It has been quite a while since my last bento. In the meantime, I have had a baby - a beautiful little boy. As you can well imagine, there was another adjustment necessary (what a year for change!). We went from a teenager just about to graduate and go to college to not just 3 but 4 children under the age of 5! :) The pregnancy was not an easy one but I am truly grateful to have our littlest boy safely delivered and thriving. Just because I can, here is our latest little bundle of joy:
I think I have finally figured out a schedule that works and am back to making bento. Here's one:
This is a new bento that I bought from Tuesday Morning. It was originally made by mybento.com. It is a cute oval shape and has handles on the top for easy carrying. I'll post a picture of the closed bento when DH comes home from work.
The top layer of bento holds a cucumber and tomato salad, tamagoyaki, some pepper slices cut in the shape of flowers, and nuts. I think it would have been nicer to put a layer of lettuce beneath the tomato and cucumber salad but I didn't figure that out until after the fact.
What are tamagoyaki? They are a lovely Japanese folded omelet. I've tried two variations this week and both have turned out well. This one is rather plain: egg, water, a little pinch of salt, and some sugar (1/2 tsp or so). This doesn't really make the tamagoyaki sweet but does amplify the egg flavors nicely. To make this, I blended 2 eggs with the salt and sugar in my magic bullet (you get a really uniform mixture and it seem lighter that way than if I do it by hand). I cooked half the mixture until the egg was just barely set. Then, I rolled it over itself. I then cooked the other half of the mixture and placed the first role on one edge and rolled the second around it. I then transferred it to a cutting board and allowed it to cool. DH and I nibbled on pieces as I was making the rest of this bento. You could easily get 2 or 3 bentos out of one tamagoyaki. If you had a smaller pan, you could easily make it with 1 egg instead of 2.
I think I have finally figured out a schedule that works and am back to making bento. Here's one:
This is a new bento that I bought from Tuesday Morning. It was originally made by mybento.com. It is a cute oval shape and has handles on the top for easy carrying. I'll post a picture of the closed bento when DH comes home from work.
The top layer of bento holds a cucumber and tomato salad, tamagoyaki, some pepper slices cut in the shape of flowers, and nuts. I think it would have been nicer to put a layer of lettuce beneath the tomato and cucumber salad but I didn't figure that out until after the fact.
What are tamagoyaki? They are a lovely Japanese folded omelet. I've tried two variations this week and both have turned out well. This one is rather plain: egg, water, a little pinch of salt, and some sugar (1/2 tsp or so). This doesn't really make the tamagoyaki sweet but does amplify the egg flavors nicely. To make this, I blended 2 eggs with the salt and sugar in my magic bullet (you get a really uniform mixture and it seem lighter that way than if I do it by hand). I cooked half the mixture until the egg was just barely set. Then, I rolled it over itself. I then cooked the other half of the mixture and placed the first role on one edge and rolled the second around it. I then transferred it to a cutting board and allowed it to cool. DH and I nibbled on pieces as I was making the rest of this bento. You could easily get 2 or 3 bentos out of one tamagoyaki. If you had a smaller pan, you could easily make it with 1 egg instead of 2.
Since I haven't been making a lot of bentos lately, I haven't kept a lot of staples in the house. To make matters worse, I didn't go grocery shopping this week. I had enough food in the house that we just tried to eat ourselves down a bit. It means that my usual cheeses and tidbits are nowhere to be found and I've had to improvise a bit to fill things in.
This bottom layer is the result of making it up as I go. On the left is sautéed cabbage, leek, and carrot with dill. The two onigiri are very western: flavored with red wine vinegar (from my own vinegar pot) and stuffed with roasted red pepper. There is a stuffed tomato on the right. The filler on this layer is the protein: sautéed shrimp. The shrimp are made with garlic, salt, pepper, white wine, tomatoes, and parsley. 
