This is my first bento that has an actual picture in it. I've been planning to try some flowers for a long time - finally got around to it.

Bento #22 - Hinged Fish with flowers - Feb 17, 2010 Molded eggs, asparagus, cooked onions and peppers on a bed of quinoa (sprinkled with black sesame seeds so the eggs would show up). Soy and teriyaki sauce in the sauceheads. Yogurt with canned plums, mandarin oranges and raisins. Roasted, hulled sunflower seeds in the fish.

For Valentine's Day, Richard surprised me with an adorable hollow fish with a hinged tail to use in my bento lunches. Thinking of something to do with it is a little challenging, as it is not liquid safe (I think it's made of laquered wood, although I'm not quite sure). Well, there's nothing like a challenge to get the creativity flowing, so I've decided to use the fish every day this week, for something different each time. For added variety, I'll try to use a different bento box each day. Today it holds dessert. I built today's lunch around the star-shaped sandwich cutter I picked up at the dollar store. It looked so pretty in the cutter that I just left it that way until I was ready to eat it. A sandwich cutter is one of those silly things that is really aimed at the parents of picky eaters who won't eat bread crusts. I'm not picky - I ate the sandwich trimmings with yesterday's lunch.

This lunch is also an example of how the Bento Box Diet is improving my nutrition. The steamed vegies are not leftovers - I cooked and added them specifically because I needed to fill in the spaces around the food containers with something colorful. I really am eating more vegetables now - especially orange and green ones. I considered reheating the vegies, but decided that a little bit of poppy seed dressing would turn them into salad. And, in fact, they were delicious eaten cold with only half a bear of dressing.

Bento #20 - Hinged Fish with Tuna Sandwich Star-shaped tuna sandwich; heart-shaped egg; mashed potatoes with a little gravy; steamed asparagus, brocolli and baby carrots. Condiments: salad dressing in the bear, soy sauce in the applehead, and Ghiardelli chocolate chips in the hinged fish.

Wow, my 18th bento!  As I was driving home last night (hungry, therefore thinking about tomorrow's lunch) I was interviewing myself about my "artistic process."  (Yes, that's right. I don't just talk to myself, I conduct interviews. TMI? Too bad.)  Anyway, it turns out that my approach is to start with one food and then build around that. The starting point is either 1) something new I want to try or 2)something that needs to be eaten. As I get more bento experience, I'm starting to add a 3rd category - things that worked well the first time I tried them. This lunch started with #3 - nostalgia for my first bento experiment in a Chinese takeout container, but is mostly #1 (Richard discovering that the new artificial sweetener I had bought him for using in his tea worked PERFECTLY when sprinkled on lefse). I had been planning a salad anyway, since that's what works the best in the Chinese tray. But I actually did the lefse rollups first and then built the salad around the little green tray in the lower corner. Added the yogurt at the last minute because I thought it would just be the finishing touch to the lefse.

#18 - Salad and sumptuous dessert Spinach salad with avocado, tomato, piquante pepper stuffed with cream cheese, pomegranate. Attempt at tomato skin roses in the bottom right corner. Salad dressing in honey bear. Two-part dessert: honey flavored Greek yogurt in the penguin cup and lefse rolled up with cinnamon and something that looks and tastes like sugar but actually isn't.

Not my most inspired presentation, but I realized I have photographed all of my bento boxes now except the good old Laptop Lunchbox. It's an interesting concept with some serious identity issues. Maybe it was designed by a committee that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a classic American lunchbox or a bento box. The container on the upper left comes with a tight cover, but there are no covers for the rest of them. This works fine if you think of it as bento and keep it carefully horizontal during transportation. However, the signature design element that makes it a "Laptop Lunch" is an attractive case with a double zipper that looks like a small laptop bag - and is meant to be carried sideways. If you carry it that way, the contents of the uncovered containers tumble around and leak. Now that I'm thinking bento, it seems like a big plus that there is even one container with a top (which I used for the soup). But if I'm going to start using it again I need some kind of carrying case that will keep the thing horizontal. 

