New Phase

Happy May everybody! I'm back! It's been forever since last time I posted. There was a big change around me recently. You know what? Yuppi left home for college. She has gone. So I've entered a new phase of my life, just started my new chapter. But I still make bento of course. These are bentos I made recently. They totally look dull and no fancy, because they are for the rest of the family, yes for hubs, hehe.



Shio saba (salted mackerel), pork bell pepper stir-fry, cheese omelet and butter-sauteed asparagus.



Cold ramen noodles, shumai/shaomai dumplings, spicy sesame sauce, moyashi sprouts, asparagus, pork and a boiled egg.



This bento is real boring. I had to add the pink sakura food cup to the sight to brighten it up, haha! But the foods are good. Potato salad, okonomiyaki omelet, simmered ganmodoki (a kind of fried tofu) and gomoku gohan (seasoned rice with some kinds of vegetables and something), which is one of my comfort foods.

DSLR Shots

Happy happy spring! It's almost May though, pheww. OK, these bentos are totally the same as the ones I posted last time except these pictures here were taken with a DSLR camera. So these bentos are not new or really interesting to see, but I thought I'd post the pictures for comparison. Mmm I can't tell which is better. That's really a matter of preference, right? Anyway you can find what's in these bentos on the last post as I wrote the details there if you haven't already read it. Since my new bento pictures have piled up (that's a bit exaggerated though), I'm going to post them soon!

Smartphone Shots

Inari chirashi bento

I hid chopped sweet salty aburaage in sushi rice instead of stuffing sushi rice into aburaage pouches. Ohitashi (spinach with dashi shoyu), turnip pickle and cheese mashed potato for side dishes.


Tompeiyaki bento

Tompeiyaki (omelet with cabbage, pork and okonomiyaki sauce) and yukari fried chicken.


Chili sausage bento

Sausages dressed with ketchup, a bit of shoyu and chili pepper. Sauteed pork balls. Tamagoyaki with edamame and kanikama.


Jambalaya bento

Is this just fried rice? I slept in and had no cooked rice or time to soak rice in water before cooking it. I decided to make a paella-like thing because it can be cooked without soaking. Fortunately, there were these ingredients in the fridge. Into a large frying pan, I threw rinsed raw rice, water, tomato puree, chicken, sausage, onion, shiitake, curry powder and salt, then cooked until the rice was tender. I had to add in some more water, but it turned out good despite my impromptu.


Pork and veggie rice bento

Mini croissants for an evening snack.


Meatless bento

This is an almost-vegetarian bento.


Happy March everybody! It's been a while. I have been on a phone camera kick lately. That's why I was absent from the blog. I feel like I finally got the hang of shooting bentos with my smartphone. Of course I've been using my camera as well, but it's so much fun to take pictures of foods with a smartphone and edit them with photo apps, isn't it? I think this kick will continue for a while. By the way, I edited these pictures with Snapseed. This app is so handy to make boring pictures look better and fun to play around with. It has been updated recently and is even easier to use than before.

Miso Soy Milk Soup

I made two sorts of omusubi. One is with salted salmon and minced daikon greens, the other is with umeboshi, the leavings of my dashi shoyu, sesame seeds and sesame oil. I also made hakusai soy milk soup. While making the soup, I remembered that I hadn't bought salt yet so I seasoned the soup with miso. Geez, it turned out great! This is super easy to make (as always) and doesn't even call for any dashi/broth, just cook. Give it a try!

I put in...

Water
Cut hakusai (napa cabbage) and bacon
Some miso (light-colored type)
Some rice flour (or flour/starch) to slightly thicken
About one third or fourth as much soy milk as water
A tiny bit of butter for aroma

Chikuwa Isobeage - Tempura

Woow. It's already February. I don't want to believe that, nooo! Haha! Well, we're sure heading for spring, little by little. I used a wappa bento for the first time in ages. It turned out that I was not a wappa lover. My other wappa has also been abandoned somewhere in the kitchen... Poor Wappa, ha! The bento today is meatless. I want to make meatless bentos more often. I made sweet potato walnut salad, chikuwa isobeage and lotus root stir-fry. The shoyu egg half and salted salmon are leftovers. I love chikuwa-no-isobeage. Isobeage is a sort of tempura, with aonori (green seaweed) in its tempura batter. I don't mind shallow/deep frying in the morning when I have enough time.

Bibimbap

I couldn't post yesterday so this is my first bento this week. I started the week with easy bentoing as usual. I've prepared these toppings the night before. There are pork stir-fry, a shoyu egg half, carrot, spinach, moyashi (sprouts), gochujang (Korean sweet, salty chilli paste) and rice in the bento. I seasoned the toppings separately. Sadly, I ran out of salt halfway so the spinach and moyashi look brown and darker because I seasoned them with shoyu instead. The soup jar contains hakusai & shiitake soup. We do love bibimbap. You can eat tons of veggie with it. Thank you Korean food. Good gochujang is a must!

Curry Onion Chicken

Today's veggie is a salad of cabbage, bean sprouts and spinach. Yeah spinach is in season right now, why not eat it? The rest of this bento are cheese omlet with ketchup, teriyaki shiitake and curry onion chicken. I marinated chicken pieces in some grated onion and salt the night before and sauteed them with carrot and curry powder in the morning. Grated onion makes chicken increadibly tender and adds extra flavor.





Happy weekend!!