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?