You know I like a salad. So my bentos are not all pretty, but they are yummy-looking enough for the blog 🙂
This bento-salad consists of lettuce, onion, pepper, cucumber, carrot and paprika Quorn chicken-style pieces.
I love a bit of Quorn.
What’s your favourite protein to have on a salad?
Quick cheeky non-homemade sushi!!
I know it is better to make things at home, but when you have a lovely abundance of store bought yumminess, just pair it with lots of veggies and you can’t go wrong 🙂
What September recipes is everyone bringing out? Or is it almost time for autumn recipes!!
I’ve been pickling, storing and making lots of different things recently 🙂 I will update you with all of them, I promise!!
It continues to be lovely and sunny here in the UK (for the most of it) so I’ve been making nice light, summery bentos.
In this bento (above) is brown sushi rice (with sushi vinegar), with spring onions on top; diced avocado, cherry tomatoes and more spring onions; mange-tout and two types of tamagoyaki.
The darker one has more soy sauce in the mix, and the lighter one is made with more mirin, so it’s a little sweeter.
I hope everyone has been enjoying whatever weather they have had!
How is the bento/healthy lunch making going over the holidays?
Bento box Challenge (No.52)
On Friday, fellow Bento blogger, over at Veggie Bento, posted her weekly Cupcake Friday post and the cupcake in question was in a Cupcake-to-go holder.
This got me thinking…
I have one of those cases.
And I love bento…
I would LOVE to make a mini bento in my cupcake holder!!
So I set myself a challenge.
And I made it:
My best food photography yet, if I do say so myself 🙂 I even put together a background 😀 with a mini vase of flowers. Go me!
This mini bento features two small onigiri cubes (made with a rice cube maker), the one on top has edamame in and they both have a strip of nori wrapped round them. Round the sides, I have put sliced cucumber, sliced carrot, sliced mange-tout and a couple of slices of smoked sausage.
This is by no means a full lunch bento, but it will accompany my lunch today and I will be extra excited to eat something this pretty! It is just the right size for a snack and I’m so pleased that I was able to make a bento in the cupcake holder! Just to confirm, the lid does go on! I didn’t want to stack it too high just in case it didn’t!
See? 🙂 (It’s got a weeny it of condensation because it’s been in the fridge, but that’s ok).
What different containers have you used for bento? And what was their original purpose?
Hope you enjoyed my personal challenge 😛 I sure did! Thanks for the inspiration Veggie Bento! 😀
Quick post for a fantastic Bento (if I do say so myself). Had this wonderful gem yesterday and I was ecstatic the whole of the day because of it. I’m not sure whether it’s the colours, or the range of foods in it, or that I managed to fit that much food in a small bento box!
In this tightly packed sistema box, (starting from top left) I had beetroot, sushi rice with sushi vinegar and furikake on a bed of lettuce, mixed salad with lettuce, pepper, olives, mange-tout, carrots and baby sweetcorn, crunchy cheese rounds (microwaved cheese crispy things), pancake muffin topped with grapes (cut into tulip shapes), cherry tomato and carrots.
How pretty does that look?? 😀
What super colourful meals have you made recently?
What a cheery Friday today. Over here, the weather is mild, I had an amazing lunch, and I’m going to be doing something even more amazing this weekend (more on that on Monday!)
The main in my bento today was amazing! I said yesterday that I was going to make myself some sushi rice for today, and make it I did! I mixed it with rice vinegar, a little salt and sugar and sprinkled it with store bought furikake. The rest of the bento is filled with leftover roasted vegetables (in a cool stripe pattern!). The leftover vegetables were sweet potato, green peppers (capsicum for you guys and girls across the pond), yellow and red peppers and courgette (zucchini).Yummy!
For snacks I had cherry tomatoes, a satsuma, grapes and a couple of Fox’s Crunch Creams (so good!!). I snacked on these throughout the afternoon.
Oooh, have you noticed?? This bento is in a new bento box!!! I got it the other week but have been trying out different ways of packing it before showing it off to you guys and girls. I bought a 2 pack of the Sistema sandwich boxes when they were on offer for £2.50 at my local supermarket (below is a picture of a paxk of three in slightly different colours). The colours that I got were purple with orange clips and pink with blue clips 🙂 They are quite small but perfect for the size of lunch I eat. I will look into doing a bigger review for these soon.
And, as todays Friday, here’s an awful bonus picture. As I had made sushi rice the night before, I fancied having a japanese breakfast this morning! I had sushi rice, sprinkled with furikake, sushi ginger, vegetables, mackerel in tomato sauce, nori, and soy sauce. It was so yummy!!
What is your favourite style of breakfast? Western, Asian or Continental?
Today is a special post!!
This is my 100th blog post!! And of course it has to be a bento post! To mark this special occasion, I am including not one, not two, but three bentos in todays post!
