Pack. Eat. Repeat. (Bento #48-51)

Whew! This has been a busy week at work. I haven't had a chance to do any posting because of it. Here are my lunches for this week.

Monday & Tuesday's lunches (Bento #48-49) were exactly the same. They included:
Mini hamburger patty, corn, cucumber, carrots, 1/2 an egg.



Wednesday's lunch (Bento #50) included:
Loose groundmeat spaghetti, cucumber, carrots

By Thursday, I was a little tired of the repetition, so a trip to Whole Foods found me some delicious cherries and blueberries! Thursday's lunch (Bento #51) includes:

Mini hamburger patty, corn cut from the cob, cucumber, carrot, cherries, blueberries

Hopefully, I'll have more variety and excitement next week. Even though there were alot of repeats this week, I didn't eat out. YAY! Most of these lunches were quick to put together. I always keep a few frozen, homemade hamburger patties in my freezer for when I don't have alot of time. I do the same thing with spaghetti. It certainly came in handy this week.

More Pomegranate Chicken (Bento #41)

Wow! This is my 50th post and my 41st bento. I'm so pleased that I've stuck with this for a whole 2 months. YAY!

Today's lunch is the last of the pomegranate chicken I cooked night before last. Lunch includes:
Pomegranate chicken, sweet potato, and boiled egg
Cucumber, carrots with dressing for dipping
Golden raisins
Various bits of chocolate.

Pomegranate Chicken & Psuedo Sushi (Bento #40)

Tonight's cooking brings more experimentation and fun! As you already know, dear reader, the word this week is pomegranate. The pomegranate I purchased and seeded this week was too much fruit for just me. Tonight, I decided to take the remaining seeds and try out the sauce from a recipe called Pomegranate & Balsamic Glazed Cornish Hen, found at http://www.recipezaar.com/.

I juiced the pomegranate seeds by hand through a cheesecloth (fun!). Since I didn't have any balsamic vinegar on hand, I used a light balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. This worked out well in my opinion. The sauce had a nice sweet flavor from the pomegranate, but I wasn't overwhelmed by the balsamic taste (which is why I don't often use balsamic salad dressing). The only thing I was unable to accomplish was to get the sauce to thicken and become syrupy. I think the reason for this is I didn't use enough honey; I ran out. All in all though, it made a wonderful sauce to baste the chicken breasts with and made for a very tasty dinner.

For tomorrow's bento, I also decided to try my hand at making a psuedo-sushi roll. I cooked some sushi rice and spread it out on a tumeric colored Sushi Party! soy wrapper. The rice was then sprinkled lightly with sea salt and liberally with toasted sesame seeds. Thinnish slices of carrots, cucumber, and radishes were added to the middle and then it was rolled up. I don't own a sushi mat, so I used my silicone baking mat to help me get the roll into shape. However, I think a bamboo mat might be necessary to get the thing to stay together. I didn't cut the wrap into sushi rolls because I could tell it would fall apart.

Here's a quick picture of what the inside of the sushi roll looks like. I cut one end to get a good picture. Then, I had to eat the portion I cut off. It is quite tasty indeed!



Tomorrow's bento includes:
Psuedo-sushi roll containing cucumber, carrots, & radishes
Wavy cucumber slices with french dressing in container for dipping
Pomegranate & Balsamic baked chicken breasts with wavy chip steamed sweet potatos
Pocky and chocolate "burger candy"

BTW, can you tell I purchased a wavy vegetable cutter. So much fun!


I included a picture of my lunch all wrapped up and ready to go. I'm excited because I now have matching bento/belt sets. Wheeeee!

The Word is Pomegranate (Bento #38)

When I started this bento adventure 2 months ago, I made myselfa promise. That in order to keep this from getting boring quick with my limited culinary palette, I would either find a new food to eat or a new recipe to eat at least 2x per month. November has started out as a great month for this. Last week was black beans and discovering I liked them.

