Char Siu Fried Rice Panda Donburi Bento Bowl

Char Siu Fried Rice Panda Donburi Bento Bowl, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Welcome to November! The passing of Halloween signifies the beginning of the hectic holidays which seem to take over the next two months. Are you ready? We are starting the month with a rice bowl. This one contains sliced deli char siu atop homemade fried red rice with egg and shiitake mushrooms, steamed baby bok choy, and sprinkled with scallions. TinySprite loves this kind of donburi, and it's easy to pack in her little cute panda bento bowl. The top tier holds a few strawberries, and assorted pickled veggies, including baby orange bell peppers. I'm hoping I can sail as easily through the rest of the season...

Beet Hash and Egg Bento

Beet Hash and Egg Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Today I tried something new, since my kids love taters so much: beet hash. It's just diced potatoes and onions, but with diced beets tossed into the mix. I'm telling ya; they couldn't really taste a difference. Or if they did, they didn't care too much. They obviously saw them in there, and I specifically asked MisterMan (since he doesn't care for beets) whether he knew they were beets, and he said "Of course! I know they're beets! But it's okay, I don't mind them when they're mixed in with other stuff." Score! I lay the hash on a bed of spinach and topped with a hard-boiled egg. It's kind of a breakfast-y lunch bento again, isn't it? The top tier of the tiffin holds broccoli, carrots, corn, grapes and white peach. We'll be eating this again for sure.

Sausage & Polenta Bento

Sausage & Polenta Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

This bento arose from some random food tweets I was reading in the morning. Someone mentioned they had sausage and homefries for breakfast and I thought that sounded good for dinner, but then I realized I only had purple potatoes. Not sure how appetizing that would look. Then someone else mentioned polenta croutons and I thought: hmm, polenta - perfect! So that's what I made. It really helps that I follow lots of "foodie" types on twitter :)

I gave MisterMan some Trader Joe's chicken / jalapeno (!) sausage alongside some sauteed mini sweet peppers and onions. I actually didn't mean to use the spicy sausages, but I forgot to check, and didn't notice until after I already started frying them up. Oh well. I decided to just give it to them without mentioning my mistake. If you mention "spicy", my girl will shriek "No! Too spicy!" without even trying it. So what do you think? They gobbled it up for dinner. Woohoo!

For some reason kids just love polenta, and I made this one without any butter at all; just cornmeal and cheese. I was going to save some for frying into croutons, but they ate it all up too fast. I decorated with maroon carrot flowers and a little broccoli. For fruits I added a sliced plum and a mini mandarin. Two little chickie pals will accompany him for lunch :)