Lets try this again...

Sushi!! Didn't take such great pictures, and no "how-to" because I just read it off the back of the nori packet...

Second attempt: Success!!

First attempt.. not so much. It all fell apart and didn't work..

These are my sushi rolls!!! I used notice, rice, avocado, red bell pepper, and cucumbers in both. Hopefully I'll get some shrimp here soon...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Cooked up a storm!

Okay, so here's my catch-up night...
This is a salad, with some hot dog flowers, baby tomatoes, yellow cauliflower, and red bell peppers all sliced up. The top left is beef saboro with some cheese, and the bottom left is the rest of the hot dog that I couldn't fit on the salad with some more cheese... my Lover loooves cheese..

Lover's Salad lunch for yesterday (and another very similar one today)

This delicious treat was leftover inarizushi skins stir-fried with some red bell peppers, red pepper paste, and some garlic. Lover ate half of this with his fingers before I could pack it into his lunch!

These are the stuffed inarizushi skins before i packed everything else in. They are stuffed with a mix stir fry of onions and 3 colors of bell peppers. He loved them! He called them veggie pockets and ate 2, so I only had 3 to pack for his lunch... I need to work on keeping him out of the kitchen if I want to pack him enough for the next day's lunch... He tends to eat half of what I'm cooking as I'm cooking it.. I guess it's a compliment tho!!

Sad, sad little stuffed veggie packets without anything else. 

 This is the finished product. Packed with rice, green beans, baby tomatoes, and some ham wrapped green beans. The inarizushi stir fry mixed with some chopped up hot dog (to give it a little more protein) and left-over shake and bake pork in the bottom left. Oh, and some more of that yellow cauliflower.

Tonight, I made some sushi rolls, which turned out rather well.. Took the pictures on my cell phone, so I will have to see if my blogger app is functioning correctly yet and will let me upload pictures as well..
So, heading to bed now, have check-offs in the morning, and Valentine's day!! :D

aah!

sooo crazy at school right now...
I made a really cute bento for Lover tonight, will post it tomorrow. I am exhausted.
But tonight I also made some barbecue pork loin that was awesome! (Gogo shake and bake!)
And I have discovered cous cous and muscato wine.. That's pretty much it when I boil it all down..
So, until tomorrow!

More Graveyards

I swear, Lover works graveyards more than anything else!! It totally throws me off! Anyways, yesterday I made this bento for his work. There is tamagoyaki (with cheese!), brown rice with a hot dog octopus from the yum-yum bento book, and then general mayhem in the large compartment. Some lettuce on the bottom, yellow cauliflower, cubed ham that I stir-fried, and some cherry tomatoes. It was fun to put together and took me a total of like 15 minutes to do everything. Yesterday was my second full day of class, and so I was exhausted, not to mention that we didn't get out of class until almost 430. So I had to come home (15 minute drive), wake Lover up, make supper, and have a nervous breakdown all before 515. Was insane. On the plus side, Lover did call me from work and thank me because he said he loved the little crazy eyes I put on them. :) Him liking it made the fact that I had to cut them out with 2 different sized straws worth it!

See their little crazy eyes?!

Forgot one!

This was the bento I made for myself for work. I leave the broccoli uncooked because I like it kind of crisp, and  I find that when I microwave it at work it gets all gooey.... So I have some cherries, poached chicken, broccoli and carrots. The bottom layer has all my yummy sushi rice in it. :) I also got to use one of my little food dividers finally! :)

Hello!!!

I GOT MY NEW BENTO BOOK IN!!! :D it's yum yum bento by Maki and Pikko!! :)

So excited. Have been looking at stuff and trying out new things. This is the lunch I made for Lover today. I had planned on making the shrimp spaghetti with the cute little cheese mushrooms, but I don't have a mushroom cookie cutter.. So he got bears instead!
They are pepper jack cheese with ham circles and nori mouths. Then I put in some left-over beef saboro and brown rice on the bottom. I made a rolled tamigoyaki to go around since he loves it so much. I also added some broccoli stalk kinpira (my favorite!!), yellow cauliflower and some green beans/tomatoes. The blue and white flecks are small pieces of pepper-jack cheese that are plain or made blue with food coloring. Lover said that I'm not using enough cheese, so there! :)
Altogether, this looks pretty yummy to me. While far from a chyaraben, I like it. And then the other guys don't make fun of him ;).
I have been making these every day, but I keep forgetting to take pictures!! Ugh. So, I will do better about that.
Till I have more to post!

oops..