Tonight at the grocery store, I found pomegranates. I've never eaten one before; however, I've seen them mentioned recently on the Adventures in Bentomaking blog (see link to left). After finding a great Youtube video that shows how to easily peel a pomegranate, I peeled and tried my first one today. This is a deliciously tangy and sweet fruit. I can't believe I've missed out on it for so long.

Tomorrow's bento includes:
2 mini hamburgers with steamed carrots & green beans
Cucumber slices, tangerine, and pomegranate seeds.
The stop of the bento box has ketchup packets for the hamburger and 4 Pocky for dessert!
(I had to take out the Hello Panda treats. It was too much for the top of the box!

Cashew Chicken II (Bento #34)

One of my earliest posts in this blog was the Kylie Kwong's cash chicken recipe. I've been craving that dish, so I decided to make it again for this week's bentos. It came out MUCH better this time around. I learned a few lessons the last go around and I very much like how this one came out.

Tomorrow's bento includes:
Cashew chicken with cucumbers
Carrots with dressing & lady apple
Sesame seed bars & 3 Hello Panda treats.

Bento #33: Chicken & Black Bean Rice

Sometimes, lucky accidents happen. That's the term I'm using for tonight's dinner which turns into tomorrow's bento leftovers.

In my quest to eat healthier and try new things, I purchased some black beans at the Asian food store. While searching for recipes, I found a few that mentioned mixing the black beans with jasmine rice. Here's what I did.

First, I boiled the black beans for about 2 hours, periodically adding water to ensure they were covered at all times. I also stirred them alot ot make sure nothing stuck to the pot. They cooked up very nicely. My only complaint is that I should have thrown in some onion or garlic with them to give them some flavor. The salt I threw in the pot didn't do much for them.

Then, I cooked some jasmine rice. Once done, I thre it into a large skillet with a bit of melted margarine to sort-of-but-not-really stir fry the rice. I added in the black beans and then some toasted black sesame seeds. I also added a garlic black pepper seasoning blend. All in all it was tasty enough, but needed more seasoning.

This is included into tomorrow's bento with balsamic vinaigrette chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, sliced cucumber, and sesame seed candy.

Bento #32

Tomorrow's lunch is tasty too! I decided to make one of my favorite comfort foods tonight: jambalaya. YUM!

Tomorrow's bento includes:
Chicken & sausage jambalaya (thank you mom for your recipe)
Steamed carrots
Hard-boiled egg, mini cornbread muffins, cubed cucumber
Almond pocky & sesame seed candy for a dessert!

It is all packed in my one and only true bento box. A clickety click one that I adore. I'm not overly fond of the pink color, but I love my bento box!

Bento #31

Today's lunch was delicious! I'm getting the hang of this bento thing I think ;)
For today's lunch, I tried something I've never made before: pizza crescent rolls. I made these using the garlic buttern Pillsbury crescent rolls found near the biscuits in the grocery store. It was the only kind of crescent roll available. I was worried the taste would be too strong because the rolls smelled heavily like garlic when I took them out of the can. However, they tasted just fine.

In this bento, we have:
Two pizza crescent rolls. The rolls were stuffed with pepperoni slices and mozzarella cheese.
A lady apple & fish-shaped hard boiled egg.
Raw carrots & cucumber. Grapes too!

Happy Cabinets

Weekends aren't much of a bento-fest for me. I don't make bentos to eat on the weekends normally. However, I do tend to prepare things for my weekday bentos over the weekend. I had a great bento prep weekend so thought I'd share.

The first thing I did this weekend is start a large purge in my house. I've have too much "stuff" that is just useless. Much of it I have been given over the years by people who were trying to help me out when I first moved into my home. Now that I'm more established, I don't use many of these things anymore. This weekend, I packed 5 boxes and 9 garbage bags of "stuff" to bring to charity. And there is still more to go through.

