Bento Corner

Umbrella cat bento with pork fried rice, broccoli salad, and fruit.

It has been raining so much the last couple of days that I thought this bento would be appropriate. My daughter said it reminded her of the cats outside getting drenched in the rain. The recipes for the fried rice and salad are up on the recipe page. The cat is made of cheese and the umbrella is made from scrambled egg I used in the rice.

My daughter got her first two wheeler bike yesterday (with training wheels). She was riding it around the house last night since it's too wet to ride it outside. Can't wait for the weather to clear up...I think the kids are going stir crazy indoors.

Recipe for Pork Fried Rice:

1/3 cup chopped up left over pork

1/3 cup chopped onion

1 egg scrambled

1 small packet of ajitsuke nori cut into small pieces

1 cup of left over rice

soy sauce, salt, pepper

oil

Fry chopped onion in a frying pan with oil until slightly wilted. Add the left over rice (I had frozen rice so I heated it in the microwave and used semi-frozen rice) and used the back of a wooden spoon to break up the rice and mixed it with the onion. Then add the pork and scrambled egg. Add soy sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. Turn off the heat and add the nori and incorporate into the rice.

Recipe for Broccoli Salad:

½ cup broccoli stem cut into matchstick pieces

¼ cup carrots cut into matchstick pieces

2 tablespoons of raisins

¼ cup cut up apples

Creamy sesame dressing

Mix broccoli, carrots, raising, and apples. Add dressing to taste.

Sake bento with moon and stars.

I suppose this would have looked better with a nori ben background. But I had salmon left over from Saturday night and needed to use it up. The salmon is lightly salted, broiled and then flaked over rice. The aqua container includes mayonnaise for dipping the broccoli. The orange stars are not carrots, but yams! I thought I was buying sweet potatoes, but since they were right next to the yams, I think one yam got placed in the sweet potato bin. Yam stars with apple slices are placed next to the broccoli. And quail egg to represent the moon.

Had quite a night with hardly any sleep. Not sure what is going on with the boy, but he is certainly not allowing his parents to sleep...To top it off, we lost one hour of precious sleep with daylight savings...which also leads to bad pictures because there is not enough natural light to take decent photographs. Why hello, Monday.

Okra ohitashi from the frozen food section. Just place in the bento from the freezer and in a few hours it will defrost to room temperature.

Frozen kimpira gobou. Just like the okra, place in the bento frozen and it will be defrosted in a few hours. Oh, the convenience of Japanese food!