Bento Boxes

I haven't had much time lately for official crafting, but I did take a minute this weekend to treat myself to a hobby I haven't indulged in in a while: making bento boxes.

Brandon was in town for the weekend, and I like to pack him a lunch for Monday at work when he's in town. I decided to throw together some traditional bento recipes, with a bit of a twist.

You may remember my spicy carrot salad recipe from back at my old craft blog (the imported entry is here.) It's one of my favorite bento staples. It's very salty and spicy, so it adds a bit of zing to a mostly-white-rice bento.

I was out of sesame seeds this time, so I didn't add any. But it was still yummy.

Then I tried a couple new things. Firstly, I have some homemade cole slaw in the house, which is new. Brandon showed me how to make it, it's way easier than I thought. In any case, I usually use yogurt as a creamy balance to all the salty soy sauce-based dressings I make. But I found this time that cole slaw works wonderfully!

Lastly, I wanted something with a bit of tang. Brandon doesn't like plain hard boiled eggs, so I knew I had to marinate them in something, so I used red wine vinegar. It gave the egg a lovely pink color, which contrasted beautifully with the yolk once the egg was cracked open. However, I don't think I marinated them long enough. Lessons for next time.

Here is the completed bento!

So, there's green peas for nutrition and color. And that's rice seasoning on the rice for flavor and color. And some chocolate gold coins for Channukah in the corner.

It turned out really well. I loved the balance of colors and flavors. I just need to do it again, fix my mistakes from this time, and make it PRETTY! I'll post a photo when I have a more professional version of this bento.

Back to crafting soon, I promise!

Picnic! (Amanda's old blog)

Just a quick update. I did some work today on the "H" block print for Val's thank-you cards, but I haven't done a test print yet, so I don't have any photos to share.

Brandon and I went on a picnic last night. It was very romantic. I decided to pack a picnic bento. I made a batch of onigiri and some carrot salad, and Brandon made a noodle concoction that turned out marvelous. Here's the setup:


At the top is some salad with salami and a slightly vinegar-y soy-sauce based dressing.
Bottom left are 2 onigiri held in place with raw green beans.
The green bento has 2 more onigiri set on top of my favorite spicy-soy carrot salad, with more raw green beans. Then some vanilla yogurt with pieces of banana.
The open spot was designated for Brandon's noodle dish.


He boiled the noodles (duh), then sauteed them with orange marmalade and a touch of soy sauce. They turned out great. I added unsalted sunflower seeds because I add them to everything in my bentos. Theye make everything so pretty, with so little effort!

Then there's always the 'extra stuff:'


I use Kashi bars instead of granola for crumbling into my yogurt. It's my favorite bento trick: it stays crunchy, and you can just throw them in your backpack separately instead of wasting a container. They are more expensive, however. But they are also flavorful. I like the honey-oat ones.
I packed the other half of the banana in a ziplock. There's our napkin and silverware. The tiny blue container has fresh nori to wrap around the onigiri. It was SO MUCH BETTER with fresh, crunchy nori. I can't believe I ever packed the nori on the onigiri itself. Soggy, fishy and gross. Although it's great for making little faces when I'm packing a kyaraben.
Then that bottom container has a piece of bean bread from Kim's oriental shop down on Westnedge. If your'e asking why there's only half a piece, you obviously don't know me very well.



I packed two water bottles and some V8 for beverages. Everything was super yummy.


I wore my black shawl and put my hair semi-up. I was very comfy.


It was lovely and romantic. We went to East campus and sat behind East Hall. You can see the whole city from there. We sat until it got dark out, then the city looked lovely with all their lights on. It was a lot of fun. We were both stuffed by the end.

That's it for now. Just thought I would share my latest bento project. More crafts coming soon!

This week (Amanda's old blog)

I was going to do the rat cage post yesterday, but I was feeling icky. I had a big allergy attack in the morning and it stayed with me all day. I ended up getting to bed early. But that post is next on my list. I may do it today or tomorrow. We shall see!

For now, a teaser photo:

Take a wild guess what she wants!

I was just catching up on some of my favorite blogs, and I noticed that April is frugal bento month on justbento.com. Maki posted a couple of excel spreadsheets people can use to track their savings as they make their lunches instead of buying them. I downloaded the couples one to try and encourage Brandon to pack his lunches as well. The nice thing is that Maki set it up such that I can track my own progress separately from Brandon, but still encourage him to use it as well.

I put today's entry into the excel sheet - it's only the first of the month and I'm already down! I was still feeling icky this morning, so I slept in a bit, leaving me no time to make breakfast. I made a miscalculation in my schedule and thought I would be on campus all day - so I ran to the bagel shop and bought a bagel sandwich for breakfast. I don't regret it, I love starting my day with a bagel. But it is $8 gone (I also buy a muffin for later - the bagel shop here has the most delicious muffins), so it's something to think about.

I will be on campus all day tomorrow, which means I need to pack a bento tonight! And then tomorrow I can get my $8 back on my little spreadsheet (my storebought lunches and breakfasts cost about the same - the Jimmy John's sandwich I like comes to about $8. I know it's steep, but I love the avocado spread!) So, that's my latest project.


