Here's my lunch for tomorrow.  (Click on the image for a larger version).

It's pretty straightforward: strawberries, cucumber and corn, and gluten free pasta with meat sauce.  The stars are cheese - it's just a little cuter than grated cheese.  =)

So tomorrow I'm taking leftover pasta to work.  Filling, tasty, but visually pretty boring.  It could also do with some more vegetables, from a nutritional perspective.

Given that it's leftovers, I had a bit of time to play around with it.  I blanched some broccoli - I just boil the jug and pour the water over some broccoli florets and let them sit for a few minutes while I'm doing other things.  The snow peas are nyummy raw, and the mung beans are just sprinkled over there.

I have no idea why my husband thought it would be a good idea to buy mung beans, but it turns out I like them.  =)

Instead of using one of my bento boxes, I used this lunch box I bought today.  I'm a sucker for lunch boxes in general.  Anyway this one might be of interest to Australians or New Zealanders (given that I bought it in Australia, and it's made in NZ) - it's a 'Klipo', made by Sistema, and it's dirt cheap.  This one is 675ml, so a good sized lunch, and it was under $4.  I also bought a 200ml one for sides and snacks and toddler bento, and it was $2.  I got mine at KMart, but there are probably other stockists around - Sistema stuff is pretty widespread.


( the box, closed )

Red vegies and rice - click on the image for a larger version.

It's mixed stirfried vegetables and cashews with coriander (cilantro) - the red colour comes from the beetroot.  Oh, and a hard boiled egg.

The rice is garnished with an umeboshi and some slices of lime, which I squeezed over the vegetables before eating.

Quick and dirty toddler bento!  I just got a phone call from a friend inviting us to playgroup, so I had about five minutes to throw something together (and of course ten more minutes to post pictures *grin*).  Promite and cheese sandwiches on rye, some chicken, and some tomato.  All favourite foods, and quick to throw in a box.  You can click on the image for a larger version... but yanno, it's sandwiches and tomato and chicken. 

The box is a bit nifty, I think.  It's supposed to be for baby food - pretty appropriate for a toddler then I suppose.  It has three individual containers which fit into the larger divided container  - so lots of options there for filling the box.  When you use the containers, there's quite a bit of space between the lid of the box and the lids of the individual containers.  Instead of wasting that space, it's a useful spot to store a damp facecloth.  If you own a toddler, you'll know how useful that is.

My nineteen month old is off to the park to play with his Grandma today, so I made him a snack.

He was running up and down the hallway this morning, calling out "shashi! shashi!", so I made him some.  Sushi, that is.  'Shashi' is about as close as he can come to pronouncing it just yet.

So he has some sushi with egg and cucumber, teamed with some grapes and a piece of tomato.  (Click on the image for the full version of the photo).

For our park trip yesterday, I packed bento for two toddlers - the Dumpling, and my friend's daughter who's the same age (18 months).  Pretty much all of them got eaten, too, which surprised me.

A container of cream cheese with a paddle (used for spreading the cheese on the rice crackers hidden under the tub, or else simply eating the cheese directly), some edamame on picks, grape tomatoes, cubes of nectarine, a tiny box of sultanas, and a package of two honey and oat biscuits.

The toddlers liked the animal food picks (see the larger image for cat and monkey picks: the bear pick is sadly out of shot), and the Dumpling found the edamame both delicious and entertaining.

Here's a snack for my toddler while we're out this afternoon - it's inevitable he'll get hungry while we're out, and probably more than once, so I packed a few things he enjoys.

The box has a mini choc chip muffin; some rice crackers and a small container of cream cheese; some chopped baby corn; some grape tomatoes, and some grapes.  (Click on the picture for the full sized image).

Toddler bento: Promite sandwiches (a kind of yeast spread, similar to Vegemite); some tasty cheddar, a huge strawberry, and some seedless green grapes on soft plastic picks.

By cool, I mean temperature-wise.

I found these very nifty containers in KMart yesterday.  They're made by Cool Gear, and they're quite inexpensive - a pack of 3 cost me about $11.  In case it's not clear from the linked picture, the lid doubles as an ice pack.  It has freezer gel sealed into it, so you store the lids in the freezer and the box itself whereever you want, and when you pack a lunch you seal the box with the ice pack lid and Bob's your uncle. 

It's a particularly nifty find right now given that it's Summer here, and food safety issues are magnified in hot weather.  I haven't yet managed to pick up any antibacterial baran yet, incidentally.  I think I will have to order some from overseas - probably from JBox, unless anyone has any better ideas.

Anyway, on to lunch.  Click the image above for a larger version, if you like.

The Spousal Unit today has a fishy lunch: a piece of crumbed fish, half an egg, some cucumber and grape tomatoes, and rice, with some obligatory lemon.  In his side container, he has cherries, green seedless grapes, and a very large strawberry, along with a blueberry mini-muffin.