#16 - Laptop Lunch - Feb 9, 2010 Clockwise from top left: Chicken/bean mole; clementine with raisins, cooked yams with yogurt, slivered almonds and black sesame seeds; lefse rollups filled with tuna, mayonnaise, spinach, roasted red pepper. And good old grape tomatoes to fill out the last empty space.

I was too tired last night to make lunch before I crashed, so my dear husband surprised me by making a bento for me. Awww, how sweet. It's interesting to compare and contrast his creation with mine from the day before. Similar ingredients but a slightly different esthetic.

	#12 - Feb 1, 2010 Finally, on bento #12, I include some rice. Stuffed salmon roulette (Trader Joe), brown rice with nori flowers, steamed broccoli and red onion, grape tomatoes, salad. Red cabbage leaf as a container for the salmon (an example of "edible partitions", but I'm not planning to eat it).
	#13 - Richard's first bento - Feb 2, 2010 Leftover tuna rice cassserole with red pepper star, spinach salad with ham and cheese, melon balls, apple slices, smoked almonds and a heart-shaped egg.

This one wasn't a particular knockout aesthetically, but man was it GOOD. The bean soup was one of Richard's concoctions that was pretty good the first time 'round but got way better after he reheated it a little too aggressively and, well, almost burned it. Somehow this resulted in a slightly smoky, carmelized flavor that he admits he would never be able to reproduce again. The Chinese crackers went great with it, and the spinach salad was a welcome fresh taste to balance all that umami.

Of course it probably helped that I didn't get time to start lunch until almost 2pm, so I was ravenous.

Round Tupperware Bento - Jan 27, 2010 Not my most inspired presentation, but I wanted to get this unique Tupperware bento box into the gallery. I have reversed the basic concept here by putting the hot dish (smoky bean soup) in the small removable section and filling the rest of the box with spinach salad and Chinese soy-flavored party crackers mixed with roasted almonds. The hard-boiled egg is actually a square egg that didn't maintain its integrity very well. You can see the squared-off edges on the piece at bottom center if you look closely.

Honey Bear Bento - Monday Jan 18, 2010 Top tier: On the left side under the grape tomatoes and pineapple chunks is the entree of baked tofu sauteed with garlic and scallions. On the right, a very sweet sesame lotus bun. The honey bear is full of honey, which is actually intended for the fruit cup in the lower tier. Bottom Tier: cottage cheese with a cut tomato and nori stars. In the middle, straining at the fencing, is chunky salsa. It is supposed to go with the cottage cheese, but not until I'm ready to eat it. Fruit cup is melon balls and pomegranate seeds.

And here's my lunches for Thursday and Friday. This is an example of art driven entirely by the available tools. Double click pictures once to see a larger picture, and again to see an even bigger one. Personally, I think you should all click through on these to appreciate the detail on the molded eggs. I think molded eggs are hilarious. Some people find them a little too subtle (as in, "That's a ... what? A fish, you say? Huh."

First Bento Box: Lube sheep stacking bento, ordered from "All Things For Sale" website. Top Box Theme: car crashing into a bush full of monkeys. Molded egg, green onion, steamed brocolli and carrots. There's leftover creamed turnips hiding under the broccoli, which is better than it sounds. The monkeys are sauce containers filled with salad dressing. Bottom box: Potstickers from Trader Joe's served with leftover chicken terrine (made by my husband, went really well with the potstickers). Garnished with cutouts of red and green pepper and two little bottles of soy sauce.

Lube sheep bento box rides again! Top box - undersea theme. Molded egg fishie with nori eye, red pepper starfish. Backdrop is just what it looks like: steamed broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, grapes, sliced tomatoes. Seashells are spicy-sweet pecans from Trader Joe's. Soy sauce bottle poking up its little head in the upper right corner. I put it in for aesthetic reasons, but the soy sauce turned out to be good on the egg. Bottom box: leftover curried chicken leg and grape tomatoes on a bed of --no, not rice. I'm on a diet. It's cottage cheese. With little Nori flowers all over it because I ordered a nori punch with my bento box. *hee*

Fruit Bento - Jan 12, 2010 We had a pizza party at work today so no need to pack lunch. But I thought I might want a healthy snack later, so I packed this little fruit bento.