Got really busy doing homework and whatnot. I have been making bentos every day, but forgetting to take pictures in the rush. My new bento cookbook should be here today. YES! :) so then I will start updating daily again. I made the teriyaki chicken from justbento.com again and it was amazing as usual. Also, the Little Man was sick, so we were in the ER and then home with him for a few days, but he's good now. :)
Till later

So..

So the bento I made Lover today surpassed itself in hideousness.. Totally didn't take a picture.. I don't want documented evidence! lol.
Actually, it wasn't THAT bad... but I am trying to stuff a LOT of stuff into his bento because he has been saying that I am trying to starve him... So, there were lots and lots of things crammed in there. I am either going to have to buy him different boxes or just send him with 2 reasonably packed ones.
Was so excited today! I finally got the nerve to stop being a lurk on my favorite bento site, Adventures in Bentomaking. I commented on a post that Pikko had made, and she commented right back!! I was amazed at how fast her response time was!! It made me feel all important. :D
I have ordered her book, but it may take up to a month to get here... I will just have to salivate over j-list and brush up on all my cooking/cleaning (yuck!) skills until I get it.
And then, it is ON. Like seriously.... I may go insane. There are going to be more bentos than I will know what to do with! I had better start cleaning now.
Until tomorrow when I should have a bento of my own to post.

Catch up

So, I'm working on preparing for school. Our first day of this semester is Wednesday, and before that we have a community health fair today, I have 2 more chapters to read in my book, and should probably finish my medication cards. Not to mention making Lover's bentos for work...On that note, here are the 2 that I hadn't posted yet!

The soy sauce fishy's tail wouldn't fill up... :(

This first one was Saturday's bento, the box is lined with romaine lettuce, and it has a rice onigiri that I made by hand and then used saran wrap to put it in the fridge. It has 4 pieces of a 4-egg tamigoyaki (which Lover LOVES), some baby corn and carrots, broccoli, grape and sunburst tomatoes, and some pan-fried turkey cubes covered with cheese. I was told that I am not using enough cheese. ;) Top that off with my soy sauce fishy, and I think it turns out okay. :)

This is Sunday's bento. The upper left-hand corner has soy sauce rice ringed by baby carrots and green beans, there are delicious cherries in the bottom right hand corner as a snack, and then the main compartment has left-over meat balls, chicken that I de-boned myself(!!!) Some broccoli, green beans, a baby bel, and as always, lined with romaine. Lover likes to take some of the stuff out and have a salad of everything that doesn't need to be warmed. 

So that's that. I still don't think I'm sending him quite enough food to work outside with.. So yesterday I packed an extra kiwi, some beef jerky and a breakfast bar.. Graveyards for 12 hours is a LOT of work..

So, I feel better.. Bentos are looking nicer, I think I'm on my way!

Update

Have made a bento for Lover every day this week.. Will upload pictures tomorrow. Having an awesome time doing it too!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Lover's graveyards bento

So, Lover started a 'new' job today, it's the old job in a new block... that was exciting! So I made him a bento lunch to take with him. He really enjoyed it, and because I packed it in one of those Tupperware containers, and not one of my tiny bento boxes, he was full. It's not gorgeous, but I liked the amount of color I managed to get into it. I'm working on shaped rice 'onigiri', but I can't say that word, so I feel stupid typing it. Also, rice out of the rice cooker is HOT! And I ran out of plastic wrap to do it the 'easy' way. But I bought real rice (not the minute kind) and plastic wrap... So I will probably try to do that today. In this bento, rice balls with a little bit of rice vinegar on them, meatballs from my Betty Crocker cookbook, baby carrots, 'sunburst' cherry tomatoes and regular cherry tomatoes, and broccoli on a bed of romaine leaves. Lover really liked the sauce bottle. :) And I liked that it added blue to the box.
Well, that was my excitement for yesterday, let's see what I can...wait for it... cook up today.
heh..:)

