Hello Again! (Bento #27)

I was sick last week and only made one bento.

It consisted of spaghetti, carrots with dressing, grape & pineapple skewers, and a piece of dove chocolate.

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.

The First Bento

My new bento obsession came at an opportune time. First, I was laid up at home with a cold and bored out of my skull. I'm not a person who relaxes well feeling I must always be doing something. Second, I'd been giving serious thought to rejoining some type of gym for the whole do-your-health-good thing. Finally, I'm just sick and tired of eating out all the time.







Now, any type of meal is tough to do when one doesn't know how to cook. For anyone who stumbles across this blog and thinks, "Hey, I can't cook either! How did you learn?," I don't have any tips to share. I'm still learning. I some great cookbooks here. But I've found it really hard to find a good basic cookbook for the cookbook challenged. Until I got the book pictured right from PBS. This is the book that has the boiled egg recipe I mentioned in my first post.





So, now I can bento to my little hearts desire. All the bento sites I've read talk about the bento boxes used and containers they have. I don't have all that (remember, we're only 2 weeks old here). Besides, I'm not sure if I want all different bento boxes. I want to be able to microwave and so many seem incapable of that. So, Lock & Lock is what I use. Be careful those out there who are reading this and think, "hmmmm, i might try lock & lock." They can be an obsession in and of themselves.





On to the first ever bento...(don't laugh)!







Okay, let me say right now, aesthetics will probably never be my strong suit. My goal here is to pack lunches that are more interesting and a wee bit healthier than the normal fast food fare I partake of. Whenever, I try to arrange things it takes me 3 times as long. Just like my website took 8 years to complete. Not because I didn't know what I was doing...but because I couldn't decide on a design! LOL!

So, in the bento....Spaghetti and meatballs (meatball recipe from above referenced book). Peaches in an aluminum foil cup, salad, croutons, and dressing in the little blue bottle.