Today my little girl, well she is not that little any more, went on a school field trip to a museum. We had instructions that they had to wear their red shirts and pack a disposable lunch. Over the summer, in anticipation of these types of events, I had my sister in law send me these adorable plastic bento boxes. They are perfect for field trips, plane rides or an average picnic date :-).
Today’s bento has a variety of food: gyoza, musubi, broccoli and carrots, oranges, kiwi and blackberries.
Happy Friday Everyone! Whew… I’m so happy that it’s Friday. 🙂 Yesterday Ms. Little Bubbles got happy musubi for lunch. As you can see, we made hapa rice (brown and white rice mixed together). It kind of makes the musubi men look like they have freckles or sun spots. The chicken is parmesan crusted chicken that I made from chicken tenders. No real recipe to share on this one. Just bought a box of Shake n’ Bake and added parmesan cheese.
Tomorrow is our school gala. I’m excited as it will be a night of fun for me and the hubs. The silent auction for the gala ended yesterday and I think my bentos went for $300!!! Whoohoo! 🙂 Thank you to the mommy who bid on them… I’m excited to make bentos for Ms. Little Bubbles and her classmate!
Spam Musubi
On Wednesday, Ms. Little Bubbles went on a field trip with her class to see a Christmas play. As parents, we are instructed to send our children to school with brown bag lunches (meaning, it can easily be thrown away after the kids eat their lunches). In the past, I’ve put her lunch in plastic take out containers and put it in a brown paper bag. But, for some reason the containers still came home. 
So, this time I thought I’d make her a simple spam musubi with eggs and use an onigiri wrapper to jazz it up. The onigiri wrapper is cute because it features an animal, and comes with cute animal ears. 🙂
Contents: Spam musubi (the bag also included applesauce and crackers, but I didn’t take a picture of that.)
Salmon Musubi
This bento was inspired by a fellow bento blogger – Hapa Bento. Hapa Bento created a back-to-school bento contest with a similar Elpha Bento Box as the prize. I saw her post and it inspired me to put a similar bento together for Ms. Little Bubbles. This bento was super easy to put together and I did it in a flash. No really… I did. And BTW, I love this bento box! It’s the perfect size for two onigiri and can hold a lot, yet it’s so tiny. 🙂
For Ms. Little Bubbles, I made her two onigiri and placed salmon in the middle. My mother-in-law made the salmon with honey, mayo and furikake. I know, it sounds strange, but it was soooo good! Even my Little Sweet Pea ate it! The bottom tier contains fruit, carrots and Japanese biscuit sticks.
Contents: Salmon onigiri, plutos, strawberries, carrots and Japanese biscuits
Three Tiny Little Spam Musubis
I have to admit, this bento did take me longer than a usual bento. 🙂 Today was Ms. Little Bubbles first day of school, and I wanted to give her something special. She loves spam musubi and I thought I’d let her have this bento as a treat. We usually don’t eat spam (if you are not from Hawaii, don’t gross out! LOL!), but as a special treat, I thought why not. I planned on prepping all the food last night and just assemble this morning, but I was so tired, I fell asleep. So, I was summoned by the alarm clock at 5 a.m. to fry the spam and make the tamagoyaki. Now, the tamagoyaki gave me some problems (notice you are not seeing a side shot). I definitely think I need a new pan.
Last week I picked up some shiso leaves and didn’t have a chance to use them until today. I usually use lettuce leaves as garnish, but I wanted to venture off and try something different. Shiso leaves are typically used in sushi dishes and is commonly found in Japanese food.
Contents: Spam musubi, shiso leaves, tamagoyaki, crackers, strawberries and plutos
Miss Musubi and Her Little Ones
The world of blogging is fun and exciting, but I’m still trying to figure out the best way to post pictures and posts. The easiest way I can think of is from my iPhone. But I can’t figure out how to add the “www.loveinabento.com” on the picture in an easy way. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a lazy bento blogger. LOL! I’m sure there are bloggers out there that bring out their big gun cameras, but I just don’t have time for that. My kids Christmas pictures are still on the camera, and it’s August! So, all the photos you see on this blog have been taken from my iPhone, thus it’s the easiest way for me to post things. Now I just need to figure out a fast way to put the words on the picture.
As for this bento, it’s Miss Musubi again. Although, this time she has little babies made out of hot dogs wrapped with an egg and nori sheet. The eggs were made in a tamagoyaki pan and right after I was done, I put a nori sheet on it and then rolled it around a hot dog. I learned how to make tamagoyaki by watching You Tube videos and looking at other bento sites. 🙂 I find that it’s a fine balance between putting too much oil and not enough. If you don’t put enough, it sticks to the pan really badly, but if you put too much oil, it’s kind of gross to eat. Although, as with everything else in life, practice makes perfect and patience is a virtue.
Contents: Rice, hot dogs, egg, nori, carrots, crackers, strawberries
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