I’ve been slacking on posting bento, but not on packing them! I make my bento the night before and usually take a picture of it at work (love that fluorescent lighting). By the time I get home, it’s time to make dinner and go to bed.

Jan 14th – Rice; Vegetables and Pork stir-fried from New Years; cabbage tsukemono; kohaku namasu

Jan 20th – Another leftovers bento. Milk tea pocky; vegetable/pork stir-fry; kohaku namasu; cabbage tsukemono; roll and leftover lobster macaroni and cheese from Jackson’s Mighty Fine Lucky Lounge. The mac and cheese went mostly uneaten.

Jan 27th – I had class after work this day, so I packed my food in a cupcake box that had come with a purchase earlier in the week. ham, spinach and cheese sandwich; gingerbread truffle; fruit salad; baked chips. This was too much food since half of the sandwich, the truffle, and the fruit salad went uneaten.

Jan 28th – kohaku namasu; homemade applesauce; milk chocolate truffle; rice with sesame seeds; lop cheung cooked in ginger-chile sauce.

Jan 29th – Rice; spinach; grilled tofu; homemade applesauce; harry and david soft caramel; thai chicken dumpling; lettuce; random “Asian chicken”. A lot of this food was from the Whole Foods prepared food bar, which I have now concluded that I do not like. The caramel was delicious!

Feb 2nd – I had a meeting off-site this day, so I wanted something that was small and I wouldn’t have to carry around all day after lunch. sandwich on challah bread; strawberries and pineapple; homemade applesauce; salt and vinegar chips. This was a lot of food, so the chips were eaten later as a snack. The pink snack box is really an onigiri container!

Feb 3rd – Another challah sandwich; pineapple slices; red velvet cupcake from the bakery in my building.

Feb 4th – Milk tea pocky, coconut cupcake; dark chocolate truffle; tamagoyaki; rice with black sesame seeds; lop cheung; pineapple chunks; homemeade apple sauce. This was so much food! I ate the sausage, two out of three of the tamagoyaki and most of the rice. Nothing else!

Bento Concept &  KaraChiwie have finished this world tour, but another one will start soon.
January’s stop was Morocco and February’s is France.

Besides the movie Ratatouille, France brings to mind desserts and picnics. For this bento I made a sort of Cordon Bleu-style chicken and packed it in a sandwich box. The inside of the chicken is filled with a little mustard, ham and provolone cheese. The bottom part is filled with chocolates I received from my sister for an early Valentine’s day present, a slice of a homemade roll cake I made (more on that later), two Nilla wafers, and the last of the pickled vegetables from New Years. This was too much food and sadly, I didn’t have enough room for all the chocolates.

I have bento from between last month’s world stop and this month’s, but I haven’t had time to post them! As it is, I’m always late for the Tour du Monde!

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Bento Concept &  KaraChiwie are still traveling around the world with bento.
December was Brazil and January is Morocco. When thinking about Morocco, the first things I think about are preserved lemons, mounds of spices, and tagine. While many of spices are sold in stores around me, and some gourmet shops even sell tagines, I chose to make couscous, the main grain of Morocco. The couscous is lemon and spinach, with some lemon slices on top. Chicken is the most common protein in Morocco, but I chose to pair it with some leftover fish I had. To emulate the tagine’s traditional triangle shape, I split the couscous into triangles. One is the couscous and the other triangle is tomato rice.

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Happy New Year! (I’m a week late in saying this of course…)
How did you celebrate your New Year?

My family celebrates the Chinese New Year (on February 14th this year), but we celebrate it on New Years day since that’s when the family is together and available. On this day, my Grandma cooks a delicious feast. The side dishes vary every year, but we always have Roast Duck, Pork, and Stuffing (made with liver). It’s my favorite time of the year because I love all these foods! This year we also had vegetables (carrot, jicama, cauliflower, broccoli) with chicken, pickled cabbage, and rice. I arrived to dinner late, so there may have been other things that got eaten up! Dessert was green tea ice cream and some coconut cream pie.

I made sure to get first dibs on all the yummy leftovers. I especially like the pickled vegetables my Grandma made. She spent the whole year of 2009 pickling them for New Years! My first bento of 2010 was basically a recreation of this New Year’s spread. More on that later~

Jan 7th – My dad got me a Wall-E bento for Christmas/New Years from Japan!! This was my first time using it.
Pocky; pickled cabbage; stuffing; vegetables; rice (all leftovers from our New Years dinner)

Jan 8th – More New Years food! This salad was part of the Washoku Warriors New Years Challenge.
Spicy Duck; kohaku namasu; rice; milk chocolate yoku moku cookie.