One big purge was a kitchen cabinet where I keep various cooking and food storage paraphernalia. Here is a great pic of my cabinet now organized and ready for use! Notice the lovely Lock 'n Lock's on the lower right hand side. Don't they look so happy together?


Next came the freezer purge. Since starting bento, I've been keeping a very neat refrigerator section but the freezer hadn't been cleaned out in I don't remember when. So, I cleaned house and went to my local grocery store that had a huge meat sale this weekend (lots of buy one, get one free deals!). Now, I have a happy freezer as well as a happy cabinet. :)
In this happy freezer you will see lots of sealed and bagged meats ready to be defrosted and included in a bento. Whoo hoo, I'm so ready for this week! I love a neat freezer!

The last thing I have to share is a quick bagel panini (love that new pan!) I made with some of the chicken purchased this weekend. The chicken breasts were baked for 20 minutes on a preheated 350 degree oven. Before baking, each chicken breast was rubbed with 1 teaspoon of Colavita extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with salt and a garlic/black pepper seasoning blend. The sandwich is one mini bagel, slices of baked chicken breast, and a piece of muenster cheese with a mix of dijon mustard / mayo for taste. YUM!

Bento #26: Chicken & a New Bento Box

Lunch for 10/19/07:

Today, I used the new Clickety Clack bento box that I purchased. I originially purchased the set for some of the items in the set, not really for this bento box. It is a little too pink for me, but loads of fun use an actual bento box!


Today's bento includes:
Baked chicken with lime/basil dressing marinade
Sweet potatoes
Raw cucumber and carrots with dressing.
Grapes with ocean animals pick
2 Chocolate Pocky & 2 sesame candies for dessert

Bento #25: More Pork Tenderloin

Lunch for 10/18/07:
The rest of the shredded BBQ pork tenderloin
Sweet potatoes, small container of cucumber
Steamed carrot chips & green beans
Dressing for cucumbers
Chocolate graham crackers

Bento No and Bento Yes

The bento below I made with leftover chicken I had cooked for a panini sandwich. Which came out wonderfully btw. However, this bento never ended up seeing the inside of my lunch bag. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend of mine and I went to P.F. Chang's for lunch over the weekend, and I came home with leftovers. After my lunch at P.F. Chang's, I had a major case of CRASH! My body needed sleep. I could tell I had eaten something that was setting off the insulin problem, but couldn't figure out what. I'd eaten carefully at Chang's, didn't overeat, and was carefuly on the portions of carbs. That night, I had a small portion of the noodles below with some chicken. I felt that same crashing feeling. I realized it must be these noodles. They were tasty enough, but were sort of thick and floury tasting to me. I think they simply overwhelmed my system. I'm sorry to say I ended up disposing of them.

So the rest of the bento was recycled into a new bento that I enjoyed immensely on Monday. This bento consisted of leftover fried rice (which I was fine with), leftover chicken from a panini sandwich I had made (yummy tasting), cucumber, carrots, and a jello cup.

Turkey Burger & Rice-a-Roni

Today's Lunch:
Turkey Burger
Herb & Butter Rice-a-Roni
Cucumbers & carrots
Dove Chocolate Square

Okay, this might not be the best lunch, but it will have to suffice. It's what I had in the fridge or available to quickly make. Not alot of time this morning.


Thought I'd show my afternoon snack since it's new to my repetoire. 6 triscuits, Laughing Cow light cheese wedge, container of sunflower seeds.

Have a great weekend to anyone reading this post!

Rolled Tortilla Sandwich with Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday, I saw a nutritionist familiar with working with women and insulin resistance. She reviewed with me the diabetic exchange list and gave me a meal plan.

So, today's lunch is packed with this in mind. My biggest problem with this lunch is the 1/2 cup of sweet potatoes. This isn't quite enough variety for my liking. So next time it's a 1/4 cup sweet potatoes with a bit of fruit to complete the 1 starch portion of the meal. All in all, it won't be a bad lunch.

