Bentos #5 and 6: Eggs and chaos tots!

(So... in case anyone's confused by the numbering, if I pack the same thing for Dante and I, I call it one bento.  If I pack different things, I count it as two.)

So today was bento #5 and the end of a FULL WEEK OF BENTO AWESOMENESS!!!

Dante's bento: Top Layer: Hard boiled egg and egg salad sandwich on Pepperidge Farm Italian bread, which fit amazingly well in his box.  I was very surprised!  Bottom layer: Apple slices, tomato slices, tater tots, and ketchup.  If you look closely, you can see one of the carrot sauce bottles hiding in the bottom of the box.  It's actually full of salt, for sprinkling on the tomato and egg!  Dante said it worked very well, so score one for the creative repurposing!!  Woo hoo!

My bento: (I had an epiphany!  Just because the boxes CAME all blue/red doesn't mean they have to STAY that way!  I mean... they're the same size/shape, so I can mix and match!!) Tater tots, with a super-cute blue flower cup of pickles and tomatoes to use to make chaos tots (I picked up ketchup and mustard packets at the little cafe downstairs from my office).  The cheese for the tots is in the bottom layer, along with some salad, again with garlic powder and sea salt.  Slightly more colorful today, which is good!

We also did some experimenting this morning, since I worked a later shift today.  We made oat-nigiri (onigiri made with oatmeal instead of rice!  Idea courtesy of One More Bento Fan's Flickr page).  Basically, cooked oatmeal with a little less water than normal to make it super-sticky, draped a piece of plastic wrap over my pancake puff pan, put a spoonful of oatmeal in it and squished it into a cup-shape with wet fingers, put fillings in the well (PBJ, dried cranberries and pecans, apples pecans and brown sugar, and maple/brown sugar), put a bit more oatmeal on top, then used the plastic wrap to squish all the oatmeal into a solid blob and do some rough shaping and stuck them in the fridge.  Then, in an attempt to reduce the sticky texture, we fried them lightly in a skillet to give them just a bit of a crust.  Consensus was, though, that the texture was still less than ideal and maybe next time we'd try deep-frying them, donut hole style (Dante's suggestion).  And IMPORTANT NOTE: two of these is PLENTY.  Oh my goodness are they filling.  Neither one of us wanted to move after eating them.  I took a picture, but it seems to have been corrupted on my camera, so no pics of the oatnigiri.  Bummer.   

Anywho... Happy bento!

Rowan

Weekend Update!

Ok, so all sorts of goings-on around here this weekend.  Most notably, Chloe came to visit!  YAY!

Part of the excitement with Chloe's visit was giving her her bento boxes and then going on a bento shopping adventure!  We made out like bandits.  :-D  (Most of) my/Dante's scores are in the following pic (Click for a bigger view):

From left: pirate cupcake set (cups and picks), plain red silicone bake cups, blue flower silicone cups, green turtle silicone cups, two kinds of flowery paper cupcake cups, three awesomely cute sets of small easter eggs that are that much *gesture* too tall for the boxes (curses!  Foiled again.), carrot powdered candies to be emptied and repurposed for sauce, zoo-shaped pasta, chopsticks, plastic picks/mini forks, bamboo mini-forks, and awesome mini silverware from World Market, all arranged on some bandanas... I mean... furoshiki? lol.  Ok, so either to be used as furoshiki or sewn into bags.  We'll see how coordinated/ambitious I'm feeling. 

After shopping, we also had to have some crafty-time to make bento accesories from some of the supplies we got.  So, some cutting, sewing, gluing, and tying later, here are a couple of our awesome pieces:

Chloe's awesome bento set- bag, chopsticks/silverware cone, and band.

More pics on her deviantArt page here: Chloe-alexandre on dA

My furoshiki-wrapped box.  Yes, that's tie-dye and smilies.  :-D  

(blurry- darn it.  Need better lighting around here)

My bento corset.  he he he.  I was playing with my eyelet setter and ribbon and... 

well... one thing led to another and you can see the results.

On the food front, Dante made an AWESOME dinner on Friday, but I believe that will be post separately in the near future, so I'll leave it at "It was AMAZING."  Same on the sushi he made Saturday.  In other food news, We had Chaos tots for dinner on Friday, which... if you haven't had them, are fan-freaking-tastic.  Seriously.  They're a take on the Denny's "Taking Back Bacon Burger Fries", which were only on the menu for a short while.  Basically, Tater tots with cooked burger, cheddar, tomatoes, pickles, ketchup, and mustard on top (See below), and boy are they delicious.

Our other noteworthy foodie delight this weekend was this beauty: BAC-BLT: Brisket  American (cheese) Cheddar Bacon Lettuce and Tomato.  VERY good.  The brisket was marinated Mexican-style (more on that later!) and the meats and cheeses were grilled on the bread panini-style (on a George Foreman Grill), then the veggies were added after it came off the Foreman.

And finally, super-exciting:  Mom got herself a blog too!!  Go give her some stalker-love at Bento Boxes and Other Distractions.

With that, I think it's time for bed.  Good night, and happy cooking!

Rowan