The last two months of 2009 saw a sharp decrease in bento-making. This was due to many meetings and get-togethers at work where food was provided (or I was traveling and it was easier to purchase lunch) and lack of time and food. My boyfriend and I moved to a new apartment in the middle of December and it took us a while to get back onto our feet and into a routine where I feel comfortable with my new commute to make bento.

November and December also saw some weird schedules in terms of trips, holidays, vacation, and snow days. Some of the bento I made were listed in separate posts because they were part of Washoku Warriors or Tour du Monde. Oh, and I was also quite lazy and took my boyfriend up on his offer when he volunteered to make me sandwiches for lunch.

Nov 5th – Leftover hamburger; blueberry jell-o; macaroni and cheese; glazed carrots.

Nov 20th – Onigiri filled with spicy bean sprouts; okara cookies from Kyotofu in New York

Dec 7th – Leftovers from Thanksgiving and other dinners: spaghetti with turkey meatballs; miso glazed roasted sweet potatoes; brown sugar acorn squash and sweet potato; peppermint “bark”

Diana from Bento Concept and her friend KaraChiwie are still traveling around the world with bento.
November was USA and December was Brazil! I researched Brazilian foods a bit and learned about a dish called feijoada. Feijoada stems from the word for bean (feijão), and is seen as the national dish. It is made with beans and salted pork and is often served with rice. Since it is traditionally time consuming, it is consumed only occasionally, and always at lunch time. Perfect for bento, right?

My feijoada consists of rice, salted pork (kaluha from hawai’i!), and a mixture of beans, corn, lime juice, and some edamame. I also added a chocolate cake on one and some crackers and home-made hot hummus to another. Feijaoda is served with hot sauce on the side, so I swirled some more hot sauce into the hummus.

My pork made a lot of portions, so thats why there are three bento made from it. But the bento all share the colors of Brazil!

December’s Washoku Warriors challenge was New Years (O-Shougatsu). We were given the option of three recipes: New Year’s Salad (紅白なます), Fiery Parsnips (きんぴら), and “Smashed” Burdock (たたき牛蒡). I chose to do the first two because the process for the gobou seemed a bit time consuming in comparison to the others.

I made the kinpira for my family’s New Year celebration on January 1 (more on this later). Everything seemed to be going really well and looked like it might even taste good, until I added in the soy sauce. Right when the soy sauce hit the pan, it caramelized and made the whole pan give off a burnt smell. The parnips tasted fine themselves, with a nice root-y flavor, but I couldn’t get over that burnt smell.

I just made the namasu and I love it! The recipe is very easy and it’s a dish that most everyone will like. The fruit in this salad mixes with the “dressing” (or pickling sauce) and gives it a nice pleasant sweetness that reminds me more of dessert than an appetizer salad. I will definitely make this again because it doesn’t have many ingredients and it only takes a few minutes to make. This makes a great accompaniment to a meal or a nice, healthy bento-filler.

I’m glad that I finally found a recipe from Washoku that I absolutely love and it has common ingredients and is very easy to make!

Kohaku Namasu (New Year’s Salad)

• ~3.5 inches of daikon, shredded (yield ~7oz)
• ~1 inch of carrot, shredded (yield ~2oz)
• two measurements of 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. Sweet and Sour mixture
  • 1/4 c. plum vinegar, 2 tbsp each of sugar, dashi, and water
• 1 small dried apricot (or fruit of choice), shredded
• 1/2 tsp. yuzu peel or lemon zest

Peel and slice the vegetables. Put the carrot and daikon in separate bowls, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp. of salt each. Allow to sweat for 2-3 minutes and then press between fingers, gradually increasing pressure. Rinse briefly with cold water and drain all liquid. Combine vegetables and fruit and toss to combine. Drizzle the sweet and sour mixture over top, gently toss, and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour.

This salad is full of vitamins and is said to bring good luck because red and white are auspicious colors (red carrots grow in areas of Japan around the time this dish would be made). Kohaku Namasu actually means “red-white” and “(vegetables) pickled in vinegar”. The strands of vegetables also look like ribbons, which connote prosperity, but also longevity!

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