Friday Review and Butterfly Bento Box Lunch

I bought a set of Progressive Cookie Cutters that also include an additional stencil/cut out piece - perfect for bento! Today was my first day trying one out, so I thought I'd combine my initial review of this product with the bento post. 

Below, our bento box lunch: butterfly prosciutto and cheese sandwich, veggies and ranch, and mango flowers. The butterfly wings and body are cut from cheese, using the stencil portion of the cutter (featured later in this post). Except the body...that was hard to cut out so I just did an easy rectangle. The flowers were cut using my favorite flower stainless steel cutter, which I have totally gotten my money's worth from!

The veggies are Persian cucumbers, orange bell pepper, and broccoli. 

To make this bento, I used my new butterfly cookie/sandwich cutter. It is fairly large, about 4 inches across.

It comes apart into two pieces. There are 12 cookie cutters included with the Progressive set and they all have two pieces - the cutter and the stencil. They are relatively sturdy plastic and easily cleaned, although if you use them on cheese, the stencil part has some small sections where things can get stuck. You can usually poke them out with something narrow like a chopstick or skewer.

The stencil does not really work well with the cutter for impressions (like a sandwich press), like I was hoping. The stencil part comes really close to the edge of the cutter, so they're ideal for decorating cookies with sprinkles or frosting, but not not so great for stamping. That's ok. They're good for cutting cheese and using that to decorate. Or, you could simply use a square sandwich (which would waste less bread) and impress the stencil on it. 

The cutter is deep, as displayed here against a normal piece of sliced bread. Sorry about the pic being a little off focus, I took it with my phone:

You could totally make a sandwich and then cut it, but I find it easier to cut the bread and the individual things that go inside, and then stack them. 

The set comes with a bear, bunny, circle, heart, pumpkin, duck, clover, Christmas tree, gingerbread man, star, butterfly and flower. It's most definitely worth the $12.95 Amazon is charging!

Field of Flowers Bento Box Salad

Mike didn't need a lunch today, so I made one for myself. Below is an example of a super quick bento, using only one tool and a knife. The salad is romaine lettuce and cilantro, with mozzarella and bell pepper flowers, and a few black olives. Very simple. Dressing is in the bottle to the right. In retrospect I should have added some nuts for additional protein, but I've got pita chips and Greek yogurt at work, so it should be a filling lunch.

Stay tuned for Friday's review and bento, I've got a super cute one planned for tomorrow!

Dress Up The Leftovers Bento

Today we are taking a mini vacation! So for our daily post, I have a version of Tuesday's bento that I made "adult style" for myself. I had leftover turkey tenders and sauteed brussel sprouts with green apple and almonds, cheddar cheese flowers and crackers, melon stars, and a few of the leftover strawberries for color, and a giant mango star. It's so easy to make your own lunch beautiful, even if it's just leftovers from last night's dinner! Don't forget yourself if you're making lunch for others (your kids or special someone) - it's very simple to just prep extra and throw it into your own lunch or dinner.

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? ;) 

Mushroom Bento

Mike and I both love mushrooms, but Mike doesn't like to eat them, he just likes the way they look. Inspired by the ones I saw online, I made Mike a salad with tomato and string cheese toadstools. I hollowed out sugar plum tomatoes for the tops, cut up a piece of string cheese for the stems, and put a tiny bit of ranch dressing on the top, which acted as "glue" for a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. They came out pretty cute!

On the left we have a salad with carrot flowers, sliced sugar snap peas, smoked gouda stars, "toadstools," and "chicks" made from quail eggs with black sesame eyes and carrot beaks. I threw in sunflower seeds to up the protein factor a little. On the right we have a fuji apple, blood orange and green grape salad, a heart shaped tuna sandwich on squaw bread, kumquats, and some chocolate covered sunflower seeds for dessert. I inserted a little bottle of ranch dressing after I took the picture; it fit right on top of the heart sandwich.

This is the first mostly veggie/fruit bento I have made for Mike, so I hope it is filling enough. I prepped the whole salad and the fruit last night, so this morning all I made was the heart, and cut up some kumquats. Which was a good thing, because I woke up late with the time change. I miss my sunlight in the morning!

REVIEW: Mike loved the salad and even ate the tomato tops of the "mushrooms" which is weird because he hates tomatoes. I would like to think it has something to do with the cute factor, but I think it's probably because they were hollowed out, then coated in ranch and parmesan. :) 

Also, chocolate covered sunflower seeds were a huge hit with both of us! They are like mini M&Ms. I love the pop of color they provide.

Friday Review - Stainless Steel Veggie Cutters

Each Friday I thought I'd review a bento item I use, and let you know how it tested in a "real world" setting. Namely, my kitchen. 

