Daring to be different Bentos

Normally I fix the same thing for all three of us because it is so much easier than cooking seperate dishes, especially for bento meals. However, while my daughter and I are spicy food fanatics my husband is a mild loving guy. Every once in a while I cook up two batches of stir fry at the same time and make one nice and hot while the other is mild and calm. I then freeze them in single serving size containers and whenever I'm hankering for a hot thai curry I can pop them out and quickly serve up a meal that suits all of us. This was one of those times!
Top tier: Stirfry with marinated tofu, alphabet french fries that spelled out JOY, baby tomatoes and peas on skewers, one red bean mochi with yellow star sprinkles.

Bottom tier: Thai sticky rice with carrot sun and fruit by the foot flowers.

Left: Thai sticky rice with Spicy thai tofu checkerboard & green peas.

Right: Thai Green Curry, Extra Hot!!! Tiny carrot flowers.

Top tier: Mild asparagus stir fry with marinated tofu, baby tomatoes & green peas.

Bottom tier: thai sticky rice, carrot flowers & snap pea leaves with black sesame seeds.

LCE #39

How many ways can one make a boring lunch fun to eat? This is pretty much one of our staple lunches and it can be seen many times in this blog :) Rice, peas, sesame carrots. Sometimes with tofu, sometimes with corn croquettes, sometimes with corn. Luckily it is a favorite meal for my toddler, but it is still boring. So making it into a flower made it a fun lunch!

Left to right: Grapes with Envirokidz Cheetah Chomps Cereal, flower of thai sticky rice, peas, sesame carrots and 1 corn croquette. As always there was soy sauce and hot sauce on the side!

Super H Mart Loot, Part 1

This luscious looking tray of mixed cakes was what I was truly looking for when I went to this store. I had seen the maple leaf one in pkceres' bento pics on flickr.com and had to try it! They did have a tray that was completely full of maple leaf cakes, but I thought the assortment looked like more fun. I have absolutely no idea what to call any of them and I can only guess at what's inside them, even after tasting each one!
#1 - I think it was a white bean filling in a soft cake outer. Very good.
#2 - These were my favorite. Sweet red bean filling in an outer layer that reminded me strongly of ice cream cones. Yum!
#3 - Sweet potato-ish filling in a dense cake outer. My toddler's favorite.
#4 - White bean filling in a dense yellow cake. Not as good as the other, in my opinion :)
#5 - Soft white cake with sweet red bean filling inside. My husband's pick.
I would so buy these again when we go back. Which hopefully will be a while because my diet is really suffering right now!

The octagonal Pizza Snack wasn't a big hit with my family, which is surprising considering how much they (okay, we) love pizza. They are kind of like a puffed chip, a puffy cheeto for example, in texture and not as crunchy as chips or crackers. The flavor was very subtle and was different for each of us. My husband thought it tasted like how he thought fried pig's ears would taste, not a high recommendation in this vegetarian family, lol. My daughter wasn't so pleased with them either, though she ate more than her father did. I, on the other hand, thought they tasted of parmesan cheese, tomato sauce and basil - just very lightly. My final opinion was that they were edible but I don't know if I would buy them again.

LCE #38

I didn't have much to work with in the way of cuteness for this lunch, so I made it educational instead! A-chan didn't seem to mind and she enjoyed counting the stars and wheel spokes and reading the word so I still consider it a success.

Left to right: strawberries & grapes, pasta salad, cheese stars, soy hot dog strips, terra exotic chips (candy beet, purple potato & something else that I can't remember right now.).

I read somewhere when I first began feeding A-chan solid food that hotdogs were the most dangerous of all foods for toddlers because of the way they are shaped. When a toddler bites off a round of hotdog it is perfectly sized and shaped to block the airway if they mistakenly inhale. So I began to cut all hot dogs into strips to avoid any mishap. She seems to like the ability to dip them into sauces just like french fries so all is happy. It will be fun to start doing other things with them once she gets older, though!

One Cute Kitty Bento

This was my husband's bento lunch for a day away from us (this happens extremely rarely...) and since I felt sorry for him having to go have fun all day, I wanted to make him an extra special bento! :D

Top tier: Strawberry & lychees, sand: peanut butter, honey & blackberry jam, broccoli
Bottom tier: Fiori pasta with feta & baby tomatoes, sand: peanut butter, honey & blackberry jam, kitty: cheese, origami paper eyes & fruit by the foot ball of yarn, broccoli bites and tomato half, snap pea snacks.

Middle of the week & in a hurry bentos

More bridies, w00t! This time I made mine and my husband's really huge by mistake ( I couldn't find my normal pastry cutter for bridies and used a bowl which was too big instead) but they came out just fine. A-chan's bridies had a little bit too much liquid in the filling and didn't come out very pretty.

We also had steamed broccoli, creamy garlic pasta shells, little containers of HP sauce for the bridies & we each had a mystery cake from our shopping spree at Super H mart. They were sooo yummy, but I'm saving info about them for another post.

It was very quick and easy to put these bentos together: already made and frozen bridies were popped from the freezer straight into the oven for 15 minutes then put into the boxes, pasta cooked on the stovetop and ready to go while I cooked lunch earlier. 5 minutes of steaming the broccoli and it was all done!

LCE #37

A kind-of cute lunch in my opinion, but A-chan seemed delighted with it. She giggled when it was put before her which was such a wonderful sound :)

From left to right: pineapple chunks, grilled cheese star with origami paper face, flower bread cutouts with cheese slices on top, cheddar broccoli twists for hair, cheese & pickle eyes, pickle mouth and strawberry decorations for her hair, more pickles and a few pretzels.