Christmas Day Bento

Since my extended family and I do not see eye to eye on holiday foodstuffs in any way, it was decided this year that we would have our own Christmas meal on the road to their house...

This was a lovely snack to eat in the car and satisfied my husband, myself and my toddler!

Radiatore Pomodore pasta with sage infused cheese bits, baby tomatoes on wreath and x-mas tree stickered toothpicks, croissant with hot mustard, soy bologna, cheddar cheese and lettuce, rolled soy bologna slices, blueberries and three diamonds of almond burfi.

The Santa cookies in the background were inspired by something that I saw on E-Obento.com a while back. Unfortumately they seem to have disappeared from the site cause I've looked for them and can't find them!! But I know that's where I saw them.... anyway, they have sugar cookie bases, ice cream cone bodies with icing decorations and sugar star buttons. Inside was a mixture of m&ms, cashews and sultanas.

Holiday Fun Bentos

Top tier: 4 Miniature potato and cheese pierogies, red grapes, steamed broccoli, round tofu bite with nori face, mozzarella scarf and red pepper hat, lemon twist with Gujarati-style Kichdi underneath.

Bottom tier: More kichdi, snap pea christmas tree with mozzarella and sugar dot decorations, more broccoli, a Huge cherry tomato, veggie dog octopus.


Top tier: Cherry tomatoes on the vine, steamed broccoli, lemon slice, miniature pierogies, tofu bite mouse with mozzarella eyes, veggie dog ears and nori whiskers.

Bottom tier: Gujarati Kichdi, snap pea wreath with veggie dog and lemon zest decorations, red pepper bow.

Huge cherry tomato, lemon slice, mini pierogies, mozzarella stars, steamed broccoli, Kichdi, tofu bite lion with veggie dog mane and ears, nori face.

Morrocan Feast Bentos

All bentos: Couscous and morrocan veggie stew in one tier & morrocan marinated tofu triangles, morrocan spice tofu bites wrapped with carrot strings, & baby tomatoes in second tier. (except for my daughter's bento which is all in one tier)

The Morrocan stew included carrots, onions, zucchini and raisins, yum! The tofu bites were a complete spur of the moment experiment involving extra firm tofu, silken tofu, flour, water, carrots, onions & spices made into a really thick batter then rolled in Panko and shallow fried. They were excellent! All three of us liked them a whole lot, so it's a perfect score experiment :)

My daughter's bento is one that we picked up on our trip to India. I found it in a large bin at the RelianceFresh supermarket which was labeled 'lunch box' so I grabbed two. Later I realized that the bags they were wrapped in were labeled as 'pencil box', but decided to use them as bentos anyway. They work really well and my daughter loves them. Even have a perfect place for utensils or pocky on top just like many bento boxes do!

Dating from October

These bentos and lunches were all made in October, but I was soooo busy that I never had a chance to post them. So here they are, extremely late (particularly embarrassing is the Halloween theme...) but not totally forgotten. Now that we're back from vacation and starting to get back into our routines again I'm hoping to go back to more regular postings :)

Grilled cheese flower: half swiss & half cheddar, cucumber stem & leaf, pineapple & grape 'hula' dancers, tomato soup with grated parmesan, wheat thins.

Two star onigiri, two corn croquettes, two cherry tomatoes stuffed with steamed broccoli, one two-potato gyoza, all on a bed of lettuce. Carrot and nori jack'o'lantern.

Thai two-potato mixture filled onigiri, storebought veggie gyoza, carrot and nori jack'o'lantern.

Corn croquettes, steamed broccoli, cherry tomato, star crunch yummy cracker thingies.

Thai two-potato mixture filled onigiri, carrot and nori jack'o'lantern, veggie gyoza, cherry tomato, corn croquettes. Maple leaf sweet bean cakes, black berries.

Jasmine rice with carrot flower and black sesame seeds, Japanese wheat cake on the side. Udon noodles with carrot ribbon, more black sesame seeds and steamed broccoli.

Same as above, pretty much, lol. Except the cake had lychee flavor gummy-stuff inside if I remember correctly. At this point we were only a few days away from vacation and the cupboards were depleted of interesting foods so these bentos aren't very colorful.