Caterpillar Bento Box Lunch

I've been thinking about doing a caterpillar for awhile; I love the way cucumbers look when they're cut and layered, and I figured a caterpillar would be perfect and easy! I will say I am desperate for my new kitchen tweezers to arrive; it is so hard to position little nori pieces and to make faces without something small to help you! Today I used cucumber pieces to make the antenna and mouth of the caterpillar, and black sesame seeds for the eyes. I think he came out pretty cute!

Here's our caterpillar with the whole bento box:

In the panda we have ranch dressing for all those crisp, fresh veggies; an orange half from our friend's orange tree, and on the right, Japanese potato salad, and Korean melon with blackberries. Japanese potato salad is traditionally mashed, with mayo and little pieces of carrot and cucumber (I remove all the seeds). Sometimes it has a little bit of sugar or seasoning in it, but I just added a teaspoon of Mirin (Japanese seasoning) instead.  

Close up of the potato salad and blackberries:

The red bell pepper "star flower" was an afterthought; the box just needed a little something extra for color. My triangles aren't all even but it still came out pretty cute!

Under The Sea Bento Box Lunch with a Crab Sandwich and Seastars/Starfish

Mike and I are vacationing soon and are excited to see all things ocean-y. Following that theme, I decided to make him a crab sandwich today, with sea star accompaniments. Our crab sandwich is on one of Yamasaki's (local Japanese bakery) delicious butter rolls, with ham and cheese (no actual crab). His legs and claws are made of carrot, and his eyes are provolone cheese with carrot centers. 

I have to mention that we've been getting ham from the charcuterie counter at Whole Foods, and they make it in-house. It is absolutely delicious and the pigs are ethically raised on an organic diet, which is important to us. It was only a couple dollars more per pound than the local grocery store deli, and totally worth it!

As an accompaniment to the sandwich, I have Korean melon that I cubed, topped with blackberries and a piece of starfruit. Korean melon has a yellow, striped outside, is about the size of a large coffee mug, and smells delicious. Tastes sort of like a crunchy cantaloupe. I linked a good description and pics above if you'd like more information. Starfruit is something I get to eat all the time when I travel to Hawaii or Hong Kong, but not so much here in the States. I bought some at the local market, but I wasn't impressed with the flavor. Still, it looks beautiful in a bento!

Finally, a bird's eye view of the whole bento put together. The extra treats on the side are "jujubee" star candies from Whole Foods.

Little Piggy Bento - Pig Flatbread Sandwich!

As I keep bento-ing, I learn new ways to keep offering variety with the lunches. One easy way is to change up the bread. This week we didn't buy any sliced bread and instead, we got bagels, flatbread, and butter rolls. It's like getting a new canvas! 

Today's lunch is a piggy flatbread sandwich with turkey, mayo, mustard, lettuce, provolone cheese, and avocado. YUM. I made the nose with ham and two sizes of my oval shaped fondant cutters. The ears I just cut with a knife, and the eyes were made from my tiniest round fondant cutter and the nori punch (I just put together a mouth and an eye together, overlapping, to make a round shape with a tiny hole in the middle). 

We have three kinds of fruit on the side - kiwi stars, two strawberry hearts, and honeydew flowers, with our ever-so-useful animal picks. Close up of the kiwi stars:

Mike also has celery sticks and peanut butter in the tiny piggy container. I love this container because it has a lid (no spilling, no mess) and it's SO CUTE! I also got a panda and chick with this set. 

REVIEW: This lunch got a "delicious!" rating and almost everything got eaten, although most of the peanut butter was leftover in the little piggy. Guess it holds a lot more than I thought.

"Hiding the Leftovers" Bento

Inspired by some Easter posts I saw online, I tried to make a "bunny bread" for today's bento, using crescent roll dough from Trader Joe's. I stuffed the bunny with provolone cheese and chopped up leftover turkey (yep, too many leftovers = creative lunches), and made another roll stuffed with artichokes, sun dried tomatoes, and provolone. The veggie stuffed roll is on the left, with melon stars, half a Caracara orange, and tucked in the back, some plantain chips and a little fruit snack flower. On the right is my attempt at the "bunny" with some celery sticks and peanut butter, and little fruit snack flowers for color. I brought some of the stuffed rolls for myself for lunch today, so I'll let you know how they taste...

