Weekly Bento Recap 1

Monday: Salmon Monday

This is the third week I've had salmon in my bento box on a Monday. I am considering dubbing Mondays "Salmon Mondays."

Bottom tier: Lebanese rice. In one of my last posts, I mentioned that I wouldn't be posting again until Wednesday. Well, I ended up posting a couple days later, on the Sunday. I've been dying to make this Lebanese rice recipe I found on Pinterest for a while now, and decided I would bring it to school as part of my Bento lunch. I also ended up writing a recipe review of it ^.^  

Upper Tier: Consists of leftover grilled salmon, strawberries, broccoli and pork shao mai (dumplings). In the past, I've only brought one little slice thingy of salmon, but I found I was still hungry afterwards. So this time, I've packed two into the container. (Well, technically, the salmon is one whole slice, because I have to cut it in half anyway to fit into Chin Po)

I very much enjoyed this Bento. Would definitely make again. 

Tuesday: American Bento

I've mentioned this before, but lately I've been wanting to get another box. I love my panda bento--IT'S SO CUTE <3 BUT trying to fit things into a nice neat circle gets really old really fast. I've kind of wanted some variety. While I was tearing my house apart, looking for my silicone baking cups because someone had moved them (-_-) , I stumbled across one of my mom's (many) tupperwares. And guess what. IT WAS DIVIDED INTO BENTO PORTIONS. There was the 4 parts carb, 2 parts protein, and then the 1 part for fruits and veggies respectively. 

I was at Dollarama the other day, and I saw a bunch of toothpicks for sale with little images attached to the ends. I've always wanted to get those toothpicks with the little plastic panda heads on the end ^.^ But the paper chicks and eggs were also cute (also in the spirit of Easter), so I decided to get them. 

(Left to right): Flower ham  (without the radish), 2 hotdogs (cut to fit), 2 buns, broccoli, and strawberries.

This should have been better than it was. Like, theoretically, this meal is delicious. I love hotdogs; I love strawberries. I can tolerate broccoli. But you know how sometimes people who you're eating with/certain situations can spoil a meal? Yeah. That happened. Also, I thought I was okay with broccoli since I ate it on Monday and was perfectly fine with it, but I didn't finish them all on Tuesday. Maybe because of the vaguely-aforementioned lunch circumstance? The pink container contains ketchup (I packed a knife to spreed onto the hotdogs), and the green container contains cheese for the broccoli (which melted in the caf microwave to the point of not even existing anymore). 

Wednesday: "Soup" Dawg (haha im so funny) 

This is what I had for lunch today. It's also my last bento for the week. There's no school on Friday, and I typically go out for lunch every Thursday (or hit the caf). 

Lower tier: Pancit! It's a Filipino dish my mom makes once in a while. I don't think this is a good picture of pancit because it's supposed to have canton noodles (She forgot to put them in) and have a bucket load of vegetables and shrimp I won't eat, and waaaay more chicken. But when I was scooping this into the container, I was trying my hardest to avoid all the vegetables (while also trying to get carrots and parsnips, because those are okay and add texture) and as a result got mostly noodles. Just Pinterest pancit and a lot more images (of better quality) will pop up ^.^

Upper tier: M&M Meat Shop's spicy breaded chicken breast cut into two. Strawberries, and one shao mai. 

Soup: Lipton noodle soup. I made it for the first time the night before, but I think I put too much water in. My mom makes it better than I do. The soup wasn't as good as I thought it would be and as a result, it made an awesome meal (because the two tiers were DELICIOUS) kind of okay. It also didn't help that my friend spilled some of the soup onto her new (white) shoes. I didn't end up finishing it. If I were to bring soup again, it would probably be wedding soup (brought it last week and I only have good things to say about it). I would post a picture, but the lighting is really bad and it doesn't look very appetizing haha. Maybe next time.

Thanks so much for reading this post! Next week, I'll also only be posting three bento lunches (since Monday is a holiday and Thursdays are not bento days). Also, remember that person from my company in marketing class who I mentioned two posts ago and is considering getting into Bento? Well, yesterday he bought a Bento box off ebay! I'm so happy! My dream of having a bento buddy might become a thing ^.^

Back-to-School Bento

If you've read my last post, you'll know that this is my first attempt at bento. I thought it would turn out a lot worse, so I'm actually quite pleased with the results ^.^

Lower Tier

At first, I was planning on using steamed rice for the carby bit in the bottom tier, but my sister and I made Hard Rock Cafe mac & cheese for lunch and there were leftovers so I figured...why not? Normally, we make it with cavatappi pasta. The picture on the left shows it made with elbow macaroni and (several dashes of) cayenne pepper.

Upper Tier

 There are four different foods in this tier: Grilled salmon (my absolute favourite!), steamed spinach, baked potato, and Filipino spring rolls (also known as lumpia). I figured that instead of including fruit, I would just double up on the vegetables since I normally don't get enough of those in my diet anyway.

Everything was so delicious! The salmon was not as warm as I wanted it to be, but I was too lazy to go back downstairs to the caf to reheat it. But other than that, I would say that this bento was definitely successful. One of my favourite lunches I've had all year ^.^ In terms of taste, I give it 5/5. I don't think I can rate it in terms of aesthetics though (I'd probably be pretty biased); someone else would have to do that. 

I'm not sure how filling this was, though. Like, I wasn't hungry until I got home, but that could be because my friend brought some kind of Greek cake to school and shared it with me. That was awesome too, by the way. Overall, I think that this bento was good considering the weather. It was quite cold. My phone said the lowest was -29 C (not sure if that includes windchill or not, though?). My toes spent the majority of the morning defrosting from the hour-long bus ride. All the foods in the bento were warm foods, making the day feel extra fuzzy ^.^