Gyoza EcoLunchBox Bento and a Spelling Bee

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

Hello again! Sorry I've been a bit negligent about posting bento here for a week or so. The day after Valentines Day, MisterMan participated in his school district Spelling Bee again this year. Last year he took home the top prize, and this year he snuck into 4th place. He was the only returning placewinner from last year. This year's competition was fierce, complete with 21 4th-grade spellers from 5 schools, multiple elimination rounds of off-list words, tie-breakers, and even parent protests. It was a nail-biter, I tell you! In the end MisterMan was tripped up by "scalene", but when he stood onstage with his ribbon he looked just as pleased as ever. I'm glad he likes words so much; I think it's quite a nice hobby to have. We're so proud of you MisterMan! To celebrate, we spent the long weekend checking out some dinosaur exhibits and cool kid museums. And yes, there were frozen desserts involved too! ^_^

Today's bento is packed in my super awesome EcoLunchBox two-tier set, with homemade pork gyoza (see my method and recipe here) in the lower part and a variety of refreshment in the upper part: baby satsuma, a smattering of grapes, strawberry, blueberries, and house-pickled cucumbers. Gyoza are guaranteed kid-pleasers, tasty with or without dipping sauce, easy-to-eat finger food, and made for bento. I made my filling with pork and chopped baby bok choy, because I'm wild like that. You can use almost anything you like: even mushroom, scallions, water chestnuts (for crunch), bean sprouts, whatever. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Wings of Bento, and a Celebration

Wings of Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

As I was going through my bento stash, I found this two-tier rectangular stainless steel Ecolunchbox set. It comes with a smaller, lidded box that fits into the top tier and is useful for packing things that you'd like to keep contained. The other Ecolunchbox I have (the oval one you can see here and here) also includes a separate small box, which seems to be where this company stands out. I like the quality of these boxes; the metal is sturdy and well-constructed enough to survive a typical lunchbag-swinging kid. This one, like the other one, has a tight latch, which you might need to practice with your child to make sure he can open and close it easily. Here I've packed some tebasaki (Japanese Grilled Chicken Wings with Sea Salt - method and recipe here), roasted diced taters and asparagus spears in the lower tier, and strawberries, carrots, blood oranges in the top tier, along with cottage cheese and blueberries in the little tin.

As for the kids' accomplishments last Friday, MisterMan finished first in the 3rd Grade District Spelling Bee! He beat out 27 other kids from 8 other schools to take home the medal. Interestingly, although the kids were given a list of about a thousand potential words to study, the second half of the bee drew from a secret list that the kids would only have been able to recognize from their reading. Not surprisingly, most of them were eliminated during that half; and some of those words were tough! MM never cracked under pressure, and spelled the winning word, "admirably", admirably. So proud of him! As for TinySprite, she appears to have performed well in her Kindergarten Readiness Interview, as we received her positive evaluation today. So as promised, they celebrated with their own double ice cream cones this past weekend: pistachio and chocolate chip for him, and chocolate and blueberry cheesecake for her. ^_^