the american way

chicken salad sandwich with cucumbers

ham and cheese skewers, carrot sticks

after all these japanese lunches, i thought shmantz would be excited to have an american bento. apparently not. now he thinks i'm mad at him and i'm punishing him with this american food. good thing my bento looks exactly the same. can you imagine what a fit he would've thrown if i had packed myself some japanese food?! *phew*

i used the leftover chicken from this week's donburi to make the chicken salad. i 4got to buy celery, so i only added kewpie and pepper to the chicken. sad salad. but the cucumber gave it a nice crunch. i think i should've turned the croissants on their sides for the picture so you could see how pretty it looked. hah! oh well, maybe next time. oh wait, no next time. you probably won't be seeing another sandwich again. if you do, i'll be sure to also post a picture of shmantz so you can see how sad he looks.

last day of summer

cucumber, ham and egg on somen

romaine lettuce, shrimp and veggie gyoza

summer is quickly coming to an end, so i figured i better get a somen bento in here fast! according to shmantz, summer ended a couple dayz ago. *boohoo* 

i packed the somen sauce in a separate container with a bunch of sliced green onions. i thought shmantz would enjoy dipping the somen traditionally. i wuz going to slice up the romaine leaves and add it to the somen, but i couldn't figure out where to put it. so i just stuck it under the gyoza. if the leaves were bigger, i could've had them sticking out of the bento and looking all fancy like those japanese pictures. i alwayz wondered how they closed their bento bako up with all sorts of food all up in the air. you know what i'm saying? sure you do. thx.

not something i would eat...

cucumber chicken donburi on rice with wasabi mayo dressing (not pictured) 

tamagoyaki, shumai, goma shio broccoli

i think one of the good things about making bento is that i can make things that shmantz likes instead of things we both like. this donburi recipe is from the donburi book. i packed the wasabi mayo dressing in a separate container so the cucumbers wouldn't get all soggy. i'm not a fan of wasabi, so i never made this recipe b4. however, shmantz loves wasabi, so i thought he would enjoy trying this donburi out. success!

mechakucha recipe for goma shio broccoli:

blanch broccoli. drain. sprinkle with goma shio.

i've received a question from one of my three readers: "what do you mean when you say 'blanch'?" i am no expert, so i don't know what it really means to blanch vegetables. but when i say it, this is what i mean:

bring a pot of water to a full boil 

(i'll usually throw some salt in the pot for flavoring)

throw in your vegetables

boil the vegetables until they are just cooked

do not overcook!

pour the vegetables into a mesh strainer

run under cold water until vegetables have cooled

the end

the miso experiment

kimchee and rice

miso pork, edamame

yay! the shmantz bento week is over! j/j. maybe he will try again soon. to make him feel better, i let him choose what kind of rice he wanted 2day. he chose plain rice with kimchee. delicious.

the miso pork is from mom's bento book. it wuz my first time cooking with miso, so i wuz a little nervous. i bought red miso instead of white miso. i figured the red would go well with the pork and beef recipes i have. i think white would go better with fish recipes. you know, kinda like wine. pfffft. i just made that up. maybe i should've called mom for advice. but i really enjoyed the pork! almost as good as dad's miso beer chicken. heehee.

all the japanese moms seem to skewer edamame instead of sending their kids off to skool with the pods, so i decided to try it out. plus, i got to make use of some new skewers. shmantz and i got these from shirokiya way back in april. i think it looks a lot nicer this way, ya?

yay for freezers

the nice thing about having tons of stuff stocked up in the freezer and pantry is that i don't have to buy lots of food every week. i only have to make four bento this week, so 2day's shopping list is pretty puny:

4oz pork

2 slices of ham from the deli

1 seedless cucumber

romaine lettuce

my fault

peeman chicken skewers

cylinder onigiri

the menu printout got cut off, so this bento is my fault. on the bright side, shmantz followed the menu correctly 2day! he even tried some fancy patterning with the onigiri. after taking the picture, he realized that there wuz lots of empty space. "i found some chopped up chard, so i sprinkled that around the onigiri." of course, that wuz the chard that wuz supposed to be used in the donburi on wednesday.

mechakucha recipe for the peeman chicken skewers:

cut some chicken and a nicely colored bell pepper into bite-size pieces. season with salt and whatever delicious spices you have around the house. i used italian herbs and pepper. brown in olive oil. remove from pan and cool. skewer.

me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! i can't believe this is all you packed for lunch! HAHAHAHAHAHA! weren't you hungry? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

shmantz: i came home from skool early.

me: HAHAHAHAHA!

tonkatsu filler

carrots, tonkatsu, asparagus

kimchee pork donburi on rice

i guess shmantz wanted lots of pork 2day. he didn't know what to fill up all the empty spaces with, so he just threw in the tonkatsu, which wuz supposed to be his dinner. what did he eat for dinner? a cliff bar x.x

he loved the kimchee pork donburi ^.^