Happy Boys' Day Bento

Growing up in Hawaii, we called it Boys' Day - Tango no Sekku - (Girls' Day is in March) but it has evolved to Children's Day - Kodomo no Hi - since then. However, since I made one for TinySprite on Girls' Day, I'm making one for MisterMan now. His features a boy with a koi that symbolizes strength and determination as it swims upstream. 👦🏻🎏

In the bento: meatloaf, mixed grain rice, asparagus, carrots, raspberries, cara cara oranges, apple and cheese. Happy Boys' Day!

BB-8 Bento

Happy Star Wars Day, or May the 4th Be With You!
A little light bento for TinySprite includes her current favorite polenta made with cornmeal, corn grits, and millet; steamed Okinawan sweet potato, little quail egg BB8, tomato, pickled cucumbers, lotus root, daikon and carrot; raspberries and mandarin.

Chef Bento Noodle Contest Results

Wow - so exciting and incredible to place first in the final 10 (of 172 worldwide entries) at the Bento & Co contest! Thank you, friends, for voting for my bento! I really am appreciative and honored! 😘❤🍱

Chef Bento Noodle Contest by Bento & Co

Hello Bento Friends!

Bento & Co held a contest this past week for a Noodle Theme Bento. The contest is open to any and all, and it's a fun way to challenge yourself into making a bento using the ingredient or element called for. The company holds a similar contest every year with different themes, and I decided to enter this year (I also participated in a past contest here).

I was pleased and honored to have been selected as one of the ten finalists! 💖💖💖
You can see the other nine finalists in the collage above; they are beautiful! The ultimate ranking of the 10 bento will be determined by public vote, meaning people like you! If you are so inclined, please click over to the Bento & Co website to view the entries in closeup, and cast your vote for your favorite. Voting is open until Wednesday! If you vote for me, thank you! 😘💕

While you're there, you can check out the super cute and practical bento and kitchen items offered in the shop. I love the quality and selection of the goods offered by this Kyoto-based company!

In case you were wondering, my entry is this one (top middle in the collage): Soba Totoro Bento! 

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful week so far! 😊❤🍱

Anpanman Turkey Burger PlanetBox Bento

Round sandwich thin in the square section. It works! And the PlanetBox Rover smushes it down just enough so Anpanman's face doesn't move around. Score! Turkey burger with melty Swiss, romaine lettuce, and varied tomato and Okinawan sweet potato decoration, An ombre selection of blood orange segments, a little cup of cottage cheese with sunflower seeds and granola, carrots, asparagus, and pickled lotus root. Oh and a tiny cup of arare (rice crackers). Happy Bento!

Lucky Chow Sizzle Reel Season 2 Preview

Hi Bento Friends!
Remember the time last summer when a film crew came over and filmed a bento segment with Happy Little Bento family? I blogged about the experience here.

It turns out they spent the rest of the year editing our shoot for a very interesting and varied Japanese food and cooking episode. Our bentomaking piece will be part of an upcoming episode in the second season of the PBS TV show Lucky Chow, which focuses on food and culture stories.

Here above (click on embedded video or link here) is the trailer preview for the season if you'd like to take a look. We show up at 1:23 for a few seconds (don't blink or you'll miss us)! It will air here in the bay area next month on our local PBS station KQED; you can check your local PBS listings for the scheduled airing dates in your area. :D

St. Patrick's Day Pot o' Gold Bento!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!  Today TinySprite gets a rainbow's end pot o' gold made from a piece of green pepper filled with egg salad and cheddar cheese coins. There are stars cut from steamed Okinawan sweet potato, red grapes, tomatoes, and mandarin cuties. Hope it's a lucky day for you!

Soba Salad Bento

Hello! I know it's the middle of March, but it has been feeling like summer these past few days in the Bay Area. It was too hot in the kitchen to cook, believe it or not, so I decided to make a fresh cool salad for dinner. And tomorrow's lunch as well! Soba salad is convenient because everyone can use whatever toppings they choose: this one has snap peas, tomatoes, ham, egg, shiitake mushrooms, sesame seeds and green onion. The tsuyu goes into a separate small container on the side, but if you have a leakproof lunchbox you can drizzle it right on top ahead of time (or just omit it if desired). You can also sprinkle furikake as well. I hope this weather means the worst of the rainy winter season is over!

Won Ton Bowl Bento

Another bowl type bento today; this time in an actual round bowl. I really like this apple-shaped two tier metal container. It's cute and handy and just right for meals like this. I lay some soba noodles on the bottom, added shredded romaine lettuce, cilantro and green onions, then topped with as many won tons as would fit. You can drizzle a little shoyu, chili oil, and black vinegar, or use a separate condiment bottle for that. I have a current obsession with scallion ginger sauce so I ate mine with that - SO good. One day I'll share that with you but that's for another day. Since there aren't too many fruit in season right now, I cut some red grapefruit. You might think it sounds tart and sour but they are actually quite sweet! I know some folks sprinkle sugar on top but trust me, you don't need to. If it's not sweet enough for you, maybe toss in some oranges (or squeeze some juice over). I hope you try it!

