4/27/11 - Week/end recap

Trying to figure out when to start. Last Wednesday I wasnt feeling well. Also, we got lunch at work, so I didnt pack anything. In addition, I didnt eat dinner either. Thursday, same thing. Bought some pizza at the local pizzeria and called it quits. Got home, fell asleep, skipped dinner.
Friday, we didnt work, so I tried to make breakfast (pancakes), called it quits and went to my parents' house. Worked Saturday, zombie'd around on Sunday, and Monday, I packed a sandwich at my parents' house before heading in to work.

Tuesday, I THOUGHT we were back to regular schedule. I made lunch. I made dinner. It wasnt the best, but it was edible.

Lunch included pasta noodles with veggies, and some more veggies on the side:

Then today for lunch, we have potatoes, boiled eggs, and some broccoli to fill in the gaps:

I am feeling majorly like poop. I took a nap yesterday, woke up totally wiped out, went back to sleep a few hours later, and spent about 3 hours in the AM awake tossing and turning with a sore throat, a fever and a headache. Fell asleep at about... 3:30am. Lucky me. So yeah, right now I am in survival mode. I want to make my lunches filling. I'll worry about making them presentable some other time...

4/20/11 - Green snacks

I just noticed just how much green was inolved in this bento...

This is actually just a snack/pre-lunch bento, since we're getting lunch at the office. It has juicy pears, carrots, cucumbers and broccoli. I added yogurt for the pears and ranch for the veggies in separate containers.

4/19/11 - Cheesy Potatoes & Eggs

Nothing fancy, again. :/

Potatoes with cheesy sauce, two boiled eggs, mixed greens salad with egg bits. It was more of a I-need-to-buy-food lunch.

I've found it is hard to make messy food look good... or any sort of potatoes.

4/15/11 - Carbs

Pretty simple lunch; pasta salad and roasted potatoes with broccoli. Can you say, carb overload?

I am really liking these one-tier boxes. They're a lot easier to organize and look more put together. I packed this meal yesterday just as I finished dinner, because I think that the warm weather is messing up with my sleeping schedule and I end up hitting the snooze button too many times before rolling out of bed.

I think that what I am needing is a bit of guidance... so I might go bento-book shopping soon. Before I started playing with bentos, lunches would be straight from leftovers (like this one). So the thought of cooking two different meals for, well, two different parts of the day is sinking in, but very slowly.

Anyone got any recommendations? I know slovakiasteph has been checking out Yum Yum Bento Box, and that's definitely on my list.

Rice stars and coleslaw

Kind of funky looking photo, but I also took one with a real camera and will probably upload it tomorrow or tonight. This lunch contains a boiled egg, cheese fence sticks covering the eggs, two rice stars topped with cheese flowers, coleslaw, and broccoli to secure everything in place.

I have been really craving coleslaw, so I went ahead and made some with the last of my cabbage. I ended up with too much shredded carrot (not that it is a bad thing), but it doesnt look like the typical coleslaw. It also doesnt have the same sauce, as most recipes I found had either too many ingredients, or different ingredients throughout the different recipes. So I stuck with the most prevalent ingredients, didnt measure (as usual) and it came out interesting. It was a little tangy from the vinegar and chopped onion, but overall, pretty good.

Egg noodles and veggies

What's in it: Boiled egg, carrots, egg noodle pasta with broccoli, mushrooms and onions with cheese flowers.

Well, the new supplies kind of intimidated me. So yesterday I went and attempted to buy general food supplies, since I'm between grocery shopping trips. I didn't get most of what I wanted (ew, expensive pre-Spring 'sales'), so I will try that again today. I had all the right intentions of waking up extra early and making some rice. But I got caught up in one of those dreams that are just too good to miss. (In case you were wondering, it included dinosaurs and epic battling... sigh, I'm just a big kid.)

So since I got ready relatively late, I decided to pack leftovers, but I just HAD to use the cutters. And oh my goodness, I love them! So fun, so easy to use. The cheese was slightly hard to punch out without breaking them, but overall, I think they might very well be my favorite purchased item.

I wanted to make a rainy day bento, since today it will be raining cats, dogs, cattle, dragons and meteorites, with green beans and rice and cheese clouds, but couldnt find affordable edible-looking beans.

I also take back what I said about the size of the boxes. They might be small, but they are kind of deep, so they hold a decent amount of food. This lunch was thrown together in less than 15min. I was being coy about not wanting to use all of the pretty supplies in front of my roommates. Yet, anyway. :)

New Bento Supplies!

First of all, this is like Christmas. I was too excited to wait until Saturday night/Sunday morning to get my packages, so I drove home... and there they were!

Courtesy of AllThingsForSale.com

Courtesy of FitJPStore.com. 

I combined my allowed budget with April's misc. money to buy these items. Together, they were $80 (yikes!), but I suppose I wont be buying any more any time soon, and I will get a lot of use out of them, so they sort of even out... I am especially excited with the food cutters. Though if I must say something...

They are TINY! Wow. Everything's a lot smaller than I imagined. I guess I should've known, but the picks are super small and cute, and the bento boxes do not look that much bigger... so we'll see how packing those go. The yellow and other pink boxes are 480ml. The natural pink is 560ml. The huge one in the back (came with a lid broken :( Hoping it can be replaced) is 900ml. It seems too big, but the other two seem rather small to me. Well, considering my red and green 2-tier bentos are about 580 combined... (I'll post comparative photos later.)

Anyway! Yeah. The picks, the boxes, the utensils, everything seems so much smaller to me. But I'm excited to get to use them. (Especially the cutters, ha!)