Bentos Series 8

Couldn't really think of a title for my bento posts so I decided to numerise them from now on. And what an auspicious number to start with! You may have noticed now, my favourite furikake is Umeshiso (梅 しそ). The slightly sourish taste from dried plum and the fragrance of perilla leaves makes even plain rice interesting. Previously at the Hokkaido fair at Isetan's, my mom bought some sun-dried furikake. There were so many varieties and I was especially glad that she bought the one with Ume. I love it to death!


















Stir-fried Chinese Spinach with Shimeiji and Carrots, Tomatoes. Devilled egg with Tuna in Hot Mayonnaise (canned food). And of course, rice with Umeshiso furikake.



















Rice balls with sun-dried furikake filled with Natto (纳豆). Weird combination it may seem, but it really goes very well together. Stir-fried beans with white baits (good source of protein and calcium). Tamago-Yaki, Tomatoes. Dates, raisins with various nuts.



















Niku-tofu (肉豆腐), Jaga-imo with beans, topped with pan-fried white baits. Rice with sun-dried furikake and Apples and Blueberries.



















Somen with Umeshiso furikake (again), Chinese Spinach, Tamogo-Yaki. Chicken with Hijiki.



















My desperate attempt in increasing my milk supply by adding soup in my menu. Just a simple fried rice with eggs and beans. Carrot, potato and chicken soup. I should have added Umeshiso furikake too. Tsk.

それじゃ～～ Till the next bento!

Bentos & Slowing Down

Since I have cakes oozing out of my ears now, I decided to take a break from blogging about cakes and sweet stuffs, lest I get queasy looking at my own blog. I have to refrain myself from baking for the time being but seriously, I don't know how long I could last. Baking is addictive, especially for me. My hands don't take to idling. I'm making mooncakes this year and I'm also thinking of starting a crochet project soon.

Plans aside, I have not been updating my bento posts lately. Doing too many things at the same time. Thanks Bento Pet for the reminder. This is for you. Hope they pleased your eyes!


















Abura-age stuffed with rice with toppings; fried white bait, sakura denbu and scrambled eggs. Fresh fruits with yoghurt.


















Rice with stir-fried Hijiki, long beans, carrots and Abura-age. Steamed carrots and Xiao Bai Cai. Stir-fried chicken with Ichimi chilli powder.


















Chahan with mix vegetables. Orange slices and Melon Jelly.


















Somen with Tom Yam flavour seaweed. Wakame and carrots stir-fry with butter and Shoyu. Pan-fried Salmon, lime wedge.


















Rice with Natto, Steamed Tofu with chopped Tomatoes and Shiso Shoyu. Stir-fry young french beans, carrots and Shimeji.

There will be more coming up I promise! Stay tuned.

Bento Competition

Remember the Bento Competition I mentioned in my earlier post? I am delighted to find out that my entry got shortlisted! This is the entry that got selected. Bento Pet will run a poll and the best entry will be voted the winner.


















It is an honour, just to be shortlisted. To see the rest of the bentos, please click here. They are so creative and colourful! I admire their perserverence and dedication to Bento food art. After a while, I do get bored/lazy and lose the drive to take pictures of my bentos or even arrange them nicely to be picture worthy. There are times when I get swamped with work and everything, I need to prioritise. Thanks Bento Pet for organising this event, I found the motivation to do this again. I need to find time for my other interests too. My beading loom, crochet needles and cross-stitch cloths are all gathering dust. Hmm... come to think of it, I still have some jigsaw puzzles chucked in a corner.




I try very hard not to use processed/deep fried food in my bentos. You do not need alot of seasonings to bring out the flavours of food either. Ah Girl will be in Primary 1 in 1 year+ time. I am thinking of packing bentos for her as well. She is a fussy eater but I am glad that she doesn't take to processed food such as sausages, ham or nuggets. She loves soups and noodles mostly. I might need to get a thermos afterall. After checking out the other bento blogs, I discovered that; instead of just letting the pictures do the talking, one needs to be more descriptive about the bentos. I hope my descriptions will not be a bore.


















Rice decorated with Sakura Denbu and sesame. Tom Yam Chicken with Pineapples stirfry. Cherry Tomatoes and Fruits and Nuts mix.



















Rice with Natto and sesame. Steamed Broccoli and Carrots. Pan fried meatballs, Fruits and Nuts mix.



