Big Announcement!
I have one other thing to tell you! It occurred to me the other day that I have completely failed to mention the biggest crafting project I've got going right now. What a huge oversight!

I recently got a group of my craftiest friends together and proposed that we combine our efforts and start a costuming company! We had a meeting, ironed out the details, and decided we would start by opening an Etsy.com shop! Our deadline is July. We all need to have some items ready for the inventory, and we need a name, a logo and business cards. Then, on July 1st, we will apply to Etsy.com, create our profiles, pay the fee and we'll be open for business (hopefully). If I recall correctly, there are about seven of us. Here's what we do:

-Val is my best friend, I've known her since 3rd grade. She's been dabbling lately in embroidery, knitting, and the like.
-Kelli is a good friend of mine from high school. She's the one who gave me my pet rats! She sews - she's extremely talanted. She already has an Ebay.com shop where she sells cloaks and robes. (I don't remember her username off the top of my head. I'll let you know when I talk to her next.)
-Will is one of my college buddies. He started doing chainmaille a few years ago. He makes lovely chainmaille jewelry, and accessories.
-Gini is Will's girlfriend. She dabbles in a number of things, I've seen some of her knitting, she's really good.
-Kittie is Gini's roommate. She crochet's with the best of them, and she writes her own patterns!
-Alex is a childhood friend of Brandon's. Lately he discovered chainmaille, but his style is notably different from Will's. He like spikes and leather and other manly things - haha!
-And then there's me! I dabble in knitting, though I need a good excuse to get better. But mainly, for the company, I plan to make books and linoleum block prints. More on that later.

So there you have it! When we have a name and logo, I'll let you know. And I will definitely be making an announcement when our Etsy shop opens in July. You'll likely be hearing more and more from me about books and paper and block prints between now and then, as I have a lot of work to do to get ready for the shop to open up.

That's all for now. Rat entry coming soon, I promise!

Finally (Amanda's old blog)

I got my camera fixed! My wonderful boyfriend Brandon fixed it. Lookit the cutie!


Yowzah. Well, anyway. Let me show you what I've been up to! I think this is going to be a food entry, because that's what I have the most available photos of at the moment.

So, a while back I made some ADORABLE onigiri. For those of you who don't know, onigiri are Japanese rice balls. Sometimes they have filling, sometimes they're just seasoned on the outside with a light flavoring. The Onigiri FAQ on Justbento.com has a lot of great information.
So, when I make mine, I use a bit of an unconventional filling. I sautee chicken, carrot and onion in soy sauce with a bit of brown sugar and just a dash of lemon juice. When it's all cooked, I put it through the food processor so it's chopped fine and I can spoon it into the center of the onigiri while I'm making them.


I make them by hand, because I'm hard core like that. You have to keep your hands wet with salt water, otherwise the rice will stick. These are the traditionally-shaped ones, and some egg-shaped ones:


The black-looking stuff on the outside is nori. It's toasted seaweed. I have a bad habit of adding mine after I make them instead of waiting until I'm going to eat them... so the nori gets soggy. It's way better when it's crisp. But they look so cute with their little nori wrappers! Onigiri are so delicious. They're a comfort food - a really basic staple in Japan, and they're surprisingly filling! 3 of these puppies is plenty for a meal.

They also make great bento box foods. I didn't put any in this one, but this was one of my favorite recent bento boxes:


Let's see if I can remember everything that's in it. On the bottom left we have a spicy soy sauce carrot salad. I just sautee the carrots in sesame oil and soy sauce with a bit of hot pepper paste melted in (got the recipe off of Justbento!), they're sitting on a bed of lettuce, though you can't see. They're surrounded by raw green beans, cut to fit. Bottom right has vanilla yogurt with frozen raspberries and blackberries. It's covered in saran wrap so it doesn't spill. Top has sticky Japanese rice with wavy-cut red peppers, sesame seeds, and a hardboiled egg molded into a flower and cut width-wise. The little fishy has plain soy sauce - I didn't end up using it. The carrots were plenty flavorful enough.


Here's the whole setup. I apologize for blurry pix.
I have my lid with my favorite chopsticks taped to it, and a Kashi granola bar that I crumbled over the yogurt. That was a very, very good lunch. Extremely filling, and super healthy! I love my bento boxes.

Ok so this one isn't terribly exciting, but I made homemade iced tea! I was at the drug store and I saw some Arizona Iced tea, which is a big weakpoint for me. It's full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup but it's SO YUMMY. Brandon talked me out of it, and when we got home, I set out to make my own. I put it in these lovely oversized mason jars and chilled it in the fridge. So heavenly:


So, I just took about 4 or 5 green tea bags and 1 lemon tea bag, and boiled them in a pot on the stove. I added some white sugar, palm sugar and honey. Not much, really. Just a bit of each. It was perfect.


Alright, that's a lot for now. I'll try to remember to get some photos if I fry up any of those potstickers. I really wish I'd had a working camera when we were making them - the setup I use to make them is sort of elaborate. They're a big project.

I'm pretty proud of myself for cooking more, eating at home more, and just eating healthier overall. I think food is a great project - it's good to be in control of what you put in your body.

Ta ta fa na!