Today begins my attempt to pack bentos the night before they are needed so that I hopefully get more time and a prettier bento as a result. They are also a series of leftover bentos rather than packing completely fresh items. If I'm packing these at night, I really don't want to add more dishes for us to do. That would defeat the purpose.
Sundays in our house are family nights. While we always eat together, on Sundays we play games and spend the whole evening together as well. As a result, this bento was a group effort. DD sliced chicken, DH did dishes and put away leftovers as we went. It is not an artistic triumph but I think we had fun as a family. :)
Layer 1: Here we have a cucumber and tomato salad. - We have a huge amount of cucumber thanks to a dear friend's garden! I sliced both the tomato and the cucumber paper thin here and then layered them. On top are little flowers of cucumber. I've added some onion and caesar dressing here. Dessert is lemon crunch cake that I've sliced the top off of (the best part anyway), a strawberry, and some plum. I'm not sure what to do with the rest of the cake though . . . I'm sure it will find its way into another bento this week. :)
Layer 2: By now this should look familiar. We roasted a whole chicken last night and so I took the juice and tossed it with some onion in the ramen noodles. I topped that with half a chicken breast. On the side is some broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower.
Last night's dinner menu was:
Roasted chicken
Potatoes and onions roasted along with the chicken
Broccoli
Peach crumble
It was reincarnated to some extent here. I used leftover chicken and then cooked ramen and veggies in the steamer I had used for the broccoli. It was a microwave steamer that served well as a bowl and strainer for the ramen. - No extra dishes here.
I sliced the tomato and cucumber onto a plate (because it was smaller than the cutting boards). This was the only extra dish I made last night - aside from a knife and a spoon.
Time constraints: By packing the bento last night, I used the normal time it would have taken to put away leftovers to make the bento as well. So, there really wasn't much of a time investment here. And the best part was this morning I got to sleep in until 5:30!
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