Happy Easter Baby Chick Bento! 🐣🐰

It's not Easter yet, but one of my kids is already on school break. The other one's break is the week after Easter. Seems so late! How about your kids?

So anyway, here's my bento for the occasion. Had to make the baby chick egg, of course! If you do this, try to keep the yolk in the center. It really makes the carving much easier! My yolks were way off center so it was hard to cut neatly through so much white. In fact, the yolk was so low in the first egg I tried that I didn't even reach it at all -_-

Inside our Ecolunchbox Solo Cube: ham-spinach-tomato-enoki-furikake rice onigirazu, Okinawan sweet potato cherry blossoms, sweet baby peppers stuffed with edamame, tomato and berries.

Inside the Eco Dipper: soba, lettuce, hard boiled egg.

Happy Easter, friends!

Pork Chop Strips Bento

For this simple lunch I made pan-fried Vietnamese style thin pork chops, which I sliced into strips for the kids' bento. I marinated the meat in a mixture of fish sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar, shallots, and cracked black pepper before cooking them in a cast iron pan. Added the sliced peppers too, and reduced the sauce. You can serve them in a lettuce wrap with pickled veggies, or over shredded lettuce, or with baby sweet peppers like I did here. A half peach and some chopped Asian pear round out the bento for MisterMan. They both love this meat, and it's a great way to get them to eat lettuce too :)

Thrown-Together Bento

Thrown-Together Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

This bento is from last week: it includes oven-baked "mochiko chicken" (method and recipe here) and kabocha in one tier, and a rainbow assortment of fruit and veggies in the other tier (strawberry, blood orange, carrots, yellow pepper, blueberries in a cucumber cup, grapes, and Okinawan sweet potato. I call it thrown-together because if you look closely you'll notice that I threw the kabocha chunks in there without roasting them! I usually roast some veggies when I make the oven-roasted chicken, since the oven is already hot and all. But my mind was out-of-sorts because I had received a phone call that afternoon; the kind a parent dreads: Your daughter was playing on the play structure, and we noticed her arm is a little swollen. When I got there I saw her cradling her arm gingerly. This girl never does anything gingerly! I rushed her to the hospital and we discovered she had sustained a supracondylar fracture at her elbow joint. She had surgery that night and is now wearing a cast for the next 3-6 weeks. We were worried and nervous, but surgery went well and we are hoping for a quick and successful healing process. TinySprite handled the whole ordeal like a pro, never complaining of pain or feeling afraid of her operation. In fact, the surgeon remarked on her loquaciousness and inquisitiveness about the procedure and the equipment. Even now, 4 days later, she hasn't lost her smile or dampened her high spirits. I've really gained a new appreciation of her fortitude and strength. And don't worry - after the picture I noticed the raw kabocha and quick-microwaved and pan-fried them in butter and shoyu for MisterMan. ^_^

Added to What's For Lunch.

Calzone Flowers Lunchbot Bento

Calzone Flowers Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Welcome to the first day of the Lunar New Year! The kids happened to have yesterday off, so we spent the long weekend celebrating with family. And today's bento has meat! It's a meaty calzone I made with whole wheat dough, containing pepperoni, ham, mushrooms, arugula, tomatoes and mozzarella. I had to slice it so that it would fit in the bento box, and decorated with Okinawan sweet potato flowers with peapod leaves. I rounded out the meal with a giant strawberry, some sliced kiwi, grape tomatoes, grapes, carrots, and sweet yellow pepper rings. You can see that after the dragon tour de force, I am now back to my usual "plain" quickie bento arrangements, which take much less time but which can still look fresh and appetizing due to the addition of colorful, seasonal fruit and veggies. I am a big proponent of local, seasonal ingredients for bento; the fresher it is, the less preparation (and even cooking) you have to do. And who doesn't love that?