Today's item: the stainless steel veggie cutters I bought on Amazon (but can also be found, in various sizes and collections, in probably any catering, restaurant supply, cooking or Japanese store). I bought these four cutters at $3.50, a total bargain, considering the durability and sharpness. They are tiny, about an inch diameter, and work perfectly for vegetables and fruits, although you'll need large sized carrots and you'll probably only use the top half of the carrot. To be quite honest, it's tough to find organic carrots this early in the season that are large enough to accomodate these cutters. They come with a "mum" flower shape, a star flower shape, a traditional 5 petal flower shape, and a cherry blossom flower shape. The cherry blossom is best on harder fruits/veggies because it has tiny "divots" at the end of each petal that won't show up well on softer things like bananas. The 5 petal flower one is the smallest.

Once you start building up your bento utensil collection, you'll find that the 5 petal flower shape is very common, and that it's handy to have a small one. I used it successfully on my smoked salmon tea sandwiches and they came out gorgeous! 

In retrospect, I would consider purchasing cutters that have a hand guard. The cutters were fine on fruits and cucumbers, but on raw carrots or maybe raw potatoes, they're too hard and you'll end up with imprints on your hands. If you had arthritis, the tiny size of these cutters would be difficult to use on a continuous basis. When I prepped a bunch of carrot cut-outs for the week, my hand was sore afterward. Cutters with hand guards run about $10.00 for a set. However, for the low price of $3.50, this set can't be beat!

Updated Note: After browsing the web for more bento ideas, I've found that most Japanese bentos feature cooked (boiled or steamed) veggies, so in retrospect, those Japanese moms probably aren't hurting their hands with these little flowers, cutting through softer veggies. Since Mike and I like to eat lots of raw veggies or fruits, I am using these to cut harder substances, and I think a hand guard would still be nice!

Bento Bear

Last night we had dinner with our neighbor, and managed to get home by 9:30pm. We go to bed at 10pm, and our nighttime routine includes taking care of our fish, frog, 4 cats, and rabbit. So you can imagine I was pressed for time and needed to create a bento that was quick and easy! Here's what I came up with: peanut butter/jelly bear (there's extra jelly under the nose), bear shaped muenster cheese with crackers, a pretzel "nest" with smoked gouda birds, and a salad with ranch (I got these nifty little bottles at the Marukai Market). I put a clementine on top of the box for him to take along, too. I'm not sure if it'll be filling enough for Mike, but it'll tide him over until he gets home. Oh yeah, there's a package of gummy bears hiding under the peanut butter bear, for dessert. 

The bento bear is easy, I used a water glass for the face, then a circle cutter for the rest - the ears were pressed into the remaining bread I had left after making the face, I went right off the face circle, which is why they fit so nicely. The entire bear is about 5 inches across.

REVIEW: This was Mike's favorite meal so far, and he ate all of it. Which is amusing, because it took the least amount of effort. Let that be a lesson to me! To improve the healthy quotient of this lunch in the future, I might try to add a protein/fruit like yogurt with strawberries, or some quail eggs and a fruit salad, and take out one of the carbs (the crackers or the pretzels). 

Getting Crazy With The Bento

I received some feedback from Mike about my past two lunches, so I'll post those as "reviews" to each post going forward, so we can keep a log of what works and what doesn't! :) I imagine this will be an ongoing learning process.

I made today's bento for Mike in a simplified way, just making the cute part the top! Here I've decorated chicken salad (with celery and carrots) with black sesame seeds (which add calcium, always a good thing) and red pepper letters. I kept it separated from the rest of the bento with carrot cut-outs that are pressed into the side (you can just barely see them). My chicken salad is not runny or drippy, so it should be fine. 

Just in case, though, I put the fruit (blueberries and pineapple) into little silicon cups, with animal picks for easy eating. There's clementine segments at the back and sugar snap peas flanking the cups (it's important to make sure everything is pretty tightly packed so it travels well). I also made him a Greek yogurt/brown sugar fruit dip, which is in the dip cup in the back. This bento box is from the website Fab, which we love. It comes with two insertable containers that both have lids (only using one today), and the top, which locks down, also has a spot to store a fork. Perfect for today's lunch (which is gluten-free)!

I also made a lunch for my coworker, whose birthday is this week and I am missing her birthday dinner celebration. She loves Asian food so I made her a soba noodle nest (soba noodles are Japanese buckwheat noodles that can be eaten cold or hot) with quail eggs, and those are shitake mushroom slices I tucked into the corners, for added sustenance. On the side is a salad with tomato hearts, star carrots, and little red bell pepper pieces for color.

