I haven’t featured an actual bento on this site since Sept. 21.  7 Days between bentos.  Not good.  The previous two bentos were just as far apart.  I have bento block.  Unsure what to cook for my bento.  New recipes aren’t working the best.  New items I’ve tried haven’t worked out, hence my break-up letter with  tofu.

After last night, I feel slightly redeemed.  This past weekend, I spent a good bit of time with Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a notebook, and a pen.  I am slightly half way through the book, with a few chapters yet to go, but I’m feeling more confident again.  I’ve taken notes.  I’ve made a list of recipes to try.  Some are recipes I’m pretty sure I’ll like.  Some are ones I want to try because they feature a food I haven’t had yet.  Some are recipes that I might try just to stretch myself a bit.

Last night’s dinner features two of those recipes: Fresh Beans with Croutons and Egg, p. 591 and Roasted Brussel Sprouts p. 273.

I really enjoyed the bean dish.  It starts out by making fresh croutons with day old (or so in my case) bread cooked in a bit of olive oil.  Since I used the same skillet I had done the brussel sprouts dish in, the croutons also picked up the salt, pepper, and bit of garlic from that dish.  OH MY!  The bread tastes divine.  While this dish is meant to be for fresh beans, finding fresh beans isn’t easy for me.  So sorry Bittman.  Canned beans found their way into this dish.  And you know what.  Tastes fine to me.  All in all, I really liked this dish, but I found it slightly lacking.  Not in flavor or feeling filled.  But I feel like it needs one more ingredient.  I’m just not sure what.

I’ve already said how much I like the brussel sprouts.  Tasty tasty.

It is all packed up into a bento box for myself today.  WOOHOO!  The first tier hosts the bean dish and brussel sprouts.  The second tier has watermelon, asian pear, and cookies (in the plastic wrap).  The fruit is sitting on a leaf of butter lettuce.

Be the bento everyone!  Have a great  Tuesday.

Today is going to be a great day!  I just know it.  My morning has started off really well, and it’s all because what I planned actually happened, which is a very uncommon occurrence.  After yesterday’s sadly packed and photographed bento offering, I decided last night I wanted to share something better with you today.  I went to bed early and woke the same, bright-eyed and ready to put together this morning’s bento.  My goal: to document the progress as I went along.

I’m not a real planner when it comes to my bentos.  At the most, I might cook something the night before with a bento in mind for the next day.  Mostly, I’m an “open the fridge and hope something is in there” sort.  This means as I get ready for my bentos in the morning I’ll pull out all sorts of things and lay them out on my counter to see what’s going to go into the box.  This morning’s offerings are plentiful because I went to the grocery store yesterday.  Some mornings are really, really sad (like yesterday’s).

My plan this morning was to pack a full day of bento for me.  I don’t often do this.  Step 1: pack a morning snack bento.  My morning snack bento consists of frozen blueberries with yogurt.  This concoction is mixed with plain granola.  I add toasted pecans (not pictured) to the mix as well.  It’s yum and keeps me going in the mornings.

For an afternoon snack, I often like to partake of Feisty Foodie‘s apple and cheese sandwich.  There are a few things I’ve learned I like to do for myself as I’ve made this sandwich over and over again.  First, I like to keep the peel on, so I use an apple corer to get rid of the stuff I don’t want.  This makes making the sandwich in the morning much quicker.  As well, I like to purchase small blocks of cheese and use my vegetable peeler to get one long strip of cheese that fits perfectly on my homemade bread!  This works much better than the cheese slicer I seem to have wasted money on!

I layer the sandwich up and throw it into a pan with a wee bit of butter (or margarine) to toast on both sides.  While I do this, I start packing my lunch bento.  Here’s another tip I’ve found when bringing a toasted sandwich for lunch: don’t pack it into your bento and let it cool before putting the top on.  Where the warm toast touches the sides of the bento collects heat and makes the toast soggy.  Place the toasted sandwich on a cooling rack and once cool pack into your bento box.

Now, it’s time to pack my bento box.  Today, I’m having white beans and rice with chicken and veggies.  First, I packed in a bit of rice and placed a food divider next to it.  Two chicken tenders were cut up and placed in the box on the other side of the rice.  Finally, I topped the rice with the white beans (btw, thanks for lunch Mom!).  Oh, and the apple sandwich is about done.  I transferred it to its cooling rack at this point.

