English Muffin Bento

Today's bento contains, spicy tomato chicken, potato salad with yogurt dressing, and mini English muffins (cheat).





Since Yuppi wanted to make Eggs Benedict, she tried to make English muffins for the first time. She was going to make molds for them too by herself using paper and foil, but it sounded like a pain to me so I advised her that muffin dough could be cooked in a skillet without circles. You know what, it worked better than I expected.





This is exactly what she wanted to make. It was lovely enough without hollandaise sauce!



Photographed by Yuppi

Onion Shoyu Pork Bento

For bento today, I made curry potato salad, a fried egg and onion shoyu pork.




Onion shoyu pork is one of my simple bento dishes, which you can make the day before and store in the refrigerator. Grated onion makes meet tender and gives it extra flavor. So you can also marinate all the ingredients together in the refrigerator before cooking and then cook it in the morning. A bit of grated garlic would make it even more flavorful and appetizing if you don't mind its smell at work or school. Other spices you like (red chili, ginger, whatever) would also work. If you're not a fan of the shoyu flavor you can switch the soy sauce and sugar to a little salt and some tomato puree or ketchup. Not to mention beef also goes well on this recipe.





Ingredients for 3 - 4 bentos
About 300 gram pork slices
half an onion, grated
1 and 1/2 to 2 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 to 1 tablespoon sugar



Put all the ingredients in a pan or pot and mix well.



Cook it over medium-low heat for 5 - 6 minutes until done.

This onion shoyu pork is tender and tasty cold as well. Now it's time to give it a try!

Sammy and Naporitan plus Kotorisan

Hi guys! It looks like I can finally get back into bento. A couple of things kept me unmotivated taking pictures early in the mornings. But here is where I always come back. It's nice to be back to my main blog. I'm going to keep it going at my pace.

Today I made a quick sammy bento. For the sammy, I made an omelet, and sauteed some bacon slices in a pan. I think sammy lunches need something filling to keep you stuffed until the evening. So I made chicken crisp with a chicken breast.





This one is a Naporitan (long pasta with ketchup, onion slices, and ham or bacon) bento I made in the past summer.







In the meantime, my darling Pigchan who did a great job on the winner-drawing, went back to his real home (my sister's place) after his long stay at my house. We've all been missing him so much.







In place of him, now what puts a smile on my face is Kotori-san. I've been on a needle felting kick lately.




I got a lot of blankets because I am so cute!

Bento Love to The Winner

Howdy Doody! It's totally been quite a while?? I am alive!! I survived the tough and harsh summer, lol! Being back here, the first thing I want to do is... post bentos? Nooo. Today I'm going to do an entry about my last giveaway, do you remember? Want to see what I sent to the winner? Not interested in it? Okay I need to share it anyway haha! Here are the items I really enjoyed selecting for the winner.





Two lovely polka dot enamel containers, cute smiling wooden cutlery, a strawberry cooking timer which comes in handy when you have to whip up bento foods, sushi-printed chopsticks which make me giggle, a bento cloth I made, some cookies I made, and a box of both-sides-siliconed baking paper (which is not in the picture).





I'm ashamed I'm not a good sewer, but really wanted to do. I thought this fabric was well-matching for the red white polka dotties.





And I made cookies using our local ingredients... Hokkaido butter, flour, sugar, egg. The name, Hokkaido is such a brand, we are blessed with great local products, especially dairy and farm products. So I'd love to share the yumminess with the winner.





Matcha (powdered green tea leaves) cookies with white chocolate on it. Made out of flour, butter, confectioner's sugar, egg yolk, matcha and Meiji white chocolate.





Crumbly snowballs. Made out of flour, butter, raw beet sugar, egg and almond powder.





All those of you who took part in and jazzed up this event, thank you so much again!

Summer Bentos

Hi everybody! It's been a while?! I've been pretty busy having family matters and such. And the weather has been kind of crazy this summer. Cold drinks have been a must for me rather than food! Plus I have to come up with ideas of safe-and-tasty-in-a-hot-day bentos because of this heat wave these days. Well this is today's bento I chocked up with fresh summer veggies. Corn edamame salad, sauteed shishito peppers, soy-pickled zucchini and meatballs (chicken, pork, onion). Thankfully, in summer and fall we can always get fresh-picked great local vegetables... Corn, edamame, zucchinis, peppers etc.





This one is a quick bento made on an unmotivated day. I seasoned sauteed-pork slices with shoyu koji and honey.





This one looks bland but tastes so good, which contains pork, green onion, maitake mushrooms and moyashi sprouts, seasoned with oyster sauce, salt and sesame oil.





This contains ketchup pork rice, sausages, boiled sugar peas and aiko tomatoes.

I'm not sure when I can be back here next time but hope y'all have a lot of yumminess and a fabulous weekend!!

Finally Summer!

