Thursday, September 15, 2011

Flower Garden

 I wanted to make a flower garden bento using some of my Japanese vegetable cutters this morning.  Some of them are huge and don't get used very often because it is difficult to find veggies that are large enough.  Luckily we picked up some Japanese carrots and purple yams at Super H Mart over the weekend.

In the bento: The fruit section contains apple plum slices, orange slices, strawberry slices and lots of pieces of baby corn including some on a leaf pick.  The other side has a fake-tsukune patty with a circle of bread behind, steamed broccoli, carrot flowers, cheese flowers, a purple yam flower and hiding between the broccoli and carrots is a Mac and Cheese ball.

The Tsukune patty is decorated with mayo in a traditional henna flower pattern.  Sesame seeds decorate the carrot and purple yam flowers and to make my pink-obsessed girl happy there is a pink flower divider.  Not shown are a soy sauce bottle and a ketchup container.

Below was my lunch bento yesterday.  I promised myself Indian food after going to a Bollywood dance class the night before.  I love Indian food, the spicier the better!  Since I knew that this feast wasn't going to be shared with A-chan I spiked up the heat to a level 20.  So yummy :)

In my bento:  Naan (frozen, from Trader Joe's), a miniature orange pepper with raita inside, persian cucumber spears, chana masala in the blue cup, veggie biryani and tofu musallam.

I adapted the tofu musallam from a recipe for Murgh Musallam which is 'Whole chicken baked in Aluminum Foil' from a cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey.


4 comments:

OhayoBento said...

Both of these bentos look amazingly delicious! I'm due for some good spicy food so you're making me REALLY hungry right about now!

Happy Little Bento said...

The flower garden is simply lovely! And the chana masala is making my mouth water. Looks wonderful!

Natakiya said...

Oh wow, thank you Heather!! That's so sweet :) And yay for spicy food lovers!

Natakiya said...

Thanks so much, Sheri! I have to say the chana masala was delicious - I wish that I had more. I love Indian food so much :)