Won Ton Filling

1 lb ground meat (I used turkey but pork is traditional)
1 scallion, chopped
1 t grated ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T shoyu
1/2 T cornstarch
1 egg

Mix all together and fill dumpling skins. You can change the amounts of the ingredients to suit your taste. Drop in boiling water and when they float to the surface, wait 30 more seconds and lift out gently. Serve with soup, noodles, or just as is.

Chicken Rice Salad Bowl

Welcome to my current favorite kind of lunch: the protein bowl! I like it because it's very simple to make and the only rules are that you should use as many different varieties and colors of fresh and minimally processed foods as you can. I like to use a whole grain carb base like rice or pasta, salad greens, cruciferous vegetables, fruit, and protein.
There are tons of cookbooks offering great ideas for protein bowls, and I got the idea for this bento from Bowls of Plenty by Carolynn Carreno.
:

Vietnamese Bowl with Sweet and Tangy Vinaigrette

Marinade:
1/4 C rice vinegar
1/4 C sesame oil
2 T soy sauce
2 T honey
1 lb. skinless chicken breasts, thin

Marinate chicken for 2 hours, then cook chicken until caramelized, 3 minutes, then turn and cook 5 minutes more or until juices run clear. Rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Lay over rice, add shredded cabbage, carrots, and other vegetables of choice (I used brussels sprouts and grapefruit segments). Serve with vinaigrette.

Sweet and Tangy Vinaigrette:
1/2 C canola oil (or other neutral flavored oil)
1/2 C rice vinegar (I also added ume vinegar)
3 inch fresh ginger, grated
3 T lime juice
1 T honey
2 garlic cloves, minced


For this Ecolunchbox Solo Cube I used chicken marinated in this vinegar shoyu sauce and then pan fried in a skillet. You can use other kinds of protein too, such as shrimp, beef, or even tofu. I made a mixed rice composed of brown rice, red rice, barley, black rice, and quinoa. I also added a tossed salad of shredded cabbage, grated carrot, and grapefruit segments. You can pack along this fresh citrusy gingery vinaigrette in a separate container to drizzle at lunchtime. Pan roasted brussels sprouts and halved grape tomatoes round out this square bento. So good, and good for you too! 

Happy Girls' Day Bento!

In Japan, Girls' Day (Hinamatsuri, 雛祭り) is celebrated on March 3. On this day we wish for the health, success, and happiness of girls. My TinySprite is 10 years old, but not too old to enjoy a sweet token of my love for her. I hope she likes her Hello Kitty bento treat. Happy Girls' Day!

In this bento: hard boiled egg, radish, carrot, blood orange, snap peas, wild blueberries, mandarin orange.

Smart Planet Ultrathin SaladBook Lunch Box Review

Today we're using the SaladBook by Smart Planet that I used once previously to pack the Totoro Soba Bento last month. Remember that one? Today I've packed a Salad Bowl containing curried chickpeas, cottage cheese with sunflower seeds, cinnamon apples, pickled carrots and daikon, fresh steamed corn, pickled cucumbers and wakame, pickled red onions, and blackberries - atop tossed romaine lettuce. I am really into the bowl-type bento these days, and this kind of container is ideal because no divided sections are necessary. And there are so many possibilities!

This box is unique in that it is "ultrathin," meaning that the roundish single section container is only about one inch in height yet manages to provide 20 fl oz (591 ml) of volume. 

You can see that this container is quite wide and shallow.

The box has a leakproof gasketed lid which is held in place by four tight clips which are an integral part of the lid itself, and seal by latching to the underside of the box. While this mechanism seems to work very well at keeping the box watertight, I found that the latches are so tight they can be challenging for small hands to pull open.

Here you can see the latching mechanism of the clips. There are 4 clips and they snap closed on the bottom of the container. If your (or your child's) hands aren't strong enough to push off the clip, I've found that pressing the lid and container together will release pressure on the clip and it will be easier to push up.

The box comes with an insulated zipper tote with a handy mesh pocket and a spork in a color that matches the box lid. This is a somewhat minor point, but I found it curious as to why the pocket opens downward so that when you open the lid, the spork falls out. I solved this problem by attaching an adhesive velcro closure, which works very well.

The spork now stays in place in the pocket until you choose to remove it. Yay!

The profile of the entire SaladBook after it's packed and ready to go. I found it to live up to its "ultrathin" billing quite well. I mentioned the box itself being about one inch high; when zipped up the whole bag will only take up about 2 inches of depth in your backpack (or briefcase or similar).

Alternately, you can carry it separately by the short handle strap located at the pointed end of the tote. So convenient!

The last item included in the SaladBook set is a little dressing container. It consists of a collapsible soft silicone pouch with a hard snap-close lid which also screws off for easy filling and washing. It's a great idea, but in my experience the cap opens very easily because of the soft nature of the container. I wouldn't pack it next to the box inside the tote because it might pop open and leak. But I don't think this matters too much because since the box itself is completely watertight, you can simply drizzle the dressing atop the salad before packing. That's what we did in the Totoro soba salad bento and it worked just fine.

The salad we packed today didn't require a separate dressing, so we didn't worry about it. 

Overall, I think the Smart Planet Ultrathin Saladbook is a good buy; it retails for $14.99 and comes with a spork, dressing container, and insulated zipper tote. It is practical, sturdy, dishwasherable, and lightweight. Its storage profile is slim and convenient; it is leakproof and spacious. I recommend this container for kids and adults alike.