Far too much food

Bento #55 (Mine) :

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A really full box of stuff. lol. rice ball(Kodoma) with nori faces, 6 gyoza, narutomaki slices, fried teriyaki tofu, mushroom chunks, daikon pickles, and romaine lettuce. Packed in 1 of 3 tiers from my Korean picnic bento set.

Sidecar: Kiwi butterflies and slices, navel orange segments and the last of my rambutans.

This is waaaay to much food for me. I usually only eat(and really only should eat) about 800ml. This lunch is well over 1000. However, at school, a lot of my friends mooch off of my lunch so I decided to pack a little more and it worked out pretty well. Although, I still had enough left over that my bento tomorrow is going to be a not as nice looking repeat of today. :P

And now time for some faces

I just love my onigiri mold! It's basically my most useful and most used tool. *hugs*

Bento #54 (Mine) :

Left: Rabutans, red and green bell peppers

Right: White rice onigiri with nori faces and handles

Tiger: Leftover "Fiesta dip"

Another thing I love is my nori punch. I think lunch is so much better when pieces of it have faces. XD Some of my friends make fun of me, others are in awe of my lunches. They really shouldn't be though. Seriously, this bento was another speed one. Took about 10 minutes. This was a great way to finish off my Friday. First week of school is over and I finished all my homework for the weekend! :D

First day of school and the first day of Fall

Hello! I've been gone for so long! Just haven't had time to post. Now that school has started, I'll be making lunch pretty much everyday again. Yay! I missed my bentos.

Bento #52: (mine) First day of Fall

It's hard to see but we have: Turkey and pepperjack on maple leaf shaped skewers, bird shaped onigiri sprikled with umeboshi furikake, maple leaf/acorn shaped mushroom slices, romaine lettuce, and a small bottle of italian salad dressing. Everything packed in a Hello Kitty lock-and-lock style box.

My phone camera pretty much sucks. Even though I got a new and nicer phone. Anyway, although this may look like it took a while, it actually was a speed bento. 10 minutes total. I cut up the mushrooms and put together the skewers while the rice was reheating. The cheese was pre-cut from dinner prep so less work at the time of packing. Score! I threw in a flag with the encouraging word: FIGHT (がんばりましょう) on it because school has been pretty overwhelming. Even on the second day. Mostly because of Japanese class. Oh, I wish I remembered everything from the Spring. D:

Bento #53 (Mine)

Left: Fried rice with tofu, edemame, corn, narutomaki, and mushrooms

Right: Green and red bell pepper slices, rambutans

Tiger container: Fiesta dip for peppers

Brought out my good ol' lock-and-lock set for this lunch. The bag fits in my backpack so nicely! The rabutans are a new thing. just picked them up yesterday at the Great wall mall. They're really tasty! Kinda like Lychees, but not quite as sweet. The fried rice was made with a bunch of leftover vegetables as well as some tofu and Narutomaki (Steamed fishcake). Narutomaki is great because it can be frozen forever. Plus it makes ramen so much better! :D

I sort of got the recipe for the dip online, but I changed a lot. Mostly because there was hardly anything in the house to make it out of. I actually only put a little bit of mayonnaise in this batch. (I had to scrape it from the container.)So I'm not sure how it would be with more of it.

Kaitie's Fiesta Dip

1/4 cup light sour cream

Less than 1/4 of olive oil Mayonnaise

2 Tbsp cayenne

2Tbsp Chili powder

1Tbsp taco seasoning

Mix together and add more of the cayenne, chili powder and taco seasoning until you like the level of spiciness.

Long Delay!

I can't believe how I've been neglecting my poor bento blog. But as I said, I have been making bentos. I think I'm going to just update once a week for now and maybe every now and then put up another too. But for now, let's just expect to see an entry on Friday night with the week's highlight bentos. :)

(I guess I'll still number them even though I've already made well over a hundred.)

Bento #48 (Mine) ARGH!
Here's the breakdown: Hunk of brie, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, quail eggs, and onigiri filled with smoked/peppered salmon with nori faces. There's also some red leaf lettuce around the edges to make it less green. >.>

Backlogged bento #49: (Mine) Chirashi sushi!

(let's see if I remember what's in this. XD) On the left: Blueberries and cheese wheel. Right: Rice with shrimp, avacado, cucumber and hard boiled egg shaped like a car and cut in half.

Chicken Salad in 2 Ways

Bento #44: (Mom)
Mom has white rolls, cucumber, celery, cottage cheese, a strawberry, and chicken salad with a tomato slice.

Not much to say about this one. Except that I kept the rolls from getting soggy by making a wall of red leaf lettuce between them and the cucumber.

Bento #44 (Mine)
I have cottage cheese, cucumber, kamaboko(steamed fish cake), hard boiled quail eggs, grapes, and chicken salad-filled onigiri on a bed of red leaf lettuce.

These were packed in 2 of 3 tiers of a Jyubako box I bought at Daiso for $5.

Eeep! 50th bento is right around the corner! I think I have an idea of what to do, but people might only get it if they watch Korean movies. :P

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.

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.

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.

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.