Although I'm not spectacular at creating the bunnies yet, they were super easy and you should give them a try! Just buy the ready-made dough in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, chop up whatever you've got in your fridge, put them on the dough and roll them up! I baked them at 350 degrees on parchment paper. I liked that the Trader Joe's brand was not greasy and did not leave any grease marks. Plus it didn't smell artificially buttery like the Pillsbury brand.

The dough was easy to handle - some of them I just wrapped and pinched them closed, and they look like little balls. With some cheese decorations, or decorations with the leftover dough, they could be any animal or item you want them to be. Plus they only took 12 minutes to bake. Easy and neat solution for leftovers! I made everything last night except the celery sticks and the fruit snack flowers, so today I just arranged it all into the bento box. 

REVIEW: No complaints about this lunch, but I suspect it wasn't a favorite, either. I think those crescent rolls would be better if they were ham and cheese, or maybe proscuitto and swiss? Something with a little more flavor. The fruit leather flowers were a huge hit, and easy decorations, so now they're on our regular shopping list.

Stars and Flowers Bento

I didn't have the energy to prep last night, so this morning I relied on good old peanut butter and jelly. It's Mike's favorite and happens to be the easiest thing to make! Luckily, I still had fruit left over from Sunday's prep, so all I had to throw together was the sandwich and some cheese and crackers. As you can tell, I made great use of the silicon cups today:

For fun, I made three separate PB&J sandwiches on multi-grain bread - two star "stackers," and one cut-out sandwich. These are just two examples of things you can do with bread! Think outside the box and remember you can make them open-faced, shaped (with cookie cutters or even just squares, rectangles, triangles, etc), cut-out, or just plain and decorated or stamped on top. They can be stacked straight up or sideways, too. I love the sideways look. 

On the right, we have Galia melon stars again, a few strawberries, and cheddar flowers with crackers. My vegetable cutters are amazing, I use them for everything! I am a huge fan of the stainless steel cutters over the plastic cookie cutters. You can see how sharp and clear the star is in the sandwich - that's from a stainless steel cutter. 

I packed everything into the small bento box to see if this will be enough food. Usually the big bento box has leftovers.

REVIEW: Mike ate everything and loved this bento, because PB&J plus fruit = favorite! He requested PB&J for every day, but really, that's not very healthy and I would imagine that at some point, you'd get sick of it, and then what would I fall back on when I'm rushed? ;) 

Fish Sandwich Bento

This bento sandwich started out with me staring at the two butter rolls I had left from last week, thinking, what do these look like? Ice cream cones and snails went through my head before I thought, "goldfish!" And that's what we ended up with today. The pic isn't as wonderful as I hoped it would be, since it is super gloomy outside today.

I chopped up leftover turkey from dinner last night and mixed it with a little mayo, then hollowed out the inside of the bun and stuffed that in. Ripped up some lettuce leaves and laid them inside the bun, poking out as "fins," and made a little eyeball from a slice of string cheese and the smile from a nori (dried seaweed) face punch. I think it came out cute! What do you think?

This Sunday I also prepped a lot of fruit (prepping is key to making bentos quick and easy in the morning!), including organic strawberries, Galia melon stars, and caracara oranges. It's citrus season in California right now, hence all the varieties of oranges I've been using lately. Caracaras are pink inside, sweet, mellow, juicy, and totally delicious. If you have them in your neighborhood market, try them out! We actually bought ours at Trader Joe's; didn't make it to the farmer's market this weekend, thanks to the LA Marathon street closures.

Mike also has roasted plantain chips above the sandwich and cheddar rockets (Trader Joe's version of goldfish crackers) below the sandwich, for crunch. I think he'll love this bento, it's got all his favorites!

REVIEW: Mike liked the sandwich but wasn't able to finish all the fruit. The melon got rave reviews. It's hard to know what's too much food and what's too little. This is the big bento box, and it frequently comes back with something leftover. When I'm packing it, though, it looks too small. Go figure.