This Week in Bento: November 24-27, 2010

Hi everyone!  Did you have a good Thanksgiving?  I sure hope so!  You may have seen my Thanksgiving bento post, which featured a Fall Leaves bento (which, coincidentally, was also my first bento of the week).  So, just to mix things up a bit, I'm going to start at the end of the week and work backwards.. and if you missed the Fall Leaves bento, you can still catch it at the end of this post. ^_^

November 27

Today's bento I'm calling the "Penguin Bento," since it features these adorable penguin-shaped food cups my sister got for me.  The blue penguin is filled with pomegranate seeds, and the white one has "Hello Panda" milk-cream-filled cookies (pandas in a penguin... strange, I know).  They're chillin' out on a bed of star fruit and snap peas.  In the back is rice with ebi fumi furikake, grilled red pepper and onion with a creamy Thai peanut sauce, and avocado.  The penguins seemed rather appropriate today since it was quite frigid outside (and I hate the cold)... luckily I had these guys to cheer me up!

November 26

This one's kind of funny to me as I made it for the day after Thanksgiving.  I didn't cook anything for Thanksgiving, despite wanting to, because my mom said we were having "traditional Thanksgiving food."  This, of course, was exactly what I had been offering to make, but I'm pretty sure my mom heard me talking about making a squid dish a year ago and thinks I just eat cephalopods all of the time.  I told her this at Thanksgiving, we laughed about it, and then I came home and ended up making this for my bento.  The featured food here is squid ink rice, also known as arroz negro.  It's rice cooked with squid and squid ink and some veggies; a delicious dish found in many Spanish and Latin cuisines.  I had it at a Cuban place once, and decided to whip some up for myself.  I just used canned squid with ink, which was tasty, but I can't wait to try it with fresh squid soon!  Anyway, it's served here with avocado and roasted corn in the back, and kiwi and star fruit in the middle.  Finally, there's a "Magic Bar," one of my mom's signature desserts.  It has coconut, chocolate chips, nuts... all sorts of delicious stuff in there (plus magic, I assume).  And so I combined my affinity for so-called weird foods with my mom's classic treats... a marvelous match, if you ask me!

November 24

And here we are again with my "Fall Leaves" bento!  If you want the details, just click on over to my post about it.  Here's a little bonus though: Gnoe from Graasland has been asking (almost demanding.. ^_~) my recipe for the spicy red cabbage slaw featured here.  It's something I just whipped up once with what I had on hand and it's quickly become a staple.  It's quite simple, really, not even a recipe but more a little bit of this and that.  But here's the ingredients if you want to try it yourself:

• Red cabbage, shredded
• Red onion, thinly sliced
• Sour cream
• Cilantro, chopped
• Rice vinegar
• Salt and white pepper to taste
• Red pepper flakes or shichimi togarashi (if you want it spicy!)

Hope that works for you, Gnoe!

It was an exhausting week for me (it's crazy working at a grocery store the week of Thanksgiving) but once again, bentos saved the day and served as a calming, fun break from the chaos.  If you're lucky enough to have a job where you get a four-day weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday, make sure you're thankful for that!  I'm just so happy to have the next two days in a row off work.. and I think I'll start it off with a nap. ^_^  Have a great weekend!