Soba EcoLunchBox Bento

Soba EcoLunchBox Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Our heatwave is cooling off, but I decided to pack the kids a refreshing soba salad for their bento in the EcoLunchBox two-tier set. Toppings include shredded lettuce, ham, carrots and surimi. He'll pour the tsuyu and sprinkle furikake right before he eats. Sides include: carrot-beet salad (tossed with cider vinegar, ground ginger, and pomegranate juice), pickled cucumbers with bittermelon and kumquats, and sesame-marinated baby sweet peppers. Plus the favored farmers market strawberries. Seems like a summer lunch, and I personally can't wait!

Sakura Ma Po Tofu Bento

Sakura Ma Po Tofu Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

MisterMan's ma po tofu gets an accent of three beet-dyed sakura cut tofu "blossoms" floating atop his meal. Did you enjoy the cherry blossoms in your neighborhood? Seems this year I noticed quite a few specimen trees that I never noticed in years past. There's one fabulous double-blossomed tree that I pass every single day, and somehow I never realized its striking beauty until the past couple weeks. I can't take a picture because there's no parking, but I've been slowing down to appreciate it each day. So here's my homage to that lovely spring display. His upper tier has a couple of the last market strawberries, and some cups of: marinated baby bell peppers and pickled red onions; pickled turnips with sliced kumquats, pickled carrots and daikon, and pickled bittermelon. The baby turnips recipe called for lemon, but I substituted kumquats -- it's delicious this way! I think the kumquats would be nice by themselves as well. They are an unusual fruit in that the flesh and juice are tart but the skin is sweet. Have you had them? And this batch of bittermelon was marinated in equal parts vinegar and pineapple juice. It's a lot more palatable this way. I think this method is a winner! I may put together a post of all my pickling experiments, in case you have a hankering to try any of these, and so that I can remember what I've tried so far. What do you think?

Brown Bear Shoyu Egg Bento

Brown Bear Shoyu Egg Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

Today's bento contains the ever-popular kid favorite rotisserie chicken, on a lettuce bed. I made a brown bear from a hard-boiled egg by letting it sit in a small bowl of shoyu. After rolling it around to get even color, let it sit on its side for a few more minutes without moving. You'll see that the spot it's resting on will be a little lighter in color than the rest. I used this spot for the bear's nose. His facial details are cut from nori and satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potato).

There's also a cherry tomato half, some kumquats, strawberries, blackberry, grapes, baby carrots, broccoli and peapods. I really like this box too. It's just the right size for my boy's appetite, and all the sections allow me to keep foods and flavors separate.

I'm so happy we're starting to see some colorful fruits and vegetables in the markets. I'm hoping my bento get more and more colorful as a result, as the season goes on... how about you?

Four Squares Bento

Four Squares Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

On my recent trip to L.A. over the long weekend, I scored a bunch of new bento stuff. Yay! This multi-sectional box is one of them. I found this one at a store in Little Tokyo called Tokyo Japanese Lifestyle. It's a very cool store, and you should check it out if you're in the area.

This box also came as a two-tier option, with the lower tier a box of the same size without dividers or containers. Each section of this box holds 170 mls, and the label claims the total volume is 1.2L. I guess this takes into account the convex lid (which I don't show here), which does allow you to stuff extra food in there.

Anyway, this size is just perfect for my first-grader. I don't have to fill up the sections fully, but yet each stays separate from the others to keep sauces and flavors distinct. I love it!

For the first use, I gave him Singapore rice sticks in the red box, a green salad with marinated artichoke hearts and grape tomatoes topped with crumbled feta in the green box, pan-fried garlic enoki and broccoflower along with 2 carrot goldfish in the purple box, and a selection of desserts in the yellow box: cherries, kumquats, a beautiful strawberry and a piece of homemade zucchini bread.

This box is a little wider than my others, and it barely fits in his insulated lunch tote, but I squeezed it in there. What do you think? It's a pretty fun box, eh?