So here's my lunch for today:
1 rolled sandwich with whole wheat tortilla, roasted turkey, and a piece of provolone cheese.
Small bottle of Organic Zesty Italian dressing, 1 square of chocolate
Sweet potatos and a "salad" of carrot shreds and sliced cucumber.


I'm showing my snack picture today due to the cute picks. I've seen lots of bento websites that have food on picks and I think "how cute." After the appointment yesterday, I went to a nearby craft store and looked in the cake decorating department where I found these great picks. So yesterday's snack that I didn't have the chance to eat was rearranged out of its food cup and onton food picks. At first I thought I would feel silly, a 30-year-old woman with food on plastic toothpicks. LOL! Now I'm looking forward to make snack. It looks like so much fun.

A New "Dish"

A friend of mine lives near a unique restaurant that serves delicious panini sandwiches. I tried to make something similar at home. It wasn't a true grilled panini sandwich by any means, but was tasty just the same.

My sandwich includes honey whole wheat bread, provolone cheese, champagne honey mustard, hydroponic lettuce, cucumber, carrots, and chicken with lime-basil marinade. Served with two pineapple slices.

My next goal is to figure out how to make one fit into my bento box!

To Market, To Market

is where I went today! There are two local farmers' markets near me. I went to both today. The closest was a bit disappointing since so few vendors attended. Apparently, this was a slow weekend, and many vendors should be back next weekend. I still found some lovely homegrown cucumbers and a beautiful eggplant for my mother. I also found some nice, fresh shrimp in my price range.

The second farmer's market is the larger one and was much fun this morning. I picked up hydroponic mixed lettuce, purple hulled peas for a friend, italian green beans, ciabatta bread, pecan wood smoked pork chops, and more.

For lunch, I steamed the shrimp and made a salad.

The salad contains the fresh lettuce and cucumber purchased this morning. The colors are a bit off in this picture; however, this light lunch was quite delicious. I have the rest of the shrimp packed in part of a bento. I'll have to figure out later what all will go into it for lunch this week.

Some Assembly Required

I've been intrigued for some time now by the concept of a rolled sandwich using tortillas or flat bread. Today for lunch, I tried one and enjoyed it so much that I decided to bring one for lunch tomorrow. I didn't preassemble my sandwich. So I brought all the ingredients in the Fit 'n Fresh box I purchased at the same time I purchased my Lock 'n Locks. This is it's maiden lunch voyage.

In the bottom tier we have all the stuff to make our sandwich: a rolled piece of Flat Out honey whole wheat bread, some deli smoked ham, a container of Harry & David's Champagne Honey mustard (yum!), carrots, cucumber, and baby spinach too. A small piece of Dove chocolate is included for dessert.

Now for the upper tier. That Fit 'n Fresh has two large sized upper trays that I was trying to figure out what to do with. This is going to be one awesome lunch, but boy did I use alot of muffin cups in this one! I need some regular size silicone muffin cups. I hate the thought of using so many in one lunch!

The upper tier includes steamed green beans, homemade applesauce with dried cranberries and golden raisins, pistachios, and a small amount of bbq chips. A word about the applesauce: This stuff is delicious and super easy! I got the recipe for cinammon applesauce from the October 2007 issue of Everyday Cooking. I added the raisins and cranberries myself. This stuff is tasty tasty. Try it if you're looking for something fun. I used 2 gala apples and it only took about 7 minutes in the microwave to cook the apples. Fun!

Spaghetti with a Little Yoga for Flavor

I had a long day today, starting with arriving at work at 5:30AM and ending the day with a workout at my new gym and getting home for about 8:30PM. It was a long day, but a pretty satisfying and productive one.

Before I get to tomorrow's bento, I want to talk a little more about my new gym. I really like the place (which I think I've mentioned in a previous post). After my last meeting of the day, I headed off to the gym. They have great classes there, and this week, I decided to try the Svaroopa yoga class after my workout. I'm so glad I did. I've never been to such a relaxing class! I tend to carry around alot of tension, being the type A personality that I am. This class was just lovely. And I swear I walked out feeling an inch taller. We did these wonderfully gentle stretching exercises. I felt so much straighter and taller afterwards. I just can't say how nice it was! If you want to know more about Svaroopa Yoga, I found this site had a nice explanation and link to an article. Remember if it looks good to you, to consult your physician before starting any type of exercise.

