Bento With Benefits Returns

Hey guys!

I'm so sorry I haven't been updating lately.

Although, despite not updating this blog, I have still been making Bento. Well, occasionally. For a couple more days after my last post, I was hard-core dedicated to this whole Bento thing. And then afterwards, I kind of had a mini falling out with myself and making these kinds of lunches. But then for all of last week, I've been totally all over this ^.^

When life is out of control, there is satisfaction in being on top of your lunch. I was thinking of just continuing with making my lunch and not posting pictures onto this blog or anything, but a couple of people have told me that I should start updating my blog again and have been really encouraging about it. So I've decided to get back into the swing of things! Also, blogging is a lot of fun. However, instead of posting new pictures every day, I'll most likely only post at the end of the week (due to general school busyness).

When I say busyness, I mean super busyness. On top of school that's already jam-packed with Lit summatives, overdue marketing assignments, Math homework, and trying to squeeze in time for my own hobbies, I've started a REAL company at school. It's super fun! But also super stressful. There are 12 employees and it is honestly a full-time job. Great experience, but it's time-sucking. HOWEVER I have gotten to meet tons of new and awesome people! One person I would like to highlight is someone named Josh who might be getting into bento blogging soon. That would make me so happy! We would be like bento-blog buddies, as cheesy as that sounds :D

Anyway. This post feels kind of naked without pictures, so here is a picture I took a while ago (like when I first started blogging) but never posted.

Lower Tier

 Puto/Filipino rice cakes. I had to cut them in half though to get them all to fit. Chin Po is a really small bento box :/ I wonder if they're all like this? I'll most likely be getting a new box some time in April, so hopefully I'll find out then :)

Upper Tier

Once again, there are four components in this tier. Spinach, red grapes, perogies (I forget what kind) and lumpia. Honestly, I made this lunch so long ago, I can't remember enough to comment on anything. 

So yes, I'm super excited to start updating this blog again. Bento is honestly so much fun and there's such a sense-of-accomplishment you get when you finish making your lunches. If you've ever thought about making bento but are not 100% sure if you're down with trying it out, my advice to you is to DO IT!!! :)

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 ^.^