Harusame Salad and Onigiri Bento

Hiiii! Now I'd like to say anew, thank you for all the support and interest, to those who come read my clumsy post each time. I've learned tons of English words and phrases writing this blog and reading everyone's. (But to be honest, still I'm not able to write even half of things I really want to communicate though haha.) Well I hope to do the giveaway in a timely fashion that I missed the timing due to the earthquake. Although Japan remains in the rough situation everyone's hanging tough.

In the meantime, since it's getting warmer here each day, I thought I should consider summertime bento. I think I'm probably going to make onigiris and salad for bento very often because they are easy to eat and tasty even on a hot day, and hard to go bad yea? This morning I made harusame (thin starch noodles) salad. You can't see boiled harusame in the bento at all, but it's hiding underneath the vegetable, egg, and chicken. I also made dressing for the salad using mentsuyu (Japanese noodle sauce) that I mentioned earlier. With it, you can eat Japanese noodles such as soba, udon, somen, hiyamugi, and so on. Also you can make easily nimono, salad dressing, hiyashi-chuka sauce because it contains syoyu, mirin, sugar and dashi all in one. There are so many kinds of mentsuyu at stores, but I always pick up *Kikkoman Hon Tsuyu*. It's not too sweet and its dashi taste isn't that strong either. That's why I like it best.



=== Harusame salad dressing ingredients  (serves about 4) ===
Adjust the amounts according to your taste and mentsuyu. You can use this sauce for fresh veggie salad and hiyashi chuka (hiyashi ramen) as well.

6 tablespoons hontsuyu or mentsuyu
1 to 2 tablespoons mirin
1 to 2 tablespoons vinegar
A little sesame oil
A little rayu (chili oil) or doubanjiang or red pepper powder or mustard, whichever you like


For these onigiri I used medium polished rice, shiokombu, shirasu, and sesame seeds. Whoaaa one of them looks sour. I should've given him one more eye....I guess?