This Week in Bento: September 29 - October 2

Hi bento pals!  Welcome to another edition of This Week in Bento!  I actually hit a milestone this week, my 100th bento (at least since I've been photographing them) and I didn't even realize it until a few days later.  Frankly, I wish I had made it a bit more exciting, but I think I made up for it later in the week....

September 29

Well here it is, Bento #100!  Again, I wish I had actually realized it was a milestone bento at the time, but oh well.  This bento was for Steve, and in it are some leftovers from the ambitious menu I made the other day.  In the back is braised rabbit with a shiitake mushroom sauce, served over homemade saffron pappardelle.  In the front is a salad of baby arugula (so good!) and fresh basil with shaved parmesan.  The little piggy bottle has an orange muscat champagne vinaigrette, and there's toasted pine nuts on the side.  Not bad for leftovers, huh?

September 30

I've been making bentos for myself at home as I'm still off of work, and I really have been enjoying it.  In a way it seems like a hassle to go through all the work when I could have just thrown it all on a plate, but then again, it really is nice to have a put-together lunch and it's probably a lot healthier too.  The big ol' salad is a Greek-style salad with artisan lettuce, kalamata olives, tomatoes, cucumber slices and feta cheese.  The fish is grilled cod that Steve made with a buttery Greek-style marinade, and beneath it is some delicious pearl couscous.  Lastly there's some sautéed spinach.. mmmm!

October 1

Ah! Can you believe it's October already?  Yep, it's true.. fall is starting to to take over, and summer is fading away.  Here's a warming, meaty bento I made for Steve featuring peppery steak slices.  There's a red wine sauce and some mashed potatoes with chives.  In the back are some skewers (sorry, hard to see) of cucumber and pickled red pepper, some pistachios, and these awesome Korean cookies that are filled with chocolate.

Here's my at-home bento.  The night before I finally used my new electric takoyaki maker and it was great!  Don't worry, a tutorial will be up soon.  There are a few leftover takoyaki on the left, served with all the fixins, and sitting on a bed of red cabbage.  In the middle is a baby spinach and cucumber salad with a ponzu-miso vinaigrette and toasted sesame seeds.  The inari on the right are inspired by Bentobird's recent post in which she made inari filled with avocado and ikura.  I thought this sounded amazing so I set out to make it asap!  The ikura was three times as costly as masago though, and since money is a bit tight I went with the masago instead, but it was still delicious.  In the back are some orange slices sprinkled with chocolate shavings for a bit of dessert.

October 2

Alright... are you ready for this one?  A little back-story first...  I am really not a fan of these kind of crime drama shows, but it was Steve that got me hooked on CSI: Miami.  Not because it's particularly good, but because it's absolutely ridiculous.  He created a drinking game around the show (and if you search online, you'll find a lot of other people had the same idea), most of the drinks based around David Caruso's sunglasses-based "acting."  Tonight is the season premiere, so I thought I'd make a bento to celebrate it.  I've never tried anything like this before, and there are some things I wish I could fix but hey, I think it's pretty good for a first try.  Caruso is cut out of nori (this is not easy..) and the white is a lumpia wrapper.  The shirt is just colored in with a blue food coloring marker.  His hair is made of masago.  The water is my first attempt at making an egg sheet, which I colored with blue food coloring.  The skyline is made from red cabbage, the sky from carrots and beni shoga (red pickled ginger).  Finally, the letters are cut out of avocado.  And there you have it.. pretty intense.. haha.

Well, that's it for this week.  Hope you're all having a fun weekend!