More along the same theme.  (Click on the image for a larger version).

Today's offering is home made potato salad with corn; seed crackers and cheese; boiled egg and salad (with olive oil and balsamic vinegar); carrot sticks, home made hommus, and smoked olives.

Mmmm.  Smoked olives.

My husband has been doing well on the lunch front this week.  (Click for a larger image).

I think all boys like snack foods.  Even when they're grown ups.  Besides,  home made hommus might be a snack food, but it's also a real food - nommy chick peas, garlic, tahini, lemon, and olive oil.

Today's bento has some rice noodles with veges and tempeh from last night's dinner; some seed crackers with cheese; the aforementioned hommus with some carrot slices for dipping; an egg, and some salad.  The dressing bottles contain balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

One day I'll remember to take a picture of the nifty cutlery set I send with him.  It's a set of stainless steel chopsticks, a fork, and a spoon, and they are packed into a little tube rather like a pair of reading glasses.  The chopsticks screw together in the middle, so they're full sized and quite a nice weight.

So here's my husband's lunch today.  (Click through to see a larger image).

His work schedule today meant I tended more towards a snack box than a lunch box, though the leftover spaghetti is a bit more substantial.  Otherwise, he has some seed crackers, some cheese, tomato, and olives to go with them (and a dinky little container of seeded mustard, too); and some fruit - apple, plum, and blueberries.

I think it looks pretty tasty, myself.  The quartered lunch box really is great - because I can lift out the individual sections, it's quite flexible when it comes to filling.  And it's less than two inches deep, which makes it a useful shape to carry in a satchel.

What's interesting is that I didn't really think so much about the composition of the box, except that I wanted mostly snack type foods.  Later, when I looked at it, I realised I'd stuck to a rough 3:2:1 ratio without even trying - mostly fruit rather than vegetables, but still... it's about half starch, and a small amount of protein in there with a larger amount of fruit.  I guess the bento habit really sticks, huh?

The Dumpling (15 months) is off to the park today with Grandma and Grandpa.  So I packed him a playlunch.


Alphabet pasta with peas and corn; home made hommus with steamed carrot sticks (the spoons come from our local gelateria - we save them because they're really useful); and a tiny container of fruit and "nuts" (sultanas*, dried apple, and pine nuts which are actually seeds).

*Sultanas are basically small raisins.  They're dried sultana grapes, which are a golden seedless grape.  For some reason sultanas are bog standard here in Australia, and raisins aren't terribly common.

Well, it's not my biggest, boldest, or greatest bento ever. I like it though: it's cute primarily because it's tiny (the containers are each 125ml in volume). The Dumpling (11 months) is out with his grandparents and great grandmother, so I packed a snack for him to take.

I have no idea how much of it he'll actually eat: my guess is that he'll hoover up the avocado, eat most of the tomato (while spreading seeds and juice far and wide), try to scrape the filling out of the sandwiches and toss the bread, and play with some of the grapes. But that's just a guess. ;)

The sandwiches are "Freenut" butter sandwiches - roasted and ground sunflower seeds. It's surprisingly tasty, and entirely peanut free.

Yesterday I needed to pack a dinner for class.  (There is a cafeteria at TAFE college, but there's very little there I can eat as a rule, and by 7:30pm it's all really old and inedible anyway).  But I was going to be out of the house from about 1pm, and I really didn't want to carry around an unrefrigerated bento for that long.

So I packed myself a side container of fruit before I left home, and stopped in before class at the Japanese cafe near the college.  I bought a takeaway bento from there, and as they're pretty big I ate some of it before class for a snack (the tempura sushi, and some of the rice).  The rest I packed into my more sturdy bento box to eat later on.  It was quick and easy before class, but was a much better option than either risking salmonella from an unrefrigerated bento or risking salmonella from TAFE food that's been sitting in a bain marie all day.

So the top tier is teriyaki beef and lettuce, with salad.  It's basically a coleslaw, but they seem to use Thousand Island dressing rather than mayo.

The bottom tier is rice with black sesame seed furikake and a drizzle of teriyaki sauce, with a couple of pieces of daikon.

The side container is ruby red grapefruit, and a few pieces of Pink Lady apple.

Making food tends to be cathartic for me.  Today I'm tired and grumpy and sore: so I didn't put a lot of thought into my bento for tonight, other than packing it with things I felt like eating.  I didn't even bother with cute shapes, which is unusual for me. 

The lack of rhyme and reason is probably pretty obvious, but I think I'll enjoy it anyway.  I definitely feel less cranky now that I've spent a little while putting it together.  Yay bento!  =)


The bottom tier is rice and umeboshi.  I figure this is likely to be my most usual bottom tier for a while: making onigiri is a pain in the bum if I don't need to eat my food with my hands, and I love the flavour of umeboshi with rice.  So it's simple but reliable.

