My daughter asked for sandwiches in her bento for the rest of the week. My thought on this “oh! Nooooooo problem at all.” Making sandwiches is super easy.
Both of these bentos have soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches, mochi from Girl’s Day and apples. Seriously, about five minutes to whip together! The only thought I gave to these bentos was how to jazz up the top of the sandwiches. 🙂
I have a bunch of bento photos ready to upload, but just haven’t had a chance. Sorry for the delay and blog posting absence.
This bento was inspired by a recipe from Jolene’s “What’s Cooking Chicago” blog. I was looking for easy freezer friendly recipes and found a few, but just made them this week without preparing them for the freezer.
This bento has a chicken and apple cheese burger. You can’t really see it as it’s hidden in the bun. But quite frankly, it’s kinda bland looking that I don’t think it would look as appetizing in a picture. The happy mochi was made by Ms. Little Bubbles and in celebration of Girl’s Day. It was so super easy to make! I think 10 minutes total in the microwave!
I hope everyone is doing well and I hope to get back into bento making once work slows down.
Happy March everyone! Be happy!!!!
Wow, I know, it’s been awhile since I posted a bento. I’ve been making bentos and have been taking photos of them, but haven’t been able to get to the posting part. 😦 I’m sorry! As a working mom, life gets crazy. My “busy” period at work is January – February. It coincides with flu season too, so it always makes for an interesting time of the year. A few weeks ago, I caught a bug that knocked me out! Man, my bones hurt. But thankfully that flu is done and I’m back to normal, just in time for busy, busy days.
This bento was made last week, or the week before (I’m sorry, I can’t remember). I swore that I would make a fast bento, but it looked so sad and I felt bad that I wasn’t making “cute” bentos for Ms. Little Bubbles. So I threw in a Hello Kitty.
Again, a fast and speedy bento. I hope to catch up with the photos I have on my phone and I have a few recipes that I want to share too. 🙂
Take care everyone and Happy Valentine’s Day. May your day and YEAR be blessed with love.
Happy Hot Dogs
Looking at this bento I get really happy. I honestly think it’s just because of the fabric I used for the picture. The bento is pretty simple – shoyu hot dogs, happy onigiri’s, carrots, beans and cantaloupe. Nothing fancy, and pretty easy to make in the morning. But the happy fabric, just makes you smile. LOL. The fabric is actually an apron that my aunt made for me. She made Ms. Little Bubbles and Ms. Little Bubbles’ doll matching aprons too. We have a complete family of aprons. Soooo cute!
To make the hot dogs, I quickly tossed them in a pan with a splash of shoyu (soy sauce) and mirin (sweet cooking rice wine). Super simple and super easy.
Contents:Â shoyu sugar hot dogs, happy onigiri’s, carrots, beans and cantaloupe
Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf
Okay, you might just think I’m crazy, but this is what we had for dinner last night and it was so good. I found this recipe on “What’s Cooking Chicago” blog. I had to think twice about this recipe, but it was really good. You have to check out Joelen’s blog and this wonderful recipe. Honestly, it’s delicious. I added homemade mashed sweet potato and I can’t tell you how much my family loved this dinner. Even my Little Sweet Pea loved it. 🙂
Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf (Recipe by What’s Cookin’ Chicago)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a loaf pan with cooking spray, set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the ground chicken, egg, breadcrumbs, thyme, oregano, basil, garlic, onion, salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese. To not over handle the mixture otherwise it will get tough. Place the mixture in the greased loaf pan and form into a loaf. Top the meatloaf with pasta sauce.
Place filled loaf pan on a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes. Remove the meatloaf from the oven and sprinkle the top with the remaining shredded cheese. Place the meatloaf back in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted.
Remove the meatloaf from the oven and allow to rest for 5-10 minutes before serving/slicing. Garnish with parsley if desired.
Nishime Bento
Happy New Year Everyone! Wow, I can’t even believe it’s 2012. My goodness…. my mom use to say that as an adult, time flies and she is right. My daughter will say time takes forever, but seeing how fast she has grown up makes me sad. She will no longer be Ms. “Little” Bubbles in a few years.
As we do every year, my husband made nishime for the new year. Growing up, this was a dish my grandma made and although I’m 100% positive that it was delicious, I didn’t eat it. (Everything my Grandma made was GOOD!) As a kid, I didn’t like Japanese food. Kinda strange, considering it is my favorite type of food now. In fact, in 2nd grade, my mom took me on a two week trip to Japan and I didn’t eat during the entire trip because they didn’t serve cheese burgers! I think my mom says I only ate rice for two weeks. However, I do remember that when we drove into Tokyo, the tour bus passed by McDonald’s and every person on the bus tried to remember where the McDonald’s was and immediately rushed to it during our stop. I distinctly remember eating a lot of cheese burgers that night.
Times have changed and I definitely love Japanese food now, especially nishime. For Ms. Little Bubbles bento, I packed her red bean rice and nishime. Although, you cannot see the nishime as it is behind the green divider and apples. However, the highlight of this lunch is not the nishime (surprisingly!). Rather, it is the container. It is supposed to be a soup container, but I think it works without soup too. Don’t you think it is just the cutest? Mr. LoveInABento got us matching soup bento boxes. 🙂
Soup Bento Boxes
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.)
Breakfast Bento
Today’s bento for Ms. Little Bubbles is a bit different. I thought I’d change it up a bit and give her a breakfast bento. (Plus, I thought she would not be happy with the leftovers AGAIN). If you put this bento on a plate, it would be a basic breakfast – waffles with strawberries, syrup and eggs. The syrup is in the blue heart container. Nothing fancy, super fast and hopefully it was good.
Contents: Waffles, strawberries, and a hard boiled egg
My "cheat" Christmas Bento
LOL! So, I’m cheating when it comes to my Christmas bento. This is really a simple sandwich bento with a holiday cookie in it! Oh, and a holiday fabric on the bottom. LOL! But, it’s all out of holiday love. At work we had a holiday cookie exchange and the cookie that I put in Ms. Little Bubbles bento is from that cookie exchange. I usually don’t put cookies in her bentos, but I thought a holiday exception was in order. Plus, I really think this is all she is going to get for a Christmas bento. I know, so sad! The Christmas tree fabric is from a jar of jam that I received from a friend. It looks so good – homemade organic strawberry jam!
BTW, I wanted to thank the bento lovers out there that have added me to their blogs! Very sweet and kind of you. I love you too, and trust me when I say I get so much inspiration from my fellow bento bloggers! You guys are great!
My holiday cookie exchange box. Yummy!
Contents:Â Sandwiches, holiday cookie, strawberries and kamaboko
Chicken Stew?
Sorry, it’s been a busy week and I haven’t had time to post Ms. Little Bubble’s bentos. This is from Monday. On Sunday I made, what the recipe called, chicken stew in the crockpot. I don’t think it’s stew, but I’m not sure what else to call it. I was a bit disappointed by the chicken as it called for chicken breasts and it was super dry, even after being in the crockpot for six hours. The flavor was good, but soooo dry. That recipe gets a thumbs down for me.
Putting Monday’s bento was pretty simple. I started out with rice, then I made a ditch in the rice to put the chicken and veggies and then I poured gravy over the top. I added strawberries and given I still had a hole, I filled it raisins and a fruit roll up. I considered steaming some carrots and putting it there, but I ran out of time.
Contents: Chicken and veggies, strawberries and a fruit roll up
loveinabento 