Now, on to tomorrow's bento.

You've seen much of this before. I almost didn't post it but figured that was keeping with my goals. So here are several repeats thrown together.

Since I came home so late, I grabbed a small pack of meatballs out of the fridge. The leftovers with a bit of spaghetti underneath are tomorrow's lunch along with watermelon, grapes, and a salad with cucumbers, carrots, baby spinach, baby romaine, and balsamic vinaigrette on the side. No snack bentos to share since I packed the same thing as yesterday, except with sunflower seeds instead of soynuts.

Link - and - Balance

Currently, I am reading The Insulin Resistance Diet. The beginning of the book explains Insulin Resistance in layman's terms and has been one of the better explanations I have seen to date. Then the authors, a doctor and a registered dietician, go on to explain their "diet" for Insulin Resistance. It's not a diet really. Actually in alot of ways, it is similar to how diabetics eat.

The concept is that to keep one's insulin from spiking, as it does when you have insulin resistance, one should link carbs with proteins in order to balance the carb intake. This will keep insulin in a level state.

So, I've tested the concept for the last two days and it does seem to work. Using the ratio in the book, I enjoyed a few carbs at dinner tonite, which make a nice leftover for tomorrow. I must say, I'm not feeling that typical drag-me-down-to-sleep feeling like I normally do. So, we'll see how this works for me. I'm going to try the concept out until I can get an appt with a nutritionist.

On to tomorrow's bento:

First tier - Homemade mini hamburger (1 1/2) with ketchup packet and psuedo-mac 'n cheese. I call this psuedo b/c I didn't have any milk on hand. So it's made with a little margarine, shredded cheese, elbow macaroni, and ground pepper.

Second tier - Carrots & seedless cucumber with creamy french dressing for dipping. (YUM!)

Morning Snack: Granola with yogurt (blue container). Green container has about a tablespoon of soynuts to help balance out the granola/yogurt.

Afternoon Snack: Crackers & cheese.

Back to Bentos

This week has been a busy one at work. I had a day and a half of bentos as mentioned in my last post. After that, I had to eat out for work purposes (made sure to choose salads with light dressings, and such) and had light meals at home. No bentos to post until tonight.

This is leftovers from tonight's dinner. These are packed in two 380ml Lock 'n Lock containers. After consulting the Lunch in a Box website, I discovered a 600 ml box is what I'm supposed to use for lunch, according to the chart provided there. The ones I've been using have been a bit over 800ml. I'm going to keep those for when I have salads and such to bring, since they have more room.

In the meantime, I purchased two more Lock 'n Locks of the 380ml size. I'm using these as a makeshift 2-tier bento system. The combined ml of these boxes brings me close enough to the correct ml.

On to the food.....

In the "first tier" we have chicken basted with a fat free lime basil salad dressing by Maple Grove Farms of Vermont. It is tasty, but should have been marinated a bit longer. Probably could have used a little more black pepper too. But all in all, quite good. I used chicken thighs since they came out moister/more tender. I always seem to over cook chicken breasts. They come out dry and blech. To the left of the chicken is a sweet potato baked plain with a little margarine spray, salt, and black pepper added. I'm not one for too much added to a sweet potato. They are sweet enough to my taste buds without adding cinnamon and sugar.

The "second tier" includes a nice salad. This past week, I discovered baby lettuces. How tasty! This salad consists of baby romaine and spinach with baby carrots and seedless cucumber. The container has balsamic vingaigrette by the same brand that made the lime basil salad dressing. Tasty, tasty. I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow. Have to do some more cooking tomorrow so that I have some lunch for work this week!