punkerdoo

Recently, I have been making bento-style lunches twice a week. I am working my way through the archive list at Just Bento My plan was to blog about these lunches as I made them, but well, best laid plans… This started when Maki of Just Bento issued a 5 week bento challenge. The first week I attempted to follow along, but my weekly menu schedule of planning on Mondays and shopping on Thursdays meant that I was always a week behind. I really wanted to start making better lunches for Husband and me. So I began working my way through her archives.  The following are the bentos I have made so far.
Bento no. 1: A basic bento! Mostly vegetarian with quail eggs

This bento called for Atsuage tofu, which I could not find.  I used extra-firm tofu and pan fried it in canola oil. Also, I did not have access to any Quail’s eggs so I used 1/2 of a chicken egg.

Bento no. 2: Chicken and vegetables on rice, donburi style

With this bento, I was able to follow the directions fairly closely.  I did use the garam marsala instead of the falafel spice mix.  The nice part about this lunch was the wonderful carrots we have been getting from Athens Locally Grown They are so sweet and flavorful it really made this a nice lunch.

Bento no. 3: Spicy shirataki noodle bento – high fiber, low calorie

This one was the furthest from the original yet.  The directions called for Shirataki noodles and Kochujang (Korean red bean paste) neither of which I could find.  I should stop here and explain when I say I cannot find items, I have yet to try at our local Asian grocery Fook’s Foods.  We have been do our grocery shopping on Thursdays after work and it is everything we can do just to get back to the house by 8:30PM.  It would be nice to visit Fook’s during the weekend, since a major goal of making these bentos is to try new and different foods.  Anyway, for this lunch I used Udon noodles seasoned with tamari.  It turned out well, but was not spicy.

Bento no. 4: A picnic bento packed in a disposable egg carton

My first cutesy bento. This was designed to be a picnic bento carried in an egg carton, but since our office is in our home, I modified it slightly.   Since could not find the shiso leaves for wrapping the onigiri, I decorated them with nori.  The green beans I had on hand were not in good shape so I boiled up some edamame, which I think worked really well.

Bento no. 5: Another vegan bento featuring black bean burgers

This bento I had to eat all by my lonesome.  Husband was in ATL for a meeting (which explains the poor photo of this lunch)  I was able to follow the instructions fairly closely.  Although, I did not try to pickle the radishes, because we had purchased these wonderful D’Avignon radishes from Athens Locally Grown.  Lesson learned from this bento: Sun-dried tomato paste is available in tubes similar to regular tomato paste.  Luckily, I still had some regular tomato paste in the fridge.  Now all  I have to do is find a recipe that calls for sun-dried tomato paste.

Bento no. 6: Pita bread sandwich bento

This was a fun bento.  Making pitas with black bean burgers is probably not something I would have done on my own,  meeting one of the goals for this little experiment.  The ingredient list called for Tzatziki salt and at first I thought this was a typo for Tzatziki sauce, but the instructions definitely refer to a seasoned salt.  Husband googled Tzatziki salt and got two hits both of which were on Just Bento.  My conclusion was that I may have been taking this too literally and the list was simply calling for some type of Mediterranean flavored salt.  I ended up just putting some garlic salt in plain yogurt, but I do think it could have benefited from a more powerful seasoning.  Pretty tasty lunch and way better than boring sandwiches.

I am going to try to keep with these lunches in the future, mostly because,  it is taking me way too long to write this post.    So far this has been fun and I am looking forward to bentos no 7 & 8.