Rice with Umeboshi. Stirfy Broccoli, Carrots and fresh Button Mushrooms. Saba Shioyaki with Lime wedge.



















Today's lunch. Rice with Natto, sesame, Sakura Denbu and Umeshiso Furikake (Do try this combo, it is rather interesting). Fried egg. Stirfry Wakame and Cherry Tomatoes with Butter and Shoyu. Stirfry Kalbi Chips with Shoyu and Sake.

Is it time to start packing your own bento?

PS. : I will update this post when the winner is being announced. Stay tuned.

*Update : And the winner is Kelly @ Kel's Place. Congratulations! It was fun being a part of the event.

Lunch In A Box

Ya, I know, I have been slacking on Bento posts. Well, my bentos have not been exactly interesting. In fact, I feel that they are pale in comparison to Kyaraben bento. Same sentiments were shared by Bento Pet. It is not so much of disappointment that regular bento packers don't get the recognition, at least for me; I was afraid that I would embarass myself for posting uninteresting/sloppy-looking bentos.

I admit that breastfeeding has taken a toll on me. I have to wake up 2 or 3 times a night to feed Ah Boy. This naughty boy will feed and fall asleep, wake up again brawling for milk. I ended up dozing off with him. Morning is always a rush and I would just dump in all the ingredients and stir fry. Sometimes when I open my box, I would go, 'What the heck!'. Ahaha~ It's food anyway and I didn't get a tummyache. But blogging about it? No way!

Anyway, Bento Pet's post is a wake up call for me. I have got to put in more effort! No more excuses. The above was done in a hurry again but was somewhat more presentable. I made pizza and pita bread over the weekend. I had some capsiciums, pineapples, mushrooms and some shredded ham (actually, these are the rind part which I cut away) left in the fridge. I stir fry them together with eggs and filled them up into the pita bread. A good way to make use of leftovers.

Below are some bentos which I have made some time back but too lazy to put it up. They were in my draft box since May!









Another bento using leftovers again. The soba noodles and udon are insufficient for a meal, so I just dump them in together.

So if you have been packing bentos and been blogging about it, why not join in the fun? Join Bento Pet's Bento Competition! You might be the winner! Time for me to buck up too!

じゃね～～

Cold Sōmen

I usually eat Sōmen (そうめん) or Zaru Soba (ざるそば) when the weather is hot and have no appetite for hot food. My mom used to scream at me, saying that eating cold food is not good for the stomach and so on. I didn't want to rebuke her but erm.. what about cold drinks and ice cream? Ahah.. Anyhow, to me, eating cold noodles in a hot afternoon is the best, cools the whole body down.

Sōmen are noodles made of wheat flour I have only encountered it in dry, noodle stick form. They are usually eaten cold with a dipping sauce made out of dashi stock and shoyu. Serving it can be very simple, just some grated ginger and spring onions. Or you can choose to add some form of protein and fibre to the meal. In this case, I chose some shredded egg omelette, pan fried salmon and pickled seaweed.

There is another interesting way of eating sōmen. The noodles are cooked and placed in a long flume of bamboo, alleviated at an angle. They will run ice cold water in this flume and as the noodles flow along, you are supposed to catch them. By doing this, not only it is fun, the noodles are also cooled by the time you caught them. They called it 'Flowing Sōmen' or 'Nagashi Sōmen" (流しそうめん). To know more, please go to this site.

For Dipping Sauce (prepare beforehand)
300 ml Dashi stock
100ml Shoyu
60ml Mirin
1 tsp Sugar

Method
In a saucepan, mix and heat up the mixture. Leave aside to cool.

For the noodles, just boil in the water. When cooked, rinse with cold water and drain them with a colander. Rinse in cold water again, check if the water is murky. Once it is clear (usually 2 rinse will do the job), you can actually leave the noodles in the cold water. However, since I am bringing this to work, I drain the noodles dry (I added some oil when I boiled the noodles to avoid them sticking together).

An easy and simple meal to put together!

Happy cooking!~ それじゃ～～

Emergency Fried Rice

What do you do when you woke up too late to prepare lunch bento, have some slightly dried out rice, tired looking spinach and leftover hamburg from the previous pig-out? You make fried rice!