The top tier is a mishmash of whatever I felt like throwing in.  At either end there you see a couple of cheerios (cocktail frankfurters*), some hardboiled quail eggs, a mix of steamed vegetables (carrot, red and green capsicum†, mushroom, and baby spinach leaves) dressed with sesame oil, and a few slices of avocado.  Not pictured are a little piggy bottle of tomato sauce, and a fishy bottle of soy.

I used a side container as well: this one contains half a ruby red grapefruit, and a couple of pieces of Pink Lady apple.

So it's all a bit thrown together strangely, but I'm going to enjoy eating it anyway.  In the bag with my packed containers is a pack of Hello Kitty marshmallows.  Either I'll snack on them as they are, or perhaps I'll get a hot chocolate from the cafeteria and throw them in.

* I always get thrown by the fact that there's a breakfast cereal called Cheerios in the US.  It's only just appeared on supermarket shelves here in Australia, and the idea of a bowl of cheerios with milk always sounds weird.  Cheerios are cocktail franks where I come from.  =)
† Bell peppers.  Another name that's confusing on the internet.  Here, "pepper" usually means "ground peppercorn".

Leftovers!  Last night I made rice paper rolls for dinner, so most of what's in these boxes today are leftovers.
Top tier: bean sprouts, Vietnamese mint, cherry tomatoes, coriander, and cucumber, with some lemon.
Bottom tier: rice vermicelli with chilli garlic beef strips.

My husband's lunch today is the same thing, just arranged differently.

As you can see from this photo, I do indeed have quail eggs.

Today's bento is fairly simple, and relies mainly on miniature shapes to make it 'cute'.


Top tier: quail eggs, including one 'chick'; lightly steamed vegetables tossed with sesame oil (carrot, green capsicum, yellow squash) and some cherry tomatoes.  Off to the right there is some Packham pear.
Bottom tier: rice and umeboshi.

I've made better bento, I think, but there really wasn't much to choose from in my fridge.  The car is cute, though.

Top: tofu, capsicum, and cucumber (there's a layer of cucumber underneath) - the tofu's done in soy and sesame oil; half a hard boiled egg, and half a mandarin.
Bottom: rice vermicelli, garnished with sweet potato and cucumber stars.

So here's today's bento.  I departed from the norm a bit here - sandwiches, and salad?  How un-bento of me!  ;)

Actually, though it's not rice and vegetables, the ratios are about right.  And using leftovers is very bento, which is what I did here.  I had leftover salad in the fridge, and although I didn't end up having bacon sandwiches with that salad for dinner last night, it's what I was going to have.  So near enough.

It means the contents of my box today are a bit lunchbox-y, which meant I had to think a little more about how I was going to present it in a way that I thought appropriate to the spirit of bento. 

(Incidentally, I know that Japanese mothers do use Western ingredients in bento and that's cool: the issue I have is that aesthetically it's a fine line sometimes between a bento with Western foods, and a lunchbox, and it can be difficult for Westerners in particular to find that line sometimes.  I guess I figure if you're going to appropriate a foreign word to describe your lunch as something other than a bog-standard lunchbox, it makes sense to make it somehow different from said lunchbox).

Anyway, I'm happy enough with this effort.  The top box is salad (various lettuce, tomato, avocado, and onion with my husband's homemade dressing), with a fish-shaped egg.  (The egg's pretty bento *wink*).
The bottom box is a bacon and parsley sandwich, cut into little fingers, and garnished with lettuce, parsley, and carrot.
Inside the lid are a few slices of orange.  They're kind of fan-shaped, if you're feeling imaginative.

In terms of volume, using salad and sandwiches means the box is less densely packed than usual.  I don't mind, as lately my stomach fills more easily than it did (thank you baby, you can take your foot out of my diaphragm now, mkay?); and anyway, a sandwich and a side salad is still a reasonable sized meal I think.

It's hard to see the detail on the egg.  If you're interested, this picture shows it more clearly.  My egg moulds arrived in the mail yesterday, so I was excited to try them out this morning!  (I've left the car shaped one in the fridge for my husband to eat tonight while I'm at class... he's really tickled by them, thinks they're really cute).

For my dinner at class tonight, I have rice vermicelli (seasoned with a little bit of sesame oil) in the bottom container, with a tulip garden of green beans and cherry tomato.
In the top tier, I have some pretend stirfried vegies (really just nuked vegies - Asian greens, zucchini, carrot, mushroom, and green capsicum), some cherry tomato and chevap picks (chevaps are a kind of skinless sausage, which I cut into smaller pieces before cooking), and some William Bartlett pear pieces.  I threw in a little bottle of soy to go with.



Because people in my class think my dinners are nifty, here's a snack for my friend.  She gets some uramaki sushi (same roll as yesterday: tuna/mayo, carrot, cucumber, and capsicum); some little chevap and tomato skewers with a little bit of vege stirfry; and an egg with lettuce and mayo.

