Right: Square container, scattered beef meatballs cut in half, steamed sugarsnap peas(very, very good; leftover from tonight's dinner), in the center is udon noodles tossed with peanut butter/soy sauce mixture(I made) and chopped green onions. Hubs was so excited that he got to have udon again for lunch! lol It's great that he's so easy to please! =)

Fill'er it up please

2007-01-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

So I finally got a chance to break in my adorably cute laptop lunchbox. I just ♥ ♥ this lunchbox!! It's just so cute to me! This meal was actually a pic from Tuesday. Everything was delicious!! Since this is MY laptop lunchbox, I did pack hubs his own bento with the exact same contents of my bento. I packed his lunch in 2 of those flip and fold containers or whatever you call them. I'm really not sure what they are called. We purchased his bento gear during our Shopping Euphoria* excursion! First off I want apologize for the picture quality but our digi cam is still on the fritz. It maybe not be so much on/or in the fritz, but actually not cooperating with hubs and me. We've been trying to fandangle with it, bu no luck yet. Anyhow, on to the food.

Top lefthand side: Brown rice with mixed veggies(carrot coins, broccoli, & cauliflower) seasoned with Yasai Fumi flavored Furikake.

Top right: Steamed cauliflower and 1 broccoli.

Bottom left: Chicken Shu Mai(Trader Ming's, Trader Joe's) and 3 beef meatballs, purple container with sauce for Chicken Shu Mai.

Bottom right: More steamed broccoli

Laptop lunch

2007-01-13T16:36:00.000-08:00

Whoooo hooooo! After much admiring and drooling over this adorable lunchbox, I finally purchased me a set on e-bay! This is the same exact color I got. I can't wait to use it. Our digital camera is still on the fritz; so I'm not sure how long it will be til I'll be able to take pictures again.

O the agony of

2007-01-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to post any new pics of bentos because our digital camera is on the fritz. Aaarrhhh... makes me nuts I can't take pictures when I want to now. So that's why I haven't posted anything new. Hopefully in the next month or so, we'll get a new one; or I might have to take regular pictures the old fashion way and also get them put on a cd. Man it's crazy how everything is all about instant gratification and how we become used to that kind of habit and mindset.

First, brand new bento

2006-12-27T18:45:00.000-08:00

This bento was actually made last week, but I hadn't had the time to post it. This is my first bento that I got during my shopping euporia last week. This bento is really adorably cute! I guess the character's name is Cherry Rabbit and on the top it says, "I never want to lose the innocence of my heart."Inside the bento is filled with leftovers, on the right-hand side is chicken katsu, on the top left-side is orange chicken and underneath that is sauteed onions and peppers; directly under that is fried rice. The two little wrapped items is orange flavored marshmallow and the drink is Mogu Mogu strawberry drink with bits of nata de coco.

Shopping Euphoria

2006-12-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

Whoa what a day!!! We were out of the house before 5 am this morning and we just got back home alittle after 8pm tonight. We had brekkie at Chowking and shortly after we headed toward Kearney Mesa 99 Ranch Market to browse around and see what they had. Needless to say, of course we bought and found many things to purchase. After our little adventure at 99 Ranch Market we headed towards the 163 freeway to the other more Japanese oriented grocery store in search for possible bento boxes and accessories. I actually found a few things, but didn't go mad crazy buying things, but more than likely will be back again in the near future. We headed back towards Mira Mesa and to kill alittle time, we took a detour stop at the park near my old elementary school, Mason Elementary. After some playtime, we had lunch at L andL Hawaiian Barbecue. Hubs had their Loco Moco and I tried thier Spam musubi, kiddos had fries and we shared some Chicken Katsu then we walked directly across to Edelweiss Bakery and purchased a few sweets. Our last final destination before heading out of Mira Mesa was Goldilocks. The traffic heading back North was horrible as to be expected. Now we're finally back home from our mini culinary getaway adventure. Today was another very good and successful day for foodie shopping. :)

Fried Brown Rice & Garlicky Meatballs

2006-12-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

Forgot to post yesterday. Fried brown rice and garlicky meatballs.

Fried Tofu Noodle Soup

2006-12-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

This is my own version of wannabe bento that I made for my husband. The Gladware container was bigger than I hoped for, but I don't think my hubs seemed to mind. This fried tofu soup is very similar to the pork ramen soup. This soup has chopped baby bok choy, bite size cuts of fried tofu, mini chunks of pork breakfast sausage, sliced baby carrots, finely chopped brown onions and garnished with chopped green onions. According to hubs the soup is so filling that he ate only half and is saving the rest for the following days lunch. He also said he got a few ooohs and awes as to his lunch; some very curious as to the wonderful, fragrant aroma and the colorful array of vegetables. Quick, simple and easy lunch. What more could you ask for?

Pork Ramen Soup

2006-12-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

This is still all very new to me, but this is my first attempt in making something visually tempting not only to the eyes, but the taste buds. Ok well not really the first time in cooking per se, but a first in actually trying to capture it for the camera. This soup consisted of ramen noodles cooked first only in water. After the ramen noodles were halfway cooked, I took them out and placed them in the bowl. The broth was made from chicken broth, finely chopped brown onions, sliced baby carrots, chopped Napa cabbage, 2-3 breakfast pork sausages cut up into mini bite sized pieces. I cooked all those ingredient together and let it come to a boil. Then I poured the broth and vegetable right on top of the ramen noodles and garnished with chopped green onions. So ta-dah that was lunch for today! It was perfect considering that we've all been sick here the past week and still trying to get better. Soup is perfectly soothing for the soul in deed!

It's inevitable

2006-12-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

We're all bound to have lunch at some point in the day. If it's not lunch of some kind, a snack will have to do in order to tide us over til the next meal. So whether it's just a snack or a full blown meal like bento or baon(pronounced baa'on or bah'on) we are all packing something. Bento is derived from Japan; while baon is from the Philippines. Bento is more widely known & popular and seems to be coming along to mainstream than baon, but both have similarities. Basically bento and baon is all about bringing provisions with you to sustain you whether it's something you pack for your daily lunch at work or picnics, dinner, etc... You pack and bring your bento or baon with you to make sure that you have something to eat. So what are you packing?