Spring Roll Bento🌸🍱

Here's one to herald spring. Spring rolls! So fun for bento, and delicious at room temperature.

Today's one of those typically unsettled days with a little of everything. Warm and sunny when we woke up, followed by the sudden disappearance of the sun and subsequent black clouds and freezing wind. I'm expecting a downpour at any second. 😂

Luckily it's a fine day for fresh spring rolls. I put rice vermicelli in mine, with lettuce, napa cabbage, shredded carrots, red bell pepper, peapods, and shrimp. I sliced one open to show you, but I'll wrap it back up to keep it from drying out. I made peanut sauce for dipping (made with sun butter instead of peanut to abide by TinySprite's nut-free school rules).

First Day of Spring Bento!

First day of Spring and of course it's gray and cloudy outside. So we'll celebrate with a cheerful bento! 

Inside our Yumbox: quartered cheese - tomato - lettuce - avocado toasted sandwiches (skewered because I saw trhe idea in Sarah Michelle Gellar's cookbook "Stirring Up Fun With Food" [I really don't have any affiliation with her or her publisher; I just happened to find a few cute ideas in there]😆), mini peppers stuffed with cottage cheese, sunflower seeds and a bit of granola, cara cara oranges, steamed Okinawan sweet potatoes, corn, radish ladybug, and chocolate raisins.

One nice thing about the cool weather is my sweet violets love it! Mine are the super fragrant pink "Rosina" variety. Happy Spring, friends!

Spring Momiji Bento

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Spring Momiji Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

Spring is here!
I can tell because the Japanese maples in my garden are unfurling their delicate leaves. Each morning I check to see if they have opened yet. My green one is completely open, but my red one will take a day or two more, I think. So for this bento I celebrate the anticipation I feel each spring while I wait for my tree to awaken from its wintry slumber.

Along with Korean Chicken, I made a lettuce-wrapped onigiri of kale/jade rice adorned with pink maple leaves. They are made of satsumaimo, Japanese sweet potato, which have been "finger-painted" with beet juice from fresh steamed beet. I decided to dye them this way because then I could get varying degrees of red color for each leaf. Plus, I didn't want to overcook by boiling in the beet juice after it was already cooked. Simply steam a small piece of beet for a few minutes, and it will begin to emit beet juice immediately. I placed the satsumaimo (naturally white in color) on the beet and lightly rubbed the color on. The leaf shapes are cut with a cutter. I like how they came out. To balance out the section, I added flower-cut baby carrots, steamed broccoli and peapods. In the fruit section I slipped in blood orange slices, a halved clementine and a strawberry fan.

It was also a positively spring-like day today, which means I had nice sunlight streaming in through my "picture" window by which to take the shot. Yay! I added a sprig of my fragrant jasmine, which is currently in peak bloom right now. Every afternoon while TinySprite naps, I relax by the jasmine vine in the warm sun. It has become the time I look forward to every day. Tomorrow I think I'll bring a cup of ice tea out there with me :)