First up is my bento. I have told you that I have boring lunches so no apologies for this one! The bento has deconstructed lettuce sandwiches. I don’t have a lot of bread as I’m not a fan, so I use lettuce instead to make wraps/roll-up type things. To go in the wrap I have sliced carrots and cucumber, chicken slices (on top of the lettuce leaves) and hummus sprinkled with milled flax seed (hiding in the top left corner). I did have snacks to go with: satsuma, mini pack of popcorn, cereal bar, blueberries and grapes. Lovely and healthy 🙂
Next is my brothers lunch. I make it simple and easy to eat as I never know whether he’s off out or college or something (he’s college age). He has cheese, cucumber and mustard sandwich on seedy bread, unsalted cashews and salted peanuts in the small green lidded box, sliced peppers, cherry tomatoes and a homemade nest cake in the foil. Again, nice and balanced and healthy 🙂 with a little treat. My brothers bento has no accompanying sides.
This last one is my bf’s main dish bento. He had leftover tagliatelle in tomato and cream cheese sauce with mushrooms and leeks and cheese on top, and a side salad of cucumbers and carrots (with a little cheese on top too) with cherry tomatoes down the middle. The bf usually has lunchbox additions (aside from the main bento) of malt loaf, fruit (apple, satsuma, grapes or banana), a treat (so in this case a homemade nest cake) and other bits and pieces. Nice and healthy again! I’m on a roll!
Well, what a post for my 100th one 🙂 hope everyone is having a fantastic day!!
How long ago did you start blogging?
I definitely over estimated my food consumption today! Yesterdays fast day went brilliantly, and today, I was determined to eat ‘normally’ but still mostly healthy. I did that, but I overpacked so I haven’t been able to eat everything yet :S
On a good note though, this post includes my breakfast bento and my snacks 🙂 yay! More pictures!
After my Personal Training session before work this morning, I had a quick mish-mash breakfast when I got to work. I had a mix of cereal, oats and flax seed, a yogurt (that I mixed in with the cereal), peanut butter (to top the cereal/yogurt mix) and grapes. Nice filling and healthy way to start the day 🙂 and it filled my up until lunch.
For lunch, I had super leftovers! The main bit is cheesy mash 🙂 with sides of cucumber and pepper salad, sweet chilli quinoa and grain mix and half a boiled egg shaped like a car 😀 Lots of carbs in the mash, which I think is the reason why I’m so full.
My snacks, which I ate a little after lunch were leftover cinema popcorn from last night (I took my own so it’s leftover from the bf’s bucket), and a small sweet pot with 2 raspberry ruffles and millions in 🙂 definitely not the healthiest, but they were small portions.
Now comes the things I haven’t been able to eat yet. Above is the chicken salad roll I was going to have with my lunch. *pop* I will probably have that for my dinner now (it’s back in the fridge for the moment).
And a fruit pot with melon and pineapple in. That is now going to be my pudding for dinner. I enjoy fast days, and I do like the idea that they shrink my stomach, but I feel bad that I overpacked 😦
Onwards and upwards. Tomorrow is a fruit and veg only day 🙂 yummy!
What random/quick breakfasts do you have if you’re short on time or on the go?
I’ll be quick again, as it’s a fasting day and food pics make me hungry!!
I had this Bento the other week (when I made them more pretty) and it included some yummy snacks!! The snacks were sliced veg (radishes and cucumber) with ham wrapped dates. I’ve definitely got more into dates. I don’t love them yet, but I do like them 🙂 The main part of the bento was leftover roasted mixed veg (pepper and onion in the yellow cupcake case and sweet potato in the blue cupcake case), leftover veggie burger bake (recipe below) with more cheese on top and chicken flavour noodles with sliced radish on top.
It’s not the healthiest bento I’ve made recently, but it is so colourful and shows off the use of the silicon cupcake cases!
So, here’s how to do a Quorn burger bake. I love putting Quron in bentos, as there is so much less of a worry about it not being safe at room temperature (than meat).
Quorn Burger Bake
Ingredients:
x1 pack of Quorn mince (or any other meat free mince)
x2/3 medium onions (or however much you like)
x4 whole eggs
Basil (to taste)
Oregano (to taste)
Parsley (to taste)
Cayenne Pepper (to taste)
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Olive oil (or any cooking oil) for cooking
Cheese (any) for sprinkling on top
Method:
– Dice onions finely
– Mix with herbs (I put to taste on the ingredients list because I don’t measure everything out when I make things), salt and pepper and Quorn mince
– Whisk the eggs together and mix in with the Quorn mince mix
– Oil the inside of an oven proof dish
– Pour/put burger mix into oven proof dish and bake for 25-30 mins (I bake it at gas mark 7)
– In the last 5 minutes of baking, sprinkle a generous amount of cheese on the top of the bake and put back in the oven
Notes:
I do not pre-cook the mince mix, both for ease (makes it so much quicker and so much less washing up!), and because the mince mix will cook through fine in the time in the oven.
This idea would also work with added sauces, such as BBQ sauce, hot sauce, or sweet chilli sauce (mixed in before baking). I will be adding sauce to it before baking next time, as it would prevent the need for adding sauce to it when eating!
Have you tried Quorn products? What Quorn products do you like, or enjoy cooking with?
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