This Week in Bento: August 24-28

I'm not even going to start with the excuses (though I swear, I have plenty of very good ones!).  I'll just get straight to the bentos this week. ^_^

August 24

I've titled this one "Hanbaagu Bento," but I guess that's not exactly true.  The patty itself is not a Japanese-style hamburger (for a recipe, albeit one I've yet to try, check out Just Hungry).  Alas, it was just a leftover regular hamburger from the night before that I made into a mini-burger by cutting it with a shot glass.  I didn't have any tonkatsu sauce, so I topped it with takoyaki sauce, which was super tasty!  The burger is sitting on rice and some artisan lettuce leaves.  It's sadly hard to tell in the photo, but I colored in the centers of the carrot "flowers" with these cool food coloring brush pens I got.  I'll be experimenting more with them soon (aka: as soon as I can figure out how to open them properly without dying my hands all different colors... sigh).  There's kiwi, blueberries, and then some farmers market treats!  The tomatoes in the back are called "Michigan red" and "yellow pear" (I trust you can figure out which is which).  Those plums are the most exciting part though.  They're called "Bubblegum Plums," and at first I thought it was all just a name, but no!  The lady selling them told me they're called that because they actually have a bubblegum flavor.  She let me try one, and I was sold!  Plus they're nice and small for bentos... I'm always thinking about that!

August 25

I'm going to go ahead and say I think this might be one of my favorite bento photos to date.  It came out well, the lunch has great colors, and I really, really wish I could reach through my computer screen and eat it all over again!  Those beets are called "chioggia beets."  I got those at the farmers market too.  When they're raw, they look like peppermints when you cut into them!.

I was actually going to make a raw salad with them, since I've heard of eating raw beets, and I also heard that this variety will lose the white color when cooked.  But after trying a slice or two, I developed a really sharp, burning feeling at the back of my throat!  I looked it up and it turns out that's fairly common with raw beets, especially the chioggia ones.  So if you're ever planning on eating raw beets, or beet juice (which is often made with raw beets), start small and make sure you don't have that reaction.

But back to the bento!  I thinly sliced the beets on a mandolin and steamed them for about ten minutes.  I mixed them with steamed spinach, goat cheese, and pine nuts.  In the middle is a brown rice medley (sold at Trader Joe's) that has long grain brown rice mixed with daikon radish seeds and black barley.  It's topped with yellow pear tomatoes (and the black sheep of the bunch, or should I say "green sheep"?).  More plums to the left, and probably the best honeydew melon I've ever eaten.

August 26

Here's a good bento from leftovers!  Fusilli pasta with shrimp, sun-dried tomatoes, capers and Italian parsley is the star here.  There's a salad of red oak artisan lettuce, tomatoes, and goat cheese, a garlic scape pesto mini-biscuit, and red pepper slices.  More bubblegum plums, and good ol' chocolate chips for dessert!

August 28

Hmm.. not an especially exciting bento for the end of the week, but we had pretty much run out of food (which is rare for us.. hehe).  There's more brown rice medley, red pepper slices, green beans, bubblegum plums, and I whipped up a ginger wasabi tuna salad because, well, I had to make something!  All in all, still really tasty and was a nice, filling lunch during a particularly stressful work day.  

The good news is, I'm feeling all better and I just did some shopping (another exciting CSA adventure!) so there will be more soon.  Keep checking back!  Thanks everyone!  Have a great week!