hi bento pals!  it feels like years since i’ve had time to do a bento post… lots of changes in my life, but the one that’s most relevant to this blog is my diet… in the 1+ year since i got married, i somehow put on more than 15 pounds, and after my last doctor’s visit (during which the weight the scale showed literally alarmed me), it’s time to focus on healthy and balanced eating again.

while my work environment is still not conducive to bento-making or eating (lots of travel or erratic 5-minute lunches squeezed at odd times of day between meetings), i have really been making an effort to cook healthy dinners and to pre-portion healthy snacks and lunch options in advance (sundays are my plan-food-for-the-week day).   so, i hope to be able to get back to posting with some low-calorie bentos like this one.  after all, it was pikko’s WW points bentos that got me started in the first place!  some other new requirements for myself for making realistic work-night bentos:

• as much as i love the collection of kawaii bento accessories (picks, baran, boxes, etc.) that i’ve assembled over the past few years, bringing too many non-throw-away elements to work will make me less likely to bring the bento at all — it’s just too time-consuming to wash these out in the cafeteria sink and pack them back up to bring home with me, and i’m not always headed straight home (how many of you have experienced the slight embarrassment of having a colleague at after-work drinks ask you why you have a bag of tupperware with you?).  so, i’m going to aim to use no more than one accessory, and to focus on recyclable (preferable from an environmental standpoint to disposable, though some things — like wax paper — really are disposable).
• similarly, while i love elaborate nori and cheese cut-outs and intricate layered character designs, my new bentos need to be simply-composed — ideally from “normal” food (e.g. food i actually made for dinner or in advance for lunch portions, not bite-sized pieces especially crafted for the bento), ideally arranged in less than 15 minutes.  for anyone just starting bento, these new posts should be a good review of the basics for decorative elements, such as simple cut-outs.
• taking into consideration my current 1200-calorie-per day diet, my new bentos should be less than 400 calories each, with balanced nutrition.

that’s a tall order, no?  well, we’ll see how this goes… i’ve purchased some take-out style rectangular and round containers like these (that i can dump in the recycling bin, or wash in the work sink and leave there to bring home at the end of the week, instead of every day; these are not special or unique in any way, so if someone at work takes them or throws them out, i won’t be heartbroken the way i would with my special boxes), and put together my first attempt.

tomorrow’s lunch features a savory winter quiche.  i’ve adapted it from the vegetarian times recipe for “mushroom pie in a whole-wheat flax crust,” and can imagine infinite variations on the vegetables you could substitute in for mushrooms, or the cheese you could sub in.  not to mention crust switch-ups — you could use a couple of sheets of fillo dough, or regular pastry flour, or omit the flax.  i happen to like these earthy mushrooms with the gruyere-swiss blend i purchased from trader joe’s, as well as the nutritional boost provided by the flax seeds — but tweak to your heart’s content!

savory winter quiche (makes two five-inch pies, or four servings)

• 1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons ground flaxseeds
• pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1/2 pound of mixed mushrooms (baby bella and white button work well together)
• 1/2 cup chopped white or yellow onion
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• chopped fresh thyme; salt and pepper to taste
• 1 large egg
• 3 tablespoons liquid egg whites (or one real egg white)
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce (i like frank’s red hot)
• 1/2 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup grated cheese of your choice

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease your pie pans or spray them lightly with cooking spray.
2. whisk together the dry ingredients (both flours, the flaxseeds, and salt) in a mixing bowl.
3. in a small sautee pan over a low-medium heat, melt the butter and swirl it until it browns evenly.  once it’s browned, cut the heat and add the canola oil to the skillet.
4. in the mixing bowl, make a well in the dry ingredients, and carefully pour the hot butter/oil mixture from the sautee pan into the well.  using a fork, mix the butter/oil mixture into the dry ingredients until you have an even, crumb-like consistency.
5. put several ice cubes in a drinking glass, and add water to just cover the ice cubes.  using a tablespoon measure, add one tablespoon of ice water into the mixing bowl at a time, mixing afterwards.  when the dough is moist enough to stick to itself (and be mushed together into a ball by your hands), stop adding water.
6. dump the contents of the bowl onto a clean work surface and mold it into a ball.   cut the ball in half and roll each half into its own ball.  roll each ball into a disc.  use the discs to line your two pie pans, and crimp the edges however you would like.
7. put your pie crusts in the oven and bake for 10 minutes; take out to cool.
8. heat the olive oil in a medium-sized sautee pan, and begin to brown the mushrooms.  when your mushrooms are about halfway browned, add the onion and continue cooking until the mushrooms have given up their moisture and reduced in size (by about 1/3 to 1/2).  add your thyme, salt and pepper.
9. in a small mixing bowl, whisk your egg and white together, and then whisk in the milk and the hot sauce.  you may season this mixture with salt and pepper, as well, if you like.
10. using half of the cheese, sprinkle a layer of cheese into the bottom of the cooled crusts.  divide your mushroom mixture between the two crusts, and then top with the rest of the cheese.  pour the egg/milk mixture on last, dividing evenly between the two pies.
11. bake the pies for 30-40 minutes, until the top is domed and slightly puffy, and the cheese slightly browned.

sounds like a lot of steps, but actually quite easy, and would become quite routine if you make these regularly with different vegetable and cheese options.  you can also make a big batch of the crust dough in advance and freeze it (or even freeze it in the pie tins).  and they just look so picture-perfect when they’ve just come out of the oven, before they deflate slightly!

this bento contains half of a pie, with an arugula-and-cucumber salad topped with two hanpen snowflakes (simply cut out with a metal veggie cutter).  i’ve also got a skewer of grape tomatoes on a snowflake pick.  the snow theme is because we had our first snow of the winter this past weekend in brooklyn… it was so lovely at first, but it’s amazing how quickly new yorkers turn their pristine white environment into ugly brown slush!

for those of you who are curious or who would like to start bento-making in an effort to control calories, here is the nutritional information for this lunch (assuming a 1200-calorie-per-day diet):

• 1/2 winter quiche, 225 calories (14.1 g. fat [4.8 g. saturated], 14.9 g. carbs, 11.9 g. protein, 10.9% daily value of calcium, 5.2% daily value of iron)
• 1 cup baby arugula, 10 calories (0 g. fat, 1.5 g. carbs, 1 g. protein, 20% daily value of vitamin A, 10% daily value of vitamin C, 7.5% daily value of calcium, 3% daily value of iron)
• 10 g. hanpen, 10 calories (0 g. fat, 1.2 mg. cholesterol, 91 mg. sodium, 1.8 g. carbs, 0.7 g. protein)
• 5 grape tomatoes — 3 hidden under surface of salad, 10 calories (0 g. fat, 202 mg. potassium)
• 1/4 cup raw cucumber with peel, 2 calories (19 g. potassium)
• 1 tbsp. ken’s steakhouse lite italian dressing, 23 calories (2.2 g. fat [0.2 g. saturated], 220 mg. sodium)
• 1 cup tazo “green ginger” tea, 0 calories

TOTAL CALORIES: 280

this leaves room for both a before-lunch snack (cut up veggies with greek yogurt dip = 75 calories) and even of a piece of fruit for dessert (a mandarin cutie = 40 calories; a granny smith apple = 80 calories).   i’ve limited the processed foods containing cholesterol and sodium (take it easy on the hanpen, it’s FULL of salt!), and boosted the vegetable ratio.  i can drink tea to my heart’s content; very few teas, aside from the fruit-containing blends, are caloric.  and so far, so good on my new bento objectives: i will throw out the wax paper and pick, and leave the washed-out container in the cafeteria — no muss, no fuss.

sorry for the long post, but hope this catches you up on the new ideas i’ve been mulling over… wishing a happy and healthy 2012 to all my bento friends and readers!

hey everybody, how are things in bento land?  the past couple weeks have been crazy for me — i got a sort of promotion (i think?) and have been traveling a lot more for work, which is wreaking havoc with my meal planning schedule.  then this past week i started feeling myself getting sick.  i tried to head that off at the pass, but i currently have a terrible case of laryngitis… i am mostly resting today, trying to get my voice back in time for an important meeting tomorrow.

i hope you all have been well, and i can’t wait to catch up on bento posts and tweets!

tomorrow is a day where i know i will actually be at my desk for lunch, so i layered some of my favorite spicy tofu from the korean market under brown-and-white rice sprinkled with furikake.  the back section has a tomato, steamed broccolini, some tangerine slices, two steamed brussels sprout halves, and a piece of simmered lotus root (also pre-prepared from the korean market).  for a sweet treat i have a cup of vanilla yogurt with kiwi.

on top of the rice is an egg sheet version of our dog, ruby.  whenever i put her harness on her to take her out for a walk, she does this leisurely stretch, with all four legs splayed out — so cute.  akinoichigo’s new book (which is now available on yesasia for free shipping to the US) has a similar pattern for a cat, and as soon as i saw it i knew i wanted to use it for silly ruby.

not sure when i’ll be bentoing again, so in case i’m not back here for a while, hope you all have a great week!

tomorrow’s lunch was fairly quick and easy to pack using leftovers from tonight’s dinner: two round onigiri made from rice mixed with sauteed broccolini stems and garlic (which is how i served it the first time, not mixed especially for the onigiri), plus a few small pieces of pan-seared salmon filet.  i topped the onigiri with “strawberries” made from fish sausage, sesame seeds, and snow pea tops, using another great idea from akinoichigo’s blog.

the rest of the bento has one of the brightest red strawberries i’ve ever come across in my market, a little bit of tomato, some snow peas, broccolini tops, a takuwan rosette, and a few slices each of mini-cucumber and tangerine to fill empty spaces.  i’m looking forward to this relatively light and healthy lunch.

i hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!  i have another busy work week ahead, but can’t wait to catch up on my favorite blogs and twitter feeds when i get some down time…

a recent trend in wedding stationary is to use a mix of vintage postage stamps for a unique and stylized look. i think this idea is really cute, but it can be cost-prohibitive (some vintage stamps cost up to 10 times their face value!).

inspired by the trend as well as cute bentos by akinoichigo and lucky sundae, and evolving the scottie dog “stamps” bento i made a few weeks ago, i made two vintage postage stamp sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch. each stamp sits atop a sandwich of pumpernickel, vegetarian ham, cheese and mustard. the provolone stamps are topped with fish sausage roses, as well as green pea and nori accents and hand cut 12-cent demarcations.

posted in “what’s for lunch wednesday” — what are you having?

tonight for dinner i made an awesome pan-seared cod dish, served with shitake-miso-arugula-quinoa salad (recipe below) and a fat slice of oven-roasted beefsteak tomato.

for tomorrow’s lunch, which is my last passover lunch for the year (YAY!), i packed some of the cod beneath a layer of the quinoa salad, topped with a cheese-and-nori matryoshka.  the side portion has steamed broccoli, a fish sausage heart, steamed asparagus, sweet potato “doilies”, pea pods, and a lettuce border.

quinoa has been a controversial grain for those observing passover — because it was not a part of the diet of the jews who fled slavery in egypt, it was never placed on the list of forbidden passover foods, even though it expands like rice and other forbidden grains.  that’s good enough for me, and because quinoa is protein-packed, it’s a nice change from rice.

the basic recipe is simple, and the number of potential add-ins is infinite.  here’s the combo i came up with tonight:

shitake-miso-arugula-quinoa salad (if you can come up with a better name, let me know!)

• 1 cup of quinoa
• 8 medium shitake caps, julienned
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• olive oil to coat a medium skillet
• 2 cups water
• 2 tbsp. shiro miso paste
• 3 big handfuls of arugula
• pepper to taste

1. coat your skillet with olive oil and heat it up.  add the sliced garlic and julienned shitake caps, and sautee until golden.
2. add the quinoa to the pan and stir until it’s evenly toasted but not burned.  (this is the same process you would use when making risotto and toasting the arborio rice prior to adding liquid.)
3. in a separate pot, bring 2 cups of water to boil, and then whisk in the miso paste.
4. add the quinoa-shitake-garlic mixture to the boiling miso broth, cover and reduce to a low simmer.  allow to cook for 10-15 minutes until all liquid has been absorbed and the individual quinoa grains are plumped.  turn off heat and leave lid on to steam for an additional 2 to 5 minutes.
5. transfer the quinoa-shitake-garlic mixture to a mixing bowl, and fold in the arugula.  it will steam/wilt in this process; make sure fold until it’s evenly incorporated.

that’s it!  it’s good hot or cold, and very nutritious.

tomorrow’s lunch has two hanpen geese with egg sheet beaks and feet, nori eyes, and fish sausage cheeks.  they’re sitting on a bed of basmati rice sprinkled with furikake i received in a surprise package from a bento pal — it’s got a combination of sesame seeds, dehydrated green bell pepper, and yuzu, which gives it a very unique, tangy flavor.  i love it!

i punched some little clovers out of fish sausage, and the back portion of this box has steamed sweet potato and broccolini, a takuwan rosette with asparagus leaves, tiny red vine tomatoes, and a cheese flower.  i think i felt like using my goose-shaped cutter because the resulting geese look like they would lay nice fat easter eggs.  did everyone have a nice easter weekend?

don’t forget that the auction for the lovely hand-crafted crane earrings ends in a few hours — all proceeds are to benefit japan relief, so get your bid in while you can!

this speed-packed bento is my nod to easter… the “speedy” in the title refers both to the bunny and to the bento-making time!

it’s a simple meal in my trusty tiffin:  some bulldog-glazed veggie meatballs, japanese pickles, rice with scallions and peas, a few carrot flowers, and a sweet potato bunny.

no bento for me on friday, so this is my last reminder that the highly-sought-after bento play food set auction ends in just over a day… and then we’ll be in easter weekend.  wishing all my bento pals a wonderful holiday weekend with their families!

tomorrow’s lunch has some curry rice with two hanpen horses, plus steamed broccoli, a tomato, steamed brussels sprout halves, and some juicy pieces of mochiko chicken.  i made a batch using a combination of both sheri and debra‘s helpful recipes; mine came out looking a little bit different (the batter consistency was so close to pancake batter that the outside of some of the pieces actually look like pancakes), but it was absolutely delicious.

my horsies have manes made from egg sheet that i had leftover from last night’s rilakkuma creation.  i cut a slit in the hanpen and inserted the base of the fringed egg sheet strip so that the mane looks like it’s “growing.”  cilantro sprig harnesses are a cool idea i borrowed from lucky sundae, and i put my own spin on akinoichigo’s saddle idea by using soy paper in which i hand cut little hearts.

have you bid on the awesome play bento set or the beautiful crane earrings, both auctions to benefit the japan relief effort?

and — i posted my lunch in “what’s for lunch wednesday,” did you?

tomorrow’s bread-free lunch is my take on soboro, mexican-style: a layer of spanish rice (cooked in my rice cooker with peas and corn), a layer of monterey jack cheese, and a layer of vegetarian ground beef sauteed with cumin.  plus a bunch of fresh fruits and veggies — cuke, yellow and red vine tomatoes, steamed broccoli, pea pods, a big fat strawberry, and a few tangerine sections.

the star of this lunch is rilakkuma, cut with an exacto knife from two colors of egg sheet.  i recently bought a package of onigiri cases with rilakkuma on them, and the package had two funny/cute rilakkuma designs:  in one he is flying with cooking utensils in his hands (this is what i reproduced for my bento, without the utensils), and in another he is totally relaxing (per his name!), with one arm leisurely propping up his head.

just a reminder: the fabulous play bento set — consisting of adorable, hand-crafted fabric food items traditionally found in a bento box — is still up for grabs on ebay.  the bento4japan charity auctions are winding down, but this item is like a grand finale!

tomorrow at sundown marks the start of the jewish holiday passover.  for the eight days during which the holiday is observed, one refrains from eating leavened bread, as well as a variety of other foods that are seen as “rising” like leavened bread (depending on the regional tradition, this group of forbidden foods may include rice, beans, and other ingredients which expand when cooked).

although i won’t be strictly observing the restrictions this year, i will be saying goodbye to bread for the next week or so, which alas, includes sandwich bentos.  so as a fond (and temporary!) farewell, i made two egg salad sammies for tomorrow’s lunch.  super simple, with the cute addition of a cut-outs in the shape of keys.  the two breads i used, rye and pumpernickel, were nicely contrasting, and so i switched the keys (then both loaves went in the freezer to wait for the end of the holiday!).

this isn’t quite a bento, but i hope you don’t mind me posting.

speaking of “not quite a bento,” have you checked out the amazing wool/viscose play bento set that was recently posted as a bento4japan auction?  although you can’t eat this one, it would be the perfect gift for a cute child in your life… or for your own enjoyment.  bidding will definitely get heated on this one, so don’t miss it!

[as seen on epicute]