Came home from work last night about 11 p.m. Found out that no one remembered to switch off the rice cooker. Leaving the teeny bit of rice, turning into 锅巴 inside the rice cooker. Top of my pet peeves include these; wasting food and electricity. Anyhow, no use getting angry over it. What's done cannot be undone. Kept the rice in the fridge and decide what to do with it later.

Time seems to fly by especially when one is tired and deprived of a decent sleep. I actually woke up at 7.10 a.m.! I have to get out of the house by 7.50 a.m. so how? Rats, my helper forgot to cook rice for me. Damn, I forgot to wash and cut the vegetables the night before. Fortunately, there was still some hamburg left in the chiller. Very quickly, cut up the spinach with scissors and soak them. Take shower and change. Heat up the frying pan, fry an egg, add garlic, dump in the dried out rice, spinach and hamburg. It was all over in 10 minutes.

I'm eating this emergency fried rice as I'm blogging this. Surprisingly, the rice was not that hard. Must be the moisture from the vegetables. After some soaking, the spinach got back its crispness. I did not have to add any seasonings as the hamburg patty was already seasoned. Plus, previously, I have added Rosemary and Sage to it. I forgot if Oregano participated in the party patty though. All in all, I ended up with a satisfying lunch, without wasting any food.

One might say; why make life so difficult, just buy lunch lah! But then, I will have nothing to blog about right? Ahahahah.. At times like these, with all prices going against Newton's Law of Gravity, I try to save on whatever I can (salary remained stagnant). Packing your own lunch box makes economic sense and is environmental friendly. I do not use styrofoam/polypropylene boxes or disposable cutleries. In our tropical climate, I am guilty of enjoying air-conditioned environment. I can only play a very small small small part to help save Mother Earth that I reduce, recycle and reuse. I am also trying to educate my helper and Ah Girl to sort out the rubbish instead of dumping them all in 1 bag. This is not easy; as they say, old habits die hard. I do think that our awareness is still not enough. On and off, I still hear my neighbours throwing glass bottles down the chute. The recylce bins are almost non existent in my neighbourhood. First world country? Hah.. We still have a long way to go.

それじゃ～～

Bento Tips

Since I have been making bentos to bring to work, many friends have been asking how did I do it. To be honest, it is not as difficult as thought. You do not have to wake up that early. Instead, plan your menu the night before.

This is what I do. When I buy meat, I cut and marinate before I pack them into individual servings. On the night before, just thaw the portioned meat/fish in the fridge. Wash and cut the vegetables and set aside for use the next day. I still wake up for Ah Boy's night feed, so I will cook the rice, blurried eyes, at 4 a.m., then go back to bed. I will also use the rice cooker to steam the vegetables. That saves you one thing less to do later on. For those who are not breastfeeding, by any chance you have to wake up to take a leak; cook the rice.

Some of the dishes like stir-fry Hijiki (ひじきの炒め) seaweed and stir-fry Gobo (牛蒡のきんぴら) can be prepared and freezed for later use. They can be kept in the freezer for about 1 week. Like the vegetables, you can just dump these frozen stir-fries into the rice cooker to heat up. In the morning itself, just pan fry the meat/fish, scoop out the rice, vegetables, heat up whatever you need and assemble everything. I usually took about 10 to 15 minutes to dress up a bento. Easy, right?

Play around with food of different colours. This makes a simple, homecooked meal interesting. Recently, I paired up Sakura Denbu (pink) and Ume Shiso furikake (purple). The combo was surprisingly good! Look and taste-wise. Here's some bento I did for the past week.



がんばれ～～　　You can do it!!

A Series of Bentos

Started out making morning/lunch bentos when I went back to work after my confinement. I heard that it can help to calculate calories consumed for that meal. Results seemed slow as I don't exercise AT ALL. Besides, after CNY, who doesn't put on weight?? Wahahah.. Me and my excuses. :p

I try to make my bento as interesting as possible. I don't use fancy cutters to cut my veggies as I find it wasteful. Nor do I pack deep fried food for my bento, considering I am trying to lose weight. I usually use the minimal seasoning, pan fry or steam my food. Basically, it is said that it is healthy that we should consume 5 colours (f00d), namely, White, Red, Yellow, Green and Black. A little use of Furikake, Sakura Denbu and black and white sesame seeds will cheer up your bento. Not forgetting my favourite, Natto (納豆） and pickles （つけもの).

These are what I had for today and yesterday.




Below are what I had done previously.



Happy viewing!　 じゃね!