Bentoism

I would like to bento more often, but the mid-terms at school have started and I'm just trying to keep up with my marking.

I did manage to get a bento packed last week though, and was rather proud of it, from the content to the presentation of it all. I'm certainly no bento guru, but I thought I did a fairly good job with this one. *grin*

I made mini tuna-mayo onigiri, chicken dumplings wrapped with nori, boiled broccoli and stuffed in a serving of grapes. I admit, the second row of onigiri could've been more tightly packed, but I was rather happy with it and proud to open my box before my colleagues. Heh, heh, heh...

And of course, I took the opportunity to pack it with...*drum roll*... Hello Kitty Furikake! I know, I know, my colleague shrieked when she saw it. And not the positive kind of shriek. But it made me happy. Oh yes indeed. It was a happy meal.

The other morning, I had to pack myself a bento to school - I was teaching a class over lunch and had agreed with my students to have us eat together first before starting on our Philosophy class. How Japanese. Eating bentos together in class. :)

Since I was putting together a freshly cooked bento for myself, I thought I'd pack the rest of the family bentos too. Told KM he could consider taking LV out for a picnic lunch later if he wanted to (they didn't in the end though). So here we have, matching bentos for mummy and baby!



And this was what was in it:


Both of us had exactly the same content, arranged in exactly the same way. Short-grain rice with vegetable furikake (LV's was for toddlers, by Pigeon), freshly cut Japanese cucumber strips, asparagus in teriyaki sauce, ginger pork (marinated with light soy sauce - reduced salt by Sin Sin - and grated ginger) and lightly sauteed yellow tail fish in teriyaki sauce (leftover sauce from cooking this was used for the asparagus.

I didn't use bottled teriyaki sauce this time. I basically made it out of soy sauce, sugar, mirin and cooking sake (about 1 tbsp of each for 1 serving of fish/meat). Turned out rather nice! But the fish was a little too heavily salted, so will have to reduce the salt next time, or just leave it out entirely from the recipe.