June bento

Here is a quick shot of my bento lunch from yesterday. My sandwich is a re-creation of a delicious vegan sandwich I had recently in Ellensburg, WA, but my version has a little turkey. Hummus on one side of the bread, fresh avocado on the other side with sprouts and tomato slices between. Looks like I got a little carried away with the fruits and veggies on the side, but can you really have too many?

A Quick February Bento

A quick shot of my bento from lunch today. So much going on lately, hardly time to think much less blog but I'm trying to get back to it.

Put together a quick bento today so we could get out in the sun for a few minutes. The days are starting to get noticeably longer and brighter. We don't have very much snow right now, maybe 2" and the roads are pretty dry. Looking forward to more spring-like weather and warmer temps. 25° here today!

Quick October Bento

Just a quick shot of a couple of bento lunches I made a week or two ago. Seems like forever, things have just been so busy lately.

We both had turkey sandwiches on bagel thins, carrots, and a cookie! We split the hummus with carrots to dip, and I had an Asian pear and some Weight Watchers Harvest Grain crackers. They are my new favorite.

I snuck in another August bento!

I made a  couple of quick bentos for us earlier this week. Mine is on the left. Chickpeas, with pepitas. Caprese salad with a bit of cucumber from my mom's greenhouse added in, and an Asian pear. Hubby's bento was heavy on the desserts. He had a sandwich thin pocket stuffed with Laughing Cow cheese and deli turkey and honey mustard dipping sauce, tapioca pudding, cookie, peanut M&M's and some popped bbq chips. We were able to get out and enjoy the sun for a bit too!

Our August Bento

This was our only August bento (unless I make another one this week!). I need to get back with it, but haven't made it happen lately. I put together a quick bento one day to take in the car. Some of us need to get out of the house every now and then {insert hubby's name here!}.

Shredded carrot, raisin,  and cream cheese rolled up in a flatout. Pretzel thins and chocolate chip cookies. I would have loved some hummus to go with those pretzels but it wasn't meant to be...maybe next time.

Happy bento-ing!

A weekend bento!

It's not very exciting, but it is a bento. Finally. It's been a little hectic lately but yesterday I decided to just spend an extra few minutes and put my lunch into a bento box.

I had a little pack of garlic summer sausage (yum!) and cheese that came in a gift box that I thought would be a perfect size to line up in my box. Triscuit thins are there between the rows of meat and cheese. I wasn't sure how to fit them in and make them look cute, so they are just there. Fresh pineapple, strawberries, and a yummy homemade biscotti for something a little sweet. Mmmm. I love making biscotti in smaller sizes for just a couple bites of soft & crunchy goodness.

Two Bentos, a Dog, and a Mountain

Pretty February Sky

Backyard looks like a glacier

 The last few weeks we've had some interesting weather. One day -25°F. Four days later +40°F. We have a ton of snow on the ground. Some of the snow has been blown into drifts by the fierce winds we frequently have (gusts 50-80 mph are not uncommon). Last night we had freezing rain. Our front yard is buried in 3' of snow and the top is perfectly glassy smooth like ganache from the rain and then freezing again. One plus from this weather was a happy day for Panda earlier this week. She realized if she stood on top of the snow drift in the back yard she could see over the 6' privacy fence. A whole new world...

I found time to make a couple of bentos this week too!

Carrot, raisin & cream cheese roll-ups, fruit, string cheese & crackers for me. Dave's has chocolate animal crackers.

Another bento just for me. I love this box. