Red Spring Bento

Red Spring Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

This bento ended up with lots of red in it, which wasn't planned, but which nicely represents the feeling of spring awakening with lots of color!

Along with more chicken and furikake rice, I added a piece of steamed broccoli and a giant cherry tomato. The salad is composed of watercress tossed with diced Cara Cara oranges (with their nice dark orangey-red hue) and crushed walnuts. The third section has cottage cheese studded with ripe strawberry slices and sprinkled with pumpkin seeds and wheat germ.

And because I am currently obsessed with beet-painting satsumaimo sakura blossoms, there are a bunch of those too! Instead of fingerpainting them, you can also simply steam a slice of satsumaimo with a slice of beet on top (you can layer them alternately too) and the beet color will stain the imo it's touching. The color comes out uneven, lending a kind of "tie-dye" effect which is really cool! It might have been prettier to make a lighter pink color, but I guess I got kinda carried away. Well, plenty of chances to try again! ^_^

Wontons and Watercress Salad Bento

Wontons and Watercress Salad Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

For dinner this day (yesterday) I made wontons for wonton mein; noodle soup with baby bok choy. See the way I made them here. The kids invariably like to eat the wontons like finger food though, so I put some in my boy's bento just like this. His teacher mentioned how good they looked at lunchtime, which I think means I should make a bunch more for him to share next time :)

I added a watercress salad tossed with fresh chopped strawberries and mandarins, sprinkled with chopped walnuts. I would have added goat or feta cheese too, but I didn't have any. I squeezed some juice into the salad too... and guess what? He said he liked it! Yay! I wasn't sure how the watercress would go over. When I was a kid it took awhile for me to get used to the taste. It's also good in soup. Some baby star-cut carrots got placed in the corner, and I managed to slip some plum slices in as well. These are raspberry jewel plums, which are teardrop shaped and supersweet and juicy. They are a lovely rosy magenta color, so pretty. I was excited to see them in my local grocery this week, for a nice addition to the fruit section. Just wait till the full summer crop!