🍀Happy St. Paddy's Day Bento! 🍀

Green green green!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, you guys! ☘☘☘ It's that green time of year; luckily there are lots of green foods to choose from. Too bad the protein has to deviate from the color scheme but maybe it's better that not EVERYthing is green...

Inside this cute green frog bento: stirfried chicken, baby bok choy and peas, tomato, strawberries, kiwi.

I made shamrock egg rings with green bell peppers (I looked for 4-lobed ones and sliced them about a half inch thick). You can fry the egg directly in the pepper ring and then put a lid on the pan to finish steam cooking. The rest of this Sistema bento contains: pesto spinach pasta, turkey bacon green bean rollups, a cucumber pot of pickled wakame (plus the cucumber balls), blueberries, strawberries and kiwi.

Hope you all have a fantastic St. Paddy's Day weekend! 🍀🍀🍀

Mini Egg and Ham Muffin Bento

Mini Egg and Ham Muffin Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

This is my next installment of the mini bento series. Yes, it's another breakfast mini. I've already done a mini pancake stack, which I think was close to my first one. I've also made a mini sandwich, mini sushi, mini pizza, mini market haul, and mini snowman, among others. I got the idea for this one while I was making these whole wheat english muffins a few days ago. I decided to make a couple of mini ones so I could make a mini egg mcmuffin.

So here it is! On the flower shaped cream cheese sandwich I've plated: ham and "egg" (mozzarella cheese topped with real egg yolk dotted with fresh ground pepper) on english muffin, real bacon strips, a cup of "orange juice" (carrot with spaghetti straw), cup of "coffee" (brownie), and my cute little nori utensils. I would have liked the muffin to be even smaller. Next time! I've squeezed in some steamed broccoli and peapods, a sliced strawberry and some grapes for scale. Still have lots more mini ideas to go...

Mushroom Bacon Risotto Thermal Bento

Mushroom Bacon Risotto Thermal Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

Today I'm packing the mushroom and bacon risotto in the Zojirushi Classic thermal bento set. It's a fairly large set, especially for my second-grader, but he's game to try it. He practiced with each of the bowls so I'm confident he can open them all. The smallest bowl is meant to contain the soup, but I've packed veggies in it. I put the risotto in the largest container, which is meant to contain rice. The fruit (which I always include in his bento) is packed in the third container. The way I've packed this set is less than optimal; obviously I don't want all his food to be kept warm, so I have to keep the fruit separate. This defeats the purpose of the thermal set, but I don't see what else I can do about it. At this point, I'm wondering whether this kind of set is the best choice for my purposes. Anyway, after I've heated up the thermal outer container, I'll pack the risotto and the veggies, close the lid, and send the fruit alongside. I've already done a temperature test (I'll post about it later in my full review) and I know the food will stay warm; but we'll see what my 7-year old thinks about his "hot" bento. Fingers crossed!

Bacon Rollups Bento

Bacon Rollups Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

TinySprite's bento is a bit smaller than usual. Since school has restarted after the holiday break, she's been very excited to chat and play with her friends. Unfortunately this leaves little time to actually eat her lunch. Yesterday she had to bring almost the entire thing home to finish. Sigh. Normally this would not be a problem, but she has only a limited time to nap before we have to get her up in time to pick up her brother after school. When I woke her up she complained groggily "I want to sleep some MORE!" So today I've packed a smaller bento in hopes she finishes the whole thing, and then we can have a quick snack at home if she's still hungry. She gets bacon, mozzarella and peapods rolled up in corn tortillas. After frying the bacon, I tossed in some kabocha wedges to fry up in the drippings. Smelled good! In the remainder of the spaces I added a half clementine, carved carrot sticks and a bunch of cherries. Fingers crossed it goes down quick!

Bat and Char Siu Bao O'lantern Bento

Bat Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

Today's double bento post is from last Friday. MisterMan got a bacon-wrapped turkey burger and roasted purple potatoes. He got a colorful selection of veggies including broccoli, purple cauliflower, carrots and a tomato, as well as a piece of corn on the cob. I think that's the first time I actually used 5 different color vegetables in a single bento. Yay! Only bummer is that this one is light on the fruit. I used a bunch of black grapes to design a bat on the corn. You might need to use a bit of imagination. My boy called it an octopus until I hinted that it fell into the Halloween category. After awhile he guessed "Uh, a bat?" Um, yee-ssss. Sigh.

TinySprite gets a more finger friendly bento -- a perfectly round char siu bao just called for transformation into a jack-o-lantern. I cut the features with a small paring knife, and rather than punch out the cutouts, I just lightly pushed them in. So much easier, and it looks fine this way. I used a piece of corn on the cob for the stem, and filled in the rest of the gaps with the same veggies as in her brother's bento. Done! Love these quick ones. Just a few more days of Halloween themed bento, but it's been fun! ^_^