They're getting kind of repetitive now, so I'm not posting pictures of every lunch. But these two came out kind of elegant, so I thought I'd post them. The pork bun turned out to be a good match with the hard-boiled egg. It's delicious, but a lot of bun compared to the small amount of stuffing. However, the extra bun went really well with the egg. And the sweet sauce did taste good with it.

Bento #60a - Pork Bun Love - (April 29, 2010) I wonder how a steamed pork bun would taste with sweet duck sauce? If that doesn't work, I've always got the little applehead full of soy sauce. Heart-shaped egg, carrot sticks and olives on the side.

Bento #61 - Pesto Penguin (Apr 30, 2010) Stuffed mushrooms on bed of cottage cheese, broiled salmon, strawberries. In the other tier, tomatoes layered with mozzarella cheese, avocado and sweet pickled ginger. And, of course, pesto in the penguin. Because mozzarella cheese medallions, pretty as they are, don't really have any flavor. Penguin had to be packed separately, as it turned out to be too tall for the tier. Oh well.It also leaked a little olive oil, although the pesto itself was just the right consistency to spoon out with the little built-in spoon.

Still slogging through the 4-day quickstart. Man, am I sick of that stupid deli turkey breast. On Day 3 I only had 3 ounces of turkey on hand so I added an extra half ounce of cheese - something with a little flavor to it instead of that dreadful string cheese. It's a few more calories per ounce, but the difference in enjoyability was totally worth it. Whatever flavor of Mrs. Dash I put on the vegies was pretty good too. This lunch was so much tastier than the first two days that I did more or less the same thing on Day 4 - this time completely abandoning the string cheese for pepperjack. String cheese - yuck. Tomorrow I get to the flexible part of the diet plan where I can start having lunches with flavor. Yay!

Bento #51 - Diet Day 3 (Apr 14, 2010) - 250 calories Day 3 of Quickstart diet, liberally interpreted. Top Tier: Tomato and pepper jack cheese slices, steamed vegies left over from day before. (carrots, mushrooms, squash). Mrs. Dash sprinkled on the vegies. Bottom Tier: Deli turkey breast wrapped around slivers of string cheese, sometimes wrapped in lettuce. A few mushrooms peeking out of the largest roll. This lunch was actually pretty tasty.

Bento #52 - Diet Day 4 (Apr 15, 2010) - 308 calories Top tier: potatoes cooked in a little olive oil, broccoli with 1T shredded cheese. Bottom tier: tomatoes layered with pepper jack cheese. More of that deli turkey and lettuce.

Well, not exactly. I've had this one for a long time, but it used to be blue.  Blue with a cracked top. So my local Tupperware dealer made it disappear and replaced it with the latest color. Which is apparently that same color of orange that was so popular in the 70's along with Avocado and Harvest Gold. Go figure. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but it's starting to grow on me. I'm really glad the top is a nice opaque white instead of more orange. The whole effect is rather like a Creamsicle, which isn't a bad association. Anyway, this is a very nice design that Tupperware has offered for years and years but is now apparently trying to kill. It doesn't appear in their catalogs and is practically impossible to find on their website unless you already know that it goes by the godawful name of "Lunch 'n' Things."  I appreciate the 4 fixed compartments now that I have discovered the downside of movable dividers (stuff leaks under the divider). It's an awfully big box, however. About the only way to fill it up with a lunch for one person is to use a LOT of salad greens. 

I've gotta use the car-shaped egg molds more often - they have a nice way of turning any bento lunch into a story.

New Box - Tupperware Lunch 'n' Things (Mar 29, 2010) Brand new replacement for my old blue box with cracked lid. Four fixed compartments inside. Microwavable.

New Tupperware Creamsicle - Maiden Voyage (Mar 30, 2010) Crispy pork bun, Laughing Cow cheese wheel. Spinach salad with molded egg, strawberries, avocado, deli turkey. More spinach with olive/feta cheese mixture (from Kowalski's salad bar). Mini-toasts (from Lunds).Rare yellow-headed bear has fallen from the rocks above onto the road, crushing the cars. But when the drivers break him open they will find sinfully delicious poppy-seed dressing (also from Kowalski's).

Bento #46 - Vertical Stripes The colors aren't especially inspiring, but it's a new use for the Dollar Tree Rectangle Cup. Starting from the right: salmon/cottage cheese rollups on spinach wraps; grape tomatoes, mozarella balls and avocado with baco garnish; some kind of leftovers with more of the mozarella; blueberries, clementine and almonds. It was a good lunch.

Following ssussminh 's lead, I picked up one of these from The Container Store to replace my first clear-lidded single-tier box. I loved the form factor, but the lid was substandard and quickly deteriorated and eventually cracked in half. This box  is very close to the same size and shape, but the clear snap-lock lid seems to be a lot sturdier. Like the first one, it comes with a removable divider. However, I was so excited to have a box that was big enough for the Star Cup that I chose not to use the divider on first use. My current kick is trying to find new uses for all my small cups and compartments inside the main box.



 

Bento #44 - Snap Lock Box from Container Store - Maiden Voyage (Mar 23, 2010) Leftover chicken rice hot dish with olives in the moon. Cottage cheese, avocado and tomatoes in the star. Other than the Chinese takeout boxes, this is the only one big enough for that lovely star cup.

