A Bento for Lovers

My daughter is going on a picnic with her boyfriend tomorrow and wanted me to pack her a special bento lunch.  It's actually quite touching that she asked since she's 17 and could certainly have packed something herself.  I think she wanted to see what I would do.  :)  Since she's leaving the house before 8 am, I wanted to make sure it was done early, so here it is - 12 hours ahead of schedule!

This is a single layer bento meant to be shared.  I could have made two separate bentos but that just didn't make sense.  There's a lot of food here and only one container for my daughter to worry about bringing home. 

On the left we have piccolini pasta tossed with butter, olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.  To that I added carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, and yellow pepper.  I put a terrine de volaille on top as the protein.  Then I added more tomatoes, yellow peppers and chives.  I decorated it with two hearts cut from red peppers and sprinkled on some Parmesan cheese.

On the right is dessert: two mini cupcakes (yellow cake) topped with a chocolate ganache and some frozen strawberries.

Here's the recipe for the turkey terrine I made tonight.  By the way, this was dinner and I put the leftovers into my daughter's bento.  I actually made 3 lbs of turkey and will be making mini meatballs with the rest and freezing them for later lunches.

Ingredients:
1 lb of ground turkey or chicken  (I like to buy some white meat and dark meat and blend them.)
0.25 lb of ground pork (This can be omitted - I didn't put it in today.)
1 egg
1 shallot
1 onion
0.5 cups of white wine, sherry, or cognac
thyme, parsley, salt, pepper

Finely dice the onion and put it in a bowl with the turkey and pork. Add the egg, white wine, and herbs &spices. Combine like meatloaf. But into a loaf pan and bake at 400 for 25 minutes or until cooked through but still moist.