The second tier of the bento was just as simple.  First, half a banana is placed on one end of the box.  I wrapped it in cellophane to hopefully prevent too much browning.  Next, came a layer of my everyday carrot intake.  I placed a food divider next to the carrots to keep their slight moisture from disturbing my dessert: 3/4 of a chocolate graham cracker, broken to fit into my bento box.

This is today’s bento in all its tasty glory.  YUM!  I’m ready for lunch now.  How about you?

Be the bento everyone!  See you tomorrow.

This bento contains my mom’s white beans with ham.  YUM!  I only had some sushi rice on hand.  I cooked that in my rice cooker with the steamer basket on top to steam the carrots at the same time.  YAY for multitasking!  And thanks to Lunch in the Box for the idea in the first place.  I useed my one and only onigiri mold (triangular) to pack the rice and then placed the white beans next to it.  The beans probably look a little odd since they are still half-frozen when I placed them in the bento box.

Okay, get ready for 3 bento posts.  I have a busy week this week.  I made 3 bentos to get me through the next few days.  So here we go with the first one.

I had some chicken breasts I wanted to use up.  I chose two recipes from Recipezaar.  This is the first one: Blackened Chicken & Beans

This became a bento for this week:

This bento includes:

Blackened chicken with beans, corn, & salsa; carrots, avocado slices, cucumber; 1 nutty buddy bar.

Red beans and rice is just about my favorite Louisiana dish!  Every year, my mother cooked whatever meal I wished for my birthday.  This is the dish I asked for every year.  She usually served it with cornbread.  I have to make some of that today!

Here they are. Aren’t they yummy looking?

This is a really simple recipe, what you might call down-home cooking.  All it takes is a bit of time.  Let’s get ready ot make this delish dish.  For this recipe you’ll need:

• 1 package of red kidney beans.  I use Camillia brand because that’s what my mom uses.  Use what you can find.
• 1 package of smoked sausage, cut into slices or chunks
• 1/2 of a bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 of an onion diced
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped fine (optional)
• Salt
• Long grain white rice

Cooking the red beans:

• Place the package of red beans in a large pot and cover them with water.  Place them on your stove on medium-high heat and bring them to a boil.
• When the water boils, pour the beans out into a collander and drain off the water.
• You will do these first two steps a total of 3 times.  It reduces the scum from the   boiling beans.  My mom calls this “cleaning the beans.”
• After cleaning the beans, place the beans back into the pot and cover once again with water.  Add seasonings: onion, bell pepper, 1 heaping teaspoon of salt, celery (if you choose to use it), and bay leaves.  Please note that if you don’t want to eat the celery, you can just put the whole stalk in there and take it out at the end like you will do to the bay leaves. It is up to you.
• Cook this mixture for 1 hour, stirring occassionally.
• After one hour, check beans for softness.   If tender, add your sausage.  You have a choice on the sausage too.  If you cook it down in a pan first, it will give the sausage a firmer, more ”crisp” taste.  If you add it straight to the beans, it gives the sausage a more puffed, boiled texture.  I prefer mine added straight to the beans.  I like mine pan-fried too as a side to the beans.  This dish can be a real smoked sausage fest if I’m not careful.
• After adding the sausage, recover the beans and cook slowly for at least another hour.  Check often and stir.  At the two hour mark of cooking, all all ingredients should have blended nicely.  Taste.  Add salt, pepper, or Tony Chachere’s seasoning to your preference.  I often don’t add anything else.  I like it as is.  This is personal preference though.
• Once you’ve added the seasonings you like, place on simmer to keep warm while you whip up a batch of rice to cook with this.  Just use regular ol’ long grain white rice, cooked as you normally would.
• Before plating these red beans, take out the bay leaves.  Also, take out the celery if you left it as one long stalk for flavor.
• Place cooked rice on plate and top with red beans.  Serve with cornbread and a salad.  YUM!

Here my red beans, still in the pot and cooking.  These are fantastic.  I highly recommend you have some today in honor of my upcoming birthday!