Tag Archives: Thanksgiving kids lunch

Soup Bentos

1 Dec

Portuguese Bean Soup

The universal question for anyone that has hosted Thanksgiving lunch or dinner is “what am I suppose to do with all my Thanksgiving leftovers?”  For my family, it is always SOUP.  Jook is an after-Thanksgiving staple, and in the last few years we’ve added Portuguese Bean Soup.  For those of you who are not familiar with jook, it’s a rice porridge that is made with turkey leftovers.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a sacred family recipe to pull out of our recipe box, so we rely on Google.  🙂  The past few years I’ve used a recipe by The Tasty Island Honolulu Food Blog. It’s not too difficult and makes really good jook.  The Portuguese Bean Soup recipe has been a trial and error experiment for my husband and I.  But I think we’ve narrowed it down to: 1) don’t overcook the potatoes, and 2) don’t add the macaroni until you are ready to eat it because if you let it sit in the soup, it drinks all your soup and leaves you with a thick mess.  🙂

A Not So Pretty Picture of My Jook Bento

 

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The Extremely Last Minute, “What am I Going To Make?” Bento

30 Nov

Bunny Egg and Trader Joe's Onigiri

Thanksgiving weekend came and went in a flash.  The past few days I made soup bentos with leftover food (I’ll post those tomorrow).  I was extremely happy to CLEAN out our refrigerator last night because I swear I couldn’t fit another thing in there.  But much to my dismay, I woke up this morning in a panic that I didn’t have anything to make a bento.

All the leftovers were gone and we used most of the staples over the weekend.  I sat there for about 15 minutes, waiting for my coffee to kick in, and wondered what I was going to do.  No sandwich because I had no cheese and I ran out of soy nut butter.  I had no butter, because we used it all during the weekend. I didn’t have rice made and didn’t have time to make rice.  Oh my goodness…. what am I going to do? I honestly wondered if I was going to have to run to Togo’s for Ms. Little Bubbles lunch.

Thankfully I found a Trader Joe’s frozen onigiri in the freezer, and saw that I had eggs.  So, I hard boiled the eggs, threw them in a mold to at least make them cute, cut some apples and carrots and called it a morning.  Phew… I survived another close call.  🙂  BTW, I steamed the carrots in my cute bear silicon microwave steamer.

The bento box I used is a “new” box.  I’ve had it for a year, but never used it before today.  It’s a REALLY cool box.  It’s called Gel-Cool.  You freeze the top the night before and voila… your bento is kept cool for hours.

 

Contents: Hard boiled egg, Trader Joe’s onigiri, apples and carrots

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Gobble, Gobble. Here’s Lookin’ At You Turkey!

22 Nov

Gobble Gobble

Okay, here is my second attempt at a turkey. I hope this doesn’t become an obsession. Although, I’m determined to get it right. The example I went off of had another layer of white cheese on the top and yellow feet. Much to my dismay, I ran out of white (swiss) cheese and didn’t know until I went to look for it. And I ran out of time to make the feet. Mr. Sweet Peas woke up early and needed some attention. It’s always hard when he wakes up before I’m ready for him. Those darn garbage trucks. They need to invent silent ones that won’t wake up the kids. 🙂

To ensure that the nori on the eyes stuck to the white kamaboko, I “glued” it with mayonnaise. The mouse eating the strawberry was added at the last minute because I had a naked spot between the apples and cutie and it bugged me. LOL.

Tomorrow is a short day for Ms. Bubbles, so I won’t be making a bento until after Thanksgiving. I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Be good to each other and have fun shopping!

Contents: Ham and cheese sandwich, apples and a cutie

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Happy Thanksgiving – My 1st Turkey

21 Nov

My 1st Turkey

Well, it’s okay, you can laugh. LOL! This turkey is horrible and looks like a big mess. I contemplated putting it up on the blog, but thought, that’s what a blog is for – to share the good and the bad. So, here is my first attempt at a turkey, and maybe my last. LOL.

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t plan on doing a turkey, but for some reason, I thought “why not?”. Well, planning on the whim is not a good plan, as I didn’t have much in my refrigerator to make the turkey, and I didn’t really know what tools to use. I looked over a parenting website for some ideas, tried to follow and example, but ended up with this sad looking turkey.

Under the turkey is some of Ms. Little Bubble’s favorite food – edamame rice, furikake salmon, roasted butternut squash and a cuttie. I hope she at least enjoyed her food, even though the turkey is a bit scary. I followed this recipe for the furikake salmon, but baked it at 350 degrees rather than frying it. I also skipped the added salt on the salmon. The furikake I used has a lot of salt in it already.

Contents: edamame rice, furikake salmon, roasted butternut squash and a cuttie.

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