Three innovations today:

1. The new heart-shaped cup from Dollar Tree. The heart and the moon from that set both fit into this bento box (star is too wide).
2. I mixed my beloved honey Greek yogurt with cottage cheese this time to make it more of a protein entree and less of a dessert. It worked really well. Mmm. Come to think of it, this isn't the honey flavor; it's the mango. It's really quite delicious with the cottage cheese and the walnuts. Must do that again.
3. Joseph's multigrain Lavash as rollup wrappers. They are much more supple than whole-wheat tortillas. They are also huge: the 4 rollups in this lunch were made from a half-Lavash, and I think I had a fifth piece that didn't fit in the box so I gave it to Richard to eat  for a bedtime snack.

Bento #43 - New Heart Shaped Cup Tier 1: The heart is another of the big floppy silicone cups from the Dollar Tree. It's full of stir-fried vegies with cheese stars on top. I'll probably take it out of the box and microwave separately. Rollups (Joseph's Lavash) contain refried beans and lunch meat, with sliced pimientos on top. Sweet pickles tucked around the edges. Tier2: This time I mixed my Honey Greek Yogurt with cottage cheese to make it more of a protein dish and less of a dessert. The rest is obvious: clementines, nuts, Fig Newtons.

Finally, the last part of my J-List order arrived! It's a really excellent double-tier Hakoya box from Japan. It's meant to be a man-bento, as you can tell by the dark color and carefully not-cute styling. It's also ginormous by Japanese standards, although noticeably smaller than the dimensions listed on the website. Just as well, as it turns out. I think if it really had been 8.5" x 5.5" it would have been too big. However, I wish that the tiers really had been 2" tall instead of 1.5". It's hard to find small containers that are short enough to fit inside a Japanese bento.  Happily, the smaller tier (on the right) came with a removable cup with a jaunty slanted border for sub-dividing, and the Dollar Tree moon fits nicely inside the other tier. I think this set will be perfect for the kind of lunch i make most often - one tier of reheatable leftovers and a second tier of salad or fruit.

Bento #38 - Hakoya Checkerboard Box - maiden voyage Entree on the right: ground lamb in cream sauce (oh, okay, cream of chicken soup) decorated with a sliced black olive and leftover carrts. The other compartment is mashed yams and potatoes topped by more leftover vegies and a half-peeled Baby Bel cheese. Salad tier: fancy rice/soy crackers in the moon surrounded by black olives, alfalfa sprouts and avocado. Sauce containers hold balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Note to self: next time remove the wax-covered cheese wheel before microwaving the hot food tier!

	Bento #34 - Stripey Stuff Some kind of meaty stir-fry wrapped up in one of those new-fangled wheat-free wraps made out of some ancient African grain. Tomato slices and cheese on the left, tomato and avocado in the upper right. And a half-banana.
	Bento #35 - Second Flight of the Flower Box That's not rice with the leftover beef stew in the middle of it - it's couscous. Eyes of cheese/nori and a grape tomato for the mouth. It's amazing how easy it is to make the human eye see a face where no face exists, isn't it? Snack tier contains clementine, black grapes, walnuts and a little bit of ricotta cheese.

I finally concluded that what I really needed was 3 two-tier boxes: a small one, a medium and an extra-large. The red Lube Sheep is the small one. This one is the medium (640ml).  And the extra-large one is still on order. The description was a little hazy on the micro-wavability of this box, remarking "Because heat could cause the bento box to change its shape, the manufacturer recommends against using it in a microwave."  I took that to mean "microwave but don't overdo it" and nuked both tiers (lidless) for 2 minutes.  Worked fine and got the food to just the right temperature. Nothing changed shape (except the cheese stars, which melted slightly).

Bento #31 - Mar 1, 2010. New flower-shaped bento box Left-hand tier: Rice with nori stars; peas/lima beans/red pepper. Right-hand tier: leftovers galore: hamburger hot dish in the cup, pieces of salmon loaf along the side along with the soy sauce bottles for the rice. Red pepper slices and sweet pickles around the right side.

Not sure if making flowers is worth the trouble. They look really pretty but are a little daunting to eat. I finally just chopped up all the components of the flower and mixed them into the rice, which turned out very tasty. Flowers may be as far as I want to go with picture bentos. Not sure I want to carve up and eat something with a face. I used leftover juice from the sweet pickles as a salad dressing (in the cup with the round white lid). That turned out to be a little too sour - should have included some actual dressing.

#26 was an unqualified success. Hard-boiled eggs + hot pork dumplings = delish!  Steamed broccoli with cheese never gets old. And I sure am enjoying that can of plums. I'll be sad when they're gone. But I'm happy that nobody else in my household has shown any interest in them, so I've been eating them for a week now. All it takes is a tablespoon or two of that exquisite honey Greek yogurt to make them into a heavenly dessert.

	Bento #25 - Watercress Flower  Leftover beef stew;salad (spinach, grape tomatoes, sweet pickles, piquante pepper stuffed with cream cheese), dressing in spider container. Flower on bed of rice: watercress, tomato and cheese circle for center, grapes, leftover turkey burger for ground. The little birdie pick is holding misbehaving watercress leaf in place. Soy sauce in saucehead.
	Bento #26 - Round things Pork dumplings (steamed the night before and reheated in microwave) with slivered green onion and a little oyster sauce. Steamed brocolli with cheese sprinkles and grape tomatoes. Heart-shaped egg. Canned plums with Greek honey yogurt.