Welcome Back To School, v. Fall 2015!

Hi Bento Friends!

If your kids haven't gone back to school yet, they probably will in the next couple weeks. Like me, you might be starting to think about packing lunches again. I didn't pack lunches all summer because MisterMan was taking over the lunchpacking duties when they were required, and other times their camp activity center provided meals. So I am wayyyy out of practice! 

I decided to start easy by packing a kid favorite. This one is for TinySprite, who is now starting 3rd grade. I made her tiny tuna melts using Mini Sandwich Thins. I love these (smaller than the regular size Sandwich Thins) because you have the option of packing more, with different fillings if you like. Plus they fit in the bento box much more easily. And they're so cute! In this standard size bento box, I filled the rest of the space in with silicone cups of fresh organic plum, strawberries, grapes, blackberries and blueberries, and fancy cut carrot sticks. I totally forgot about any kawaii details, but the Chococat box should make up for it this time.

Hope you are all gearing up to get excited for a new school year!

Kimbap Summer Bento

Kimbap Summer Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

I am often influenced by food tweets on twitter, and yesterday everyone seemed to be having Korean food. I saw a pic of kimbap go by, and clicked to find a recipe for making shoyu tuna kimbap. Well, I didn't have tuna but I did have sardines. Could I substitute? Before you go "eww", I have to say, it came out really good! I adapted a recipe by Maangchi I found here.

Make seasoned tuna flakes
1.Open a can of tuna and remove the oil or water. Put it on a heated pan and drizzle some sesame oil over it. Toss it and cook it for 2 minutes.
2.Add 1 tbs of soy sauce, ½ tbs of sugar, 1 clove of minced garlic, and 1 ts of ground black pepper.

3.Keep stirring for another 3 minutes.
4.Turn off the heat and add 1 chopped green onion, 2 ts of sesame oil and 1 tbs of toasted sesame seeds.

I also realized I didn't have avocados or pickled radish, but I did have cucumber and crab stick. After cooking the shoyu sardines, it smelled so good I ate some straight out of the pan. Yum. Even better rolled up. I put almost the entire roll in his bento, two-deep. This stainless steel bento is deep enough to accomodate pretty tall food. I separated the kimbap from the fruit with a piece of green leaf lettuce and placed a bunch of Rainier cherries, a lychee and a half homegrown apricot on the side. There is shoyu in the yellow container. I used a dipping container instead of a squirt bottle so that he wouldn't have to squirt the shoyu all over the rest of the food. So good, quick and easy!