The other little box has flower toasts with cream cheese sprinkled with chives, and a smoked salmon flower. They came out pretty cute and I would totally make these for an afternoon tea! Close up:

My own lunch was a pocket sandwich with turkey, smoked gouda and cucumbers. I learned you should not overstuff pocket sandwiches...and maybe just put the cheese on top as a decoration. It's much better that way. My pocket sandwich wouldn't stay sealed. I also made myself a fruit salad with yogurt dip - yum. Very colorful and cute even without fun shapes:

Whew! That's it for today. It did take me awhile to prep stuff last night because I made three  different bento lunches with completely different items. That will be the last time I do that! From now on Mike and I will eat similar or the same food each lunch, which will make the lunches quicker and easier. 

REVIEW: Mike ate everything in his lunch except one cup of blueberries (there were two). So it was a success! My coworker loved her lunch, too, but wasn't able to finish all the noodles - too many. I used one serving size (they come packaged that way) of noodles, which I usually eat for lunch alone, so with all the sides I think it would be best to cut down the amount of noodles and maybe add more condiments, like nori seaweed or an extra egg.

Mike's First Bento Lunch

Day 1 of bento! Honestly, I spent a couple hours on Sunday prepping food, which I realize most moms may not have the time or energy to do. However, I also experimented a lot and played around, so if you stick with basic shapes and stuff, I think you could make a bento lunch in about 15-20 minutes a day or less, if you prep at some point. Prepping fruit or veggies for the week really helps, so you can just throw things together. And if you prep extra egg salad or tuna salad, or have deli meat ready on hand, you could do this during the week in 10 minutes or less. It's all in the planning!

Today's meal has three kinds of sandwiches - turkey/smoked gouda with mayo/mustard on rye (both the top and the bottom sandwich), egg salad with celery on wheat, and tuna with celery and relish on potato bread (We ate all the trimmings and extra pieces for dinner). After putting the sandwiches in the box, I realized they were super bland looking, so I thinly cut some bell peppers as "dividers." I had leftover tuna AND leftover egg salad for later this week.

Mike needs some crunch with his sandwiches, so I threw some baked cheese crunchies from Trader Joe's into a silicone heart cup (to separate them from the veggies), but in the future I think I'll get some bigger dividers; he'll be bummed there's so few in there! There's Brianna's all natural ranch dressing in the little bear, and bell peppers, celery sticks, and carrot/cucumber flowers. Those were a sudden inspiration - I was cutting Persian cucumbers and realized that the cutout would be all seed - yuck! But the outside was perfect. Then as I threw them into the tupperware I saw that the carrot cut outs would fit inside them...ta da! Also, note that you don't have to cut everything cute - the celery and bell peppers are cut normally. Save yourself some time!

Under the bear is a mini package of Orbit gum that I saw, last minute, at the grocery store. Cute, small, and perfect for the bento box (especially with stinky sandwiches like tuna and egg). Plus, the combo of the plastic on the gum and the silicone bear helps keep it gripped in place while transporting this lunch to work. I later added in two of those sugar snap peas on either side to brace the bear, although he didn't move at all when I shook the box.

P.S. this bento box only cost $7.00 at Marukai Market and it came with the divider, which is very convenient!

REVIEW: Mike says this lunch was delicious but too many veggies and not enough sandwich (all four of those sandwiches = one sandwich). Also the cheese crunchies got stale when I put them in the fridge the night before. Whoops! You can only prep so far.

Salad for SJP (our bunny)

I bought a bunch of bento stuff over the last week and finally got to test it out! It was a lot of fun cutting out veggie shapes. I am contemplating how best to do this so I don't feel stressed about putting together a healthy lunch during the week. I did pre-cut a bunch of veggies - celery, red bell peppers, carrots and cucumbers, and I put them with a smidgen of cold water into glass tupperware in the fridge. We'll see how they hold up!

The first thing I made was a salad for my bunny, SJP, who will be helping us use all the trimmings from veggies and stuff. There is a lot of waste with bento and my goal is to have the least amount of waste as I can. Luckily we have a bunny, but she can't eat too many sweets (carrots, apples, etc)...so I eat a lot of the trimmings as we go, and I also thought I could put some into carrot muffins or bread, and omelettes, or soups! Be creative with your leftover trimmings. If you have a compost pile, that would be perfect.

The little rabbit is made from a veggie cutter set I bought in Little Tokyo at Marukai Market (I also bought an elephant - can't wait to try it out!). It cuts three pieces that you just slide together. It was simple and the results are adorable! The little flower carrots are from a four piece stainless steel veggie cutter set I bought on Amazon. Threw everything together with some Upland Cress and voila! SJP mowed it down.