Happy Boxing Day!

(Written yesterday and forgot to post. Oopsies.)
Today's lunch is in honor of all the people who got gifts they didn't want. :P
Bento #35


An egg, sweet potato, radish, and steak on a bed of rice packed in my pink Hello Kitty box.(Don't know the ml. I should find out.)

I actually didn't spend as much time on this as you might think. It was my way of using up my leftover dinner from last night. The egg was mixed with soy sauce and cooked in my new Tamogoyaki pan.

I had a very Bentotastic Christmas. I got several pairs of chopsticks, a tamogoyaki pan, Bento box in the Heartland, and some other books (from Mom) coming in the mail.

Tamagoyaki For Breakfast

Bento #34 (mine)

Tamgoyaki and baby jazz apple rabbits. Packed in my new Hello Kitty box from my swap with Snappiness on Flickr.

Time: About 15 minutes. I cut up the apple and let it sit in a bath of cold water, sugar, and lemon juice while I made the eggs.

This was my second attmept at Tamagoyaki and it came out so well. (I made a third attempt that night that was even better.) I used Biggie's recipe but cooked it according to Just Hungry's instructions. My mom says it tastes like french toast. I think it tastes like fishy french toast. :P But it's still yummy!

Squished Bento

Bento #33 (Mine)

Tuna-filled onigiri, steamed broccoli, cheddar cheese, dried apricots and radishes. Packed in a 738ml Hello Kitty box.

Preparing: I had to rush with this one. Only had 10 minutes to make lunch for myself and Mom. Luckily, the fridge has food in it. Rice leftover from dinner took a quick trip in the microwave and I made the onigiri while the broccoli was reheating. (I steamed a large batch of broccoli that was going bad earlier this week.)

This is what happens when you make onigiri that are too big for your box. Obviously this photo was taken after transportation. :P

I packed my first oshibori today too.

I saw this at Daiso in a pack with another oshibori and it was too cute to pass up. The caption makes me giggle. ^_^

And here it is with it's case. I found this tupperware in the kitchen and it works perfectly. It's 118ml and has a very secure lid. It's great when you can find bento supplies at home. :)

Tuna Fish Onigiri

A friend of mine came over today and we had a Japanese day without even trying. Started off with Onigiri for lunch, watched Grave of the Fireflies and then spent the afternoon happily making origami cranes and shurikens. It was a gooood day. :D

Bento (Ok, so it's not in a box.) #33


I had tuna-stuffed onigiri, enoki mushrooms with water chesnuts and some broccoli.

A very quick lunch for 5. My friend helped make the onigiri while I cooked the enoki and chesnuts in a pan with some butter, salt, sugar, pepper and a little soy sauce. I threw the frozen broccoli in the microwave and we were all set. The onigiri were a huge success with my family. Everyone declares that it's a new favorite for lunch. I will for sure be making these again. Infact, Dad has some in his lunch for tomorrow that I didn't get a picture of.

It's a Pan, Duh.

We went to the Zoo today with my brother and his family so I packed a lunch for Mom, Matt and I. Mason ended up coming too so there almost wasn't enough food.

Bento #32:


We had: Panda onigiri with nori faces , onigiri with umeboshi, cup of pickled ginger and a elephant of soy sauce on a bed of romaine lettuce. And off to the right you can see our side car of a persimmon and an orange.

This bento took more time then I've ever spent on a lunch before. Including cooking the rice it took about an hour. If I was doing the same thing again it would take less time because I would prep more while making rice. But this time I was just adding on as I went.

My 2 year old niece loved the onigiri. She saw them and said, "I want part of the panda!" I was suprised that she liked the seaweed.(Mostly because my sister can't stand it) She even asked for more! Bento presentation is a good thing! I really like persimmons. I need to make another trip to the asian market because the ones I bought got eaten up really fast. They were an instant hit with my family.

Happy Day of The Ninja!

Yes it's here the annual "Day of the Ninja" And to celebrate I'm showcasing my favorite ninja Bentos(And other things) I've found online (I do this to cover up the fact that I didn't make my own.). Ok, let's get started. :D


Made by: shiro-ko on livejournal.

An amusing blog post including a ninja themed restaurant.
http://runwitme.blogspot.com/2007/05/sunday-of-running-and-ninjas.html

Not exactly ninja. But close enough. XD


And if you want to enjoy more ninja-ness check out askaninja.com HI-YAH!

It's amazing how handy a hoodie can become. :D

Real Bento

After waking up late today I rushed around the kitchen trying to find something to pack for lunch. Cheese cubes, a pita, 2 hard boiled eggs and some cucumber slices went into a box for Mom, Matt and I to share as we headed for the door. We get to work and what does mom say? "I don't think that'll feed all of us. Let's get bento for lunch." Oh bliss!


Our real bento: mixed tempura, gyoza, california rolls, salad and teriyaki chicken on rice. What could be better on a rainy day? :D

Breakfast and Curry

Not much about the bentos today. I don't feel like typing a bunch of stuff. Happy Thanksgiving! :D

Bento #31 (mine)


Bottom tier: Crackers, swiss laughing cow cheese, and dried apricots
Top: Fresh pineapple skewers and a bear shaped hard boiled egg.

Bento #32 (Josh's)


Bottom round: Rice and tofu/veggie curry. I sandwiched the curry with the rice to keep it warmer longer.
Second round: Homemade gyoza and tonkatsu sauce.
Top: crackers, swiss laughing cow cheese, dried apricots, baby banana and a Ghirardelli chocolate.

The Holiday Approacheth

Since we'll have to cook so much food tomorrow and Thursday I got a head start on my sushi tray tonight. And you know what that means: More pictures! :D

I don't have a musubi press, but I found a really easy way to make spam musubi without one. First I cut the spam block in half and then cut it into strips. I put those in the marinade while I shaped the rice:


After that I took the marinaded spam and fried it on med heat for a few minutes. It doesn't take long:


Then simply assembled them:


And bagged them up with the inarizushi I also made:


All of this probably took me 1 1/2-2 hours.(I ended up with about 40 musubi and 20 inarizushi) And we still have to make Thanksgiving dinner. Blech. I'm sick of cooking. But I still made Josh a lunch because I am a nice sister. :P

Bento #30 (Josh's)


Mixed greens with cranberries and almonds, leftover inarizushi rice, dried apples and apricots with a bottle of salad dressing, carrot sticks, grape tomatos and a baby banana.

I put an antibacterial sheet over the rice because it has a tendincy to "hop" into other parts of the container.

Sushi Bento

Took a trip to Daiso and H mart today with mom and picked up lots of goodies. She's employed me to make a sushi plate for Thanksgiving. She really enjoys Asian stuff now and we're both learing a lot about Japanese culture. I'm reading this book aloud in the car. It's really charming and fasinating. I highly reccomend it for anyone who's interested in Japanese food. speaking of Japanese food...(see what I did there. Oh, so clever. :P)

Bento #28 (Josh)


clockwise from top left: Vegetable maki from H mart, homemade spam musubi, munster cheese, container of ranch dressing, white bread, cutie (clementine) orange, baby banana, walnut pancake, grape tomatos, and celery and carrot sticks. Phew...a lot of ingredients. I made Dad bento too but the only difference was some umeboshi (pickled plums) instead of bread.

Easy, easy lunches. I made a large batch of Spam musubi this week and froze them. Just tossed them in the microwave for a minute and they were perfect. They're so easy to make. I don't have a musubi press yet, so I used my onigiri mold and cut the Spam smaller. I got the recipe from www.cookingcute.com

One more thing. Check out my photos from our trip to the Federal Way bonsai collection today. More photos to come soon. http://www.flickr.com/photos/16063815@N08/sets/72157603241039666/

A Little Under the Weather

Not feeling that great today and today's bento reflects it. I wish I could've had fresh hot rice though. That is my ultamite comfort food.

Bento #27 (mine)


In the yellow box I have granola, dried mango and a tangerine in the bottom and about half an Asian pear in the top. The round container has some saltines, 2 packs of hot and sour soup and a green tea bag and the hello kitty bottle is full of apple juice.



And here it is all closed up. I love that bag. I got it for a dollar at Target and was suprised with how big it was once unfolded. Score! :D

A Package from Japan

I'm so happy! I got my egg molds in the mail today!

So many cute shapes. We tried them out today and some of them got messed up because I didn't peel them right. I'll have to keep making them until they look nice.

Another trip to Daiso this weekend brought more fun goodies. Silicone baking cups, an oshibori, and a new box.



Bento #23 (Mine from a few days ago) :


With nothing for rederence, you might think this is big. Well it's not! :P
Persian cucumber, clemintine orange, asian walnut pancakes (not sure about the real name), mini eggrolls and strawberry yogurt.

Bento #24 (Josh):


On the top is Leftover rice and tofu/vegatable stirfry from dinner last night, bottom is clemintine oranges, carrot sticks, and a blue egg shaped like a car.

Real Onigiri

Bento #22(mine):


Onigiri, green pepper, container of sesame ginger dressing, mini hamburgers and eggroll, cheese skewers, hello panda cookies and grape tomatos to fill it in.

I love my onigiri molds! I cooked up the rice last night, molded them and put them in the fridge. Using the molds makes it take about 5 minutes to make 6 or 7. So much easier then doing it by hand.

Mini hamburgers and Nashi

Again I started eating my lunch before taing a picture so half my pear chunks are gone. :P I had to use my cell phone to take the photo because my camera died.

Bento #22 (mine):

Rice with furikake, mini hamburgers with gap filling grapes, half a nashi (Asian pear) and cheese skewers with "hello panda" cookies.

Really quick and simple. Mom made tamale meat loaf on Saturday so I made some of the meat into little hamburgers and froze them. The rice was leftovers from dinner.

Mom's Bento was almost the same. Except instead of the third burger she had an egg roll and she had junior caremels rather then panda cookies.

I love those asian pears. They're simply delicious! :D

Golden Curry

Daiso is my new favorite store. They have everything there. and mostly under $2! Just look at these spoils. :D

2 sizes of onigiri molds, assorted sauce bottles, fun food picks and a lunch box. (I also got a thermal lunch bag.)

They didn't have any egg molds and niether did H Mart so I'm going to have to find them online. But I was very happy with what I did find. My lunch box has four compartments and is microwavable and the picks are super cute. I can tell you I'll be going to Daiso a lot now. :)

On to the Bentos!

Bento #20 (Josh)

Rice with furikake, chicken and veggie curry*, granola, dried apple slices, and 2 hello panda cookies.

Josh's bentos usually don't take more then a few minutes to put together. The rice and curry were leftovers from dinner (So yummy!). I threw it in the box while it was still hot since his box is thermal and I didn't have to put as much food away.

Bento #21 (Dad)

Apple chunks sprinkled with lemon juice to reduce browning, cheese kabobs and a hard boiled egg, brown rice and chicken curry.

Another really fast one, except that I had to defrost the rice as I had frozen it about a week ago. I didn't want the cheese or egg to get soggy so I put the apple in a disposable muffin tin(pack of 20 for under $1) and left peeling the egg to him.

*The curry had chicken, green bell pepper, enoki mushrooms, carrots, onions, and golden curry mix.

Shopping Trip and Dino and Pac-man Bentos

I was at Ross this week and I was snooping around the toys section when these caught my eye. I ended up buying the one with a built in fork and it came with a 600ML bottle for $1.99USD. All of the boxes there are packed in sets of 2 for $2-3USD. I packed a Bento in my new box today but didn't get a picture.

Bento #18 Ice age Dino (Mine) :

I wasn't going anywhere that day but I find it easier to make lunch in my boxes.
Top Tier: Soy sauce fried onigiri, dino nuggets, mushroom slices and an egg roll.
Bottom: Cucumbers, mushrooms and cheese cubes.

This lunch took about 5 minutes to make. The onigiri was frozen as were the nuggets and egg roll. While they cooked in the micro I cut the veggies and cheese.

Bento #19 Pac-Man (Mine) :

(Not a very good picture. I need to work on that.)
Another super easy 5 minute lunch. While putting the cucumbers in the box I thought they looked like Pac-Man so decided to go with it. I put the mushrooms in between so the cheese wouldn't get soft from teh cucumbers.
Top: Roast beef and chedder on wheat bread, cheese cubes.
Bottom: Cucumber slice Pac-Man, mushroom slices and cheese "dots".

Skipping some

I haven't had a chance to update in a while and I'm not going to post 2 weeks worth of bentos here tonight so we'll just go with my favorites. (Both of Josh's lunches here are Vegetarian.)

Josh recently bought a thermal lunch box near the hispanic food at Winco that I jokingly call his "Ms. Bento". :D But seriously it has lots of space and mostly keeps the food warm. Not bad for $9.

Bento #12 (Josh)


Left:Homemade california rolls and green tea marshmallow. Middle:Instant udon soup. Right:Napa cabbage, mushrooms and cucumbers for the soup.

Bento #15 (Me and Mom)


This picture is kinda funny because I got really hungry and started eating and then I was like. Oops, forgot to take a photo. It was kind of annoying because it looked really nice when it was full. :(

Roast beef and cheddar on dinner rolls, cucumber wall and homemade california rolls.
Slightly pictured: Wheat thins, cheese cubes and green tea marshmallows.

Bento #16 (Josh)

Left: Avacado and cucumber stuffed onigiri and button mushrooms. Middle: cucumbers, cheese, avacado and hard boiled eggs. Right: Wheat thins and dried apple rings.

Mr. Face was fun to make! ^_^

It's Bento, For Breakfast.

I alwasy get hungry on Sunday mornings (We get to church at 8am to make coffee and don't get home till about noon.) and bento has come to my rescue.


Apple slices, grapes, a container of yogurt, a Lion king kiddy spoon, and a box of Lychee drink. All packed in my new Hello Kitty box that I got for 49 cents at Ross.
It took me about 5 minutes to throw it all together before we left.

Josh's Bento from the other day:


Bottom L-R: Napa cabbage, fried soy sauce onigiri and ketchup/hot sauce onigiri.
Top L-R: Nori seaweed in baggy (To keep it crisp.), green tea marshmallow and carrot slices.

This was really easy to put together. I had made a ton of the hot sauce and soy sauce onigiri and froze them. I put them in the microwave for a minute before packing them up. I adapted the hot sauce onigiri recipe from Lunch in a box.

Mom's and my bento today:

Top: White rice onigiri and meatloaf
Bottom: Trailmix (Raisins, chocolate chips, crispix cereal.), green tea marshmallow and corn.
You can see our salad boxes off to the left there. Mom and I shared the big box and each had salads in new green Hello Kitty boxes from the Dollar tree.

Salad is: Spring mix salad from Sam's club with dried cranberries, almonds, and a container of catalina dressing.

New box

I picked up this little baby at Storables last night. It has three containers that are all freezer, microwave, and dishwasher safe. It also comes with an icepack to keep the food cold. It was a great buy for $8.95.

I packed my bento in it today:

Top: Gyro skewers, white rice onigiri, and soy sauce.
Bottom: Peach yogurt with red and green grapes, olive man with carrot pieces and a hard boiled egg.

Quick tip, Leftovers: I had a gyro last night for dinner and didn't finish it, so I took it home. I realised that the bread would get soggy in my box so I took out the meat and put it on some bamboo skewers I had cut in half.

Dad's bento: More leftovers

Coleslaw, carrots, and barbecue ribs. (Not pictured: Brown rice and nori.)

Matt's bento: Fast and easy

This morning at the last minute I needed to make my little brother something for lunch, but it was no problem. 2 already made onigiri, a frozen burrito and some soy sauce makes for a quick and easy meal. Another tip: When you make something like onigiri, make some extra and put them in the fridge or freezer. It helps if you need to make lunch in a hurry.

Bento for the whole family

Well, not quite the whole family. :)

Josh's Bento: Classic favorite with an asian flair.

Ham and cheese on dinner rolls, pretzels, Lychees and salad(Bok choi, carrots, hard boiled egg and catalina dressing.).


My bento: Lovely Bento

Top: Soy sauce onigiri wrapped in nori, cheese cut outs, carrot slices, hard boiled egg chick(nori and carrot face) and heart and peanut butter and jelly on a dinner roll.
Bottom: Lychees in a heart cupcake paper, red grapes, wheat thins and cheese hearts.

I really like how this one came out. I knew I wouldn't eat very much at lunch, so I packed lots of snacky things that would keep all day in the fridge. And I got to use my cute box! ^_^


Dad's Bento: Planteriffic!

L-R: Red grapes, green olives, lychees, napa cabbage with coleslaw and a hard boiled egg.(carrot for the face.)
Not pictured: Brown rice with nori and two tillapia fillets.

Mom's Bento: Simply american

Double stacked ham and cheese half sandwiches, coleslaw and pretzels.

I'm beat after making all those bentos. I mixed the leftover rice with soy sauce and made onigiri and put them in the fridge.

Barbecue and Mr. Healthy Bento

Josh's Bento consits of leftovers again:

Cheese cut-outs, pork ribs, pickles, pepperoncinis, olives and a pluot.

Dad's lunch was more fun to make:

Top: Flower and triangle brown rice onigiri with nori seaweed, carrot cut-outs and a little container of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Bottom: Bok choi and carrot sald with a hard boiled egg and a pepperoncini on the side.

Tuna melt

Cheddar cheese and Tuna salad (canned tuna and mayonnaise.) on a toasted english muffin.



Not exactly a Bento, but it is food art! After taking the picture I threw it in the microwave for 30 seconds and it was perfect.

First Bento and box

I don't have a photo of my very first Bento, because my dad took it to work before I thought of it. But it was 3 egg onigiri (Riceballs), carrot and celery sticks, and 2 button mushrooms. Not the fanciest, but he enjoyed it.

As the posts move on I will have photos and more indepth info on what's in the Bento.


Today my mom and I went to the 99 Ranch Asian Market and the Great Wall Mall to shop for dinner. I love that place! We picked up some veggies, seaweed, some frozen dumplings, and fresh catfish. On the way home I asked if we could stop at the Anime store and mom said yes because she had to get something at Staples too. So I go in and am looking around for a Bento box and I find this pencil case:





I asked the woman at the counter if it would work for a Bento box and her eyes got really wide. She grinned and told me, "What a great idea! So creative. I should buy one too!" I told her that I was just starting to make Bentos and how I really enjoyed Onigiri and she told me that she makes Bento boxes for her daughter. We chatted for a while and she kept saying that she thought it was such a good idea. She was so sweet! I need to hang out over there more. ^_^

So tonight I took the leftovers from dinner and put together a Bento for my brother.

Maybe it doesn't look incredibly good, but it tastes good. When I make them for my self and my mom they'll be cuter. :D (The lighting is kinda bad too. I'll try to get better pictures next time.)

The contents are: A Catfish steak, bok choi and enoki mushrooms in a ginger, sesame and soy sauce and raw carrot half circles.

I then took the leftover rice and added golden raisins, cinnamon, and sugar and made sweet dessert Onigiri. They were delicious!


Sorry about so many pictures. There will be less in the posts to come.