other misc pictures

These are things I made this week while Lover And I were off together. This is teriyaki chicken, nori wrapped rice, and Bacon wrapped scallions and green beans. Yummy!
This is my first nori wrapped rice ball.. they were a lot of fun to make. I bought a cool rice cylinder maker at Kroger, and it works great!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

phone app

Trying out the new phone app. Did it work?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

well..

Who am I kidding? I couldn't wait!!

 This is the yellow one, I got it and the pink one on amazon from All Things For Sale.

 This is the top of the green one I have had from Maegan.

 And the side.

 Both of these are 2 tier, 510 mL capacity boxes. They came with black elastic straps!!

I was excited about the straps because the listing said I would need to purchase some separately. Then I went and looked up how to make them yourself, which is surprisingly easy! Just use 1 inch elastic and sew it together. Then you can add a button or any other decoration as you want. May do that some other time, but I was pretty excited that I wouldn't have to mess with that straight off.

Oh! and pictures of my lunch for tomorrow. These are some of my first ( not to mention quick!) ones, so be nice! I put a little container of strawberries on top of the meat, and the bottom is filled with rice. I am also going to take a baby-bel cheese with me, so it should be plenty of food! :) They should get better, but this is where I'm starting from.
I probably won't make another one tomorrow, my oldest friend got admitted to the hospital yesterday, so I'm going to stay with her tomorrow night at Texas Womens. 

Till next time!

New Stuff

I got in my 2 new bento boxes today!! :) they're all washed and clean. I already packed one full of my lunch tomorrow. :) I made teriyaki chicken, green beans, and actually used my rice cooker correctly!
Apparently, I was using it wrong previously... Did you know that you're supposed to put the rice IN the water in the cooker, and not up in the steamer basket... lol.. I never claimed I was intelligent..
So, I also got in my new camera charger, so I will update with pictures of everything tomorrow. Very excited!

Progress!

Today I went grocery shopping and actually bought a lot of the things I am going to need to make bentos!
I also made several things to start me on my way!

The first thing I made were the chicken cordon bleu bites from allrecipes.com. I had read about them, and they are the perfect size for bentos, and they looked awesome.. they were! Between Lover and the Little Man, we ate 6 of them, so I have 6 more leftover for bentos tomorrow!

The other things I made were meatballs for the little meatball sandwiches I saw on Adventures in Bentomaking. They are basically meatballs, cut in half, with something hamburger-ish inside them. I plan on making them with a cherry tomato and some lettuce for Lover and pickles and cheese for me.
I also got some mirin, miso, and a new rice pressy-thingy to make rice rolls, and some nori to try out non-fish sushi rolls for my first time. Lover and I are both mostly off this week, so I will probably be spending a lot of time in the kitchen (where women SHOULD be, and all that).
Very very excited for this week. Will post more pictures when I take them.
Also, please forgive my sub-standard pictures, taking them with my phone at the moment, while I wait for my new battery charger to come in for my camera.. I managed to lose it.. :S

So Excited!

Posting really quickly before I have to leave for work.. Just ordered 2 new bento boxes and the JustBento cookbook yesterday!! I am so excited!! I'm going grocery shopping today for a few of the staples I will need to cook anything. I have a few recipes I've gotten off the aibento.net page that look awesome, I'm going to try those this week while Lover and I are off. :) Can't wait to get started!!

First!

Hi!
I decided to make this blog to catalog my (mis)adventures into bento-making. My goal is to learn to make bentos and then find American alternatives that are easily available to anyone that does not necessarily have easy access to an Asian market. I love bentos and have followed several blogs for quite some time now. :)
Hope you enjoy, I'm excited to try a new, fun thing!