It's officially been midsummer here these few days. It's tiring to do anything in my hot room. While, I keep on making bentos as usual. Here are some of the ones I made recently. By the way, I will be away from this blog for a while longer due to stuff to do. I hope that y'all are enjoying your summer if you are in the Northern Hemisphere!!

Ika Fry Bento

It's Omusubi Tuesday today! I made sesame omusubi, shoyu-koji pork saute and ika (squid) fry. I actually thought this morning that it was Monday today because yesterday was a holiday here. That's why these bentos only contain two kinds of okazu... I thought *today is Monday so I'm allowed to be lazy yay* haha! But I happened to make some omusubi for Yuppi's bento this morning. I hope to share varied ideas of my favorite omusubi (onigiri) fillings on every Tuesday in the future.

In the meantime, although it's not that I'm so busy, I will be taking a short break from blogging in order to clear up tons of chores. I will be back in a week or two, maybe with many bento pictures. I might overwhelm you, so prepare yourself!

Hotcake Bento and Sukiyaki Bento

It's *Flour Thursday* today so I made hotcakes (Japanese pancakes, not that which have to be hot) for bento. Since I didn't do any prep for a flour-thing-bento last night this one turned out too simple. Wish I had bought sausages and fruits... I whipped up some hotcakes and rustled up some grub from the fridge. Chicken tender tempura (leftover) dressed in sauce, cheddar cheese in foil, butter and a ketchup bottle for the hotcake (Yuppi like it with ketchup).






This one is literally a simple bento for *Simple Wednesday* yesterday. It's safe to say that *Donburi style* (rice topped with savory foods) is perfect for simple bentos. By the way, for those of you who have no idea what I mean -- Simple Wednesday, Flour Thursday things, check out the last post!

Tenmusu Bento

I announced the giveaway winner on the last post. The drawing went quite smoothly thanks to Pig chan's big help LOL! Again, a huge thanks to everybody who livened up the event! The giveaway closed, but the bento gallery is still open. Your bento pictures are always welcomed if you haven't joined it yet.

Today's bentos feature Tenmusu --- omusubi (onigiri) filled with shrimp tempura seasoned with tempura dipping sauce or salt. I love both, but made salted ones this time. I did a bit different thing from the normal method. You would first make shrimp tempura, but I just salted a bit and floured some shrimp instead of tempura-battering, and then shallow-fried them, it's lighter this way. You can dip your shrimp tempura in tempura sauce or men-tsuyu (Japanese noodle sauce) instead of salting. I say, both work well. Then you just make omusubi as usual with the seasoned shrimp tempura and nori. Tenmusu is one of my favorite omusubi (onigiri) variations!

In the meantime, pay attention, I fixed my daily bento activities as follows. I thought I had to take steps to get out of my bento rut. I'm actually considering putting Meatless day in there.
Lazy Monday
Omusubi Tuesday
Simple or free Wednesday
Flour Thursday
Cleaning (fridge) Friday
Wow this sounds kind of funny haha! But I don't care, I'm currently going with it. How long I can continue, we'll see.

Winner of 200th Post Giveaway

Ahem, I'm going to be announcing the winner today! Ah wait, before that, I have to show you guys how the winner got chosen. I said I'd draw one name out of a hat. Yeah out of a hat. I literally put the pieces of paper with the names of all those who had joined the giveaway *in a hat*, by the way, which is one of my favorite ones I put on all the time. But the picker is not me. Our little darling birdie drew the winner LOL!









Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...



Pig chan is biting one right now lol.



Wahahah! Here is the one he picked out!



Ta daahhhh! The luckiest person on the planet! Congratulations!!!


Ahhh I really really wish I could give all of you the prize. Strange, Priscilla, Burinsmith, Tatabonita, Gamene, Angelenteo, Mande, Ohayobento, Bentomonsters, Lizzie and Torng Horng. Thank you so much for joining the giveaway and sharing your lovely hearty bento pictures. All of you livened up this event. And thank you for giving me a lot of inspiration to keep bentoing. Amazingly enough, every single one of the bentos is the type of one I want to eat for real. I am so happy to have you awesome bento mates! Let's keep making real yummy bentos!

Burinsmith, once everything is ready I will email you and post up a picture of the surprise coming to you. It'll probably take some more time, so please stay excited until then!!

Chicken Tender Katsu Bento

It was terribly foggy this morning so these photos are also kind of foggy haha. Today's bentos contain leftover chicken tender katsu with tonkatsu sauce, leftover korokke (fried potato patty, croquette), tamagoyaki with umeboshi paste in it, mayo broccoli, and plum cuties for refreshment. The shape of plums and that kind of fruits is adorable isn't it? I love how they brighten up bentos. Tomorrow is Tanabata (star festival) here. I'm drawing one person from those who've joined the giveaway wheeee! I'm so thrilled right now. Happy Friday!!