A new work week, a new bento.
- scroll down for pictures -
Already learned some bento&me things:
- No matter how I think at night: "oh, this is easy, I'll put it together in the morning", it's not working: I'm not the most awake one at mornings; I'd even forgot to look at my bento notes I made the night before.
- Despite my art education, I'm not at all creative in the morning, my only goal is to get on time to get up and go to work at minimal time&effort, and my bento shows...
- I eat all but the bread I pack, could be my co-workers that bring in delicious cakes & cookies...
Since I'm not ready yet to get up very very early, just so I can get the creativity flowing by bento-making-time, I'll have to improvise, learn some new tricks and experiment a lot (all great motivation-triggers btw, I'll do anything but getting-up-early-just-for-making-lunch).
~
This second bento was a very simple one, no dressing, no pretties:
- 2 portions of mini heart-shaped fritata (a winner! I'm glad I made a large batch to freeze);
- mixed sprouts;
- 2 slices of plain bread (I have spreads at work, but today I didn't feel like bread, reason: our cleaning lady treated us with lovely filled cookies -last pic- for end of Ramadan);
- tiny grapes with goat brie cheese.
I found a nice Dutch cloth to wrap it in (2nd pic), I do own a very nice Japanese wrap (a gift from the Japanese Cardinal), but somehow I think it's too pretty/holy to wrap my lunch in.
Yesterday I found "veggie cutters" in a hobby shop, it's actually clay cutters, and I now know why real veggie cutters are long; my cutters just cut 1 or 2 bits, so it's time-consuming when I want a lot of small veggie-shapes to sprinkle onto my bento. Today I spotted real (long) veggie cutters in a Chinese giftshop, but they didn't sell a shape I liked (or understood, some are Chinese characters).
At the same hobby shop I bought a star shaped puncher, they had a great choice of shapes and sizes, I really had to put a brake on my "want!"-sentiments ;-)
Nice surprise at the Chinese supermarket close to work: they sell 4 different flavors furikake, I bought 3 kinds plus black sesame-seeds.
Planning to make onigiri tomorrow, when I have more time to prepare, cook, create, cool and freeze. I think I'll experiment with my risotto rice first, although I did find various brands of sushi/Japanese rice in various supermarkets (local, organic and Chinese-): I'm very lucky to live in a mixed&multi-nationalities city :-)
More luck to be found in the city: a Japanese & Korean shop (I haven't been visiting, yet).
I found some great articles that really enlightened me on the (onigiri-)rice thing:
Looking at rice,
Japanese Basics: How to make Japanese-style plain rice and sushi rice and
Basics: Cooking Japanese style brown rice on the stovetop in a pot. Oh, and
this one on easy-making onigiri!
I'll leave that for tomorrow after work, when I have more time to prepare the onigiri (and
freeze them).
(links: by
Makiko Itoh from
Just Bento/
Just Hungry)
To be continued!