Seeing as I'm babysitting tonight, I made a little tiny snack bento.  I'm being fed dinner where I'm babysitting, but pregnant-cAt=snackmonster.  I know I am going to get hungry later on, and I don't feel comfortable raiding anyone else's fridge even if they say I can.

So I have a snack.  Fortunately I was playing in the kitchen yesterday, so the egg chick was already made.  And I made the sushi roll earlier today, when I made lunch - I'd stashed it in the fridge to snack on later.  So it took me just a few minutes to put this snack-bento together!

Each of these containers is 125ml, for reference.  Together, they make a fairly decent snack.


The lighting is odd, as there's afternoon sun coming in through my kitchen window.  But:
Blue: uramaki sushi - tuna/mayo, carrot, capsicum, and cucumber.
Yellow: William Bartlett pear, and mandarin segments.  I peeled the top three for prettiness, but didn't bother with the ones underneath.
Purple: a hardboiled egg 'chick', in a bed of lettuce, with a wee little container of mayo.

I think the odd lighting makes the pink cocktail pick look surreal.  =)  I made a bag for these containers this afternoon, just for fun.  I should have taken a photo: I used pirate fabric!

Today's bento is:
Top box (also top tier: I photographed them the right way around this time!): pretend stirfry of capsicum, carrot, zucchini, and peas (it's 'pretend' because I nuked them for a minute in the microwave then dressed with sesame oil, rather than actually stirfrying them), and tamagoyaki.  Garnished with shallots and pickled ginger, and there's a bottle of soy sauce tucked in there.
Bottom box: uramaki sushi - tuna, mayo, and coriander.  Garnished with lots of coriander, a pickled ginger rose, and some wasabi.  Mmmm.

Because my friend has had a cruddy week, and because she's coming over to my house to play this afternoon, I made her a mini-bento to bring to class tonight as well.


Jigsaw puzzle shaped mini-onigiri (yay for Ikea ice cube trays!), capsicum, peas, and corn.  There's also tamagoyaki in there, but you can't see it because it's under the onigiri.  Not pictured is a little fishy bottle of soy, which I tucked in there before putting the lid on.

NB: I tagged this one as 'gluten free', although it actually isn't.  The only gluten-bearing ingredient though is soy sauce, so if you're avoiding gluten, you'd simply use tamari instead.  There's a little bit in the tamagoyaki, and the rest is in the fishy bottles.  Most of my bento are gluten free, as I am intolerant to wheat.  If we don't have tamari in the house, though, I'm okay to use soy, as that tiny amount of wheat doesn't set off a reaction - but someone avoiding gluten completely couldn't be quite so lax about things.

I like making sushi, though I don't often put it in my bento because it's quite time consuming to make.  I like it, though, and make it now and then when I have the time.  I tried something out this morning, and it worked so well that the second time I did it, I took photos as I went along.  I thought it was worth writing up as a tutorial for this community, as there are many people here who like to make their own sushi.


One of the best tips I ever learned is to use cling wrap over your bamboo mat when making sushi.  It keeps your mat clean, stops the nori sticking to the mat (which happens especially if you get a few grains of rice between the nori and the mat), and makes the whole roll much easier to handle.  It also makes sushi like this possible: uramaki, or 'inside out maki' - the kind with the nori on the inside, rather than the outside. (Incidentally, I bet you could make sushi this way without nori at all, which is an alternative for people who don't like nori but don't have access to mamenori).

Anyway.  As my attempt this morning was so successful, I thought I'd write up a little tutorial for anyone who's interested.

Step 1: ( ... tutorial, with lots of pictures )

The top box (the bottom tier) contains mini-onigiri.  These were something new today: I made them by pressing rice into a funky rubber ice cube tray from Ikea.  The tray worked very well, actually.  After I turned them out, I wrapped the sides with strips of nori.  In the same container there are a couple of meatballs I'd made previously and frozen, some green beans, and some ginger and wasabi.  Onigiri aren't sushi, but I like ginger and wasabi anyway.

The bottom box (the top tier: I really should learn to photograph these things the right way around to avoid confusing descriptions) contains two more of those mini-onigiri, but these two were topped with slices of avocado before wrapping with nori.  I guess they're a sort of quasi-sushi, though that wasn't my intent.  You see also my first attempt at tamago - it's actually a lot easier than I'd expected, though I can see where a proper rectangular pan would make things much easier still.  This box is full of vegetables: butter beans (hidden under the tamago), red capsicum slices (peppers, for you in the US) and carrot.  Oh, and there are two more meatballs hidden under the carrots there.  I threw in a tiny piece of lemon because I really like lemon with eggs.  It also made me feel better about the fact that I just couldn't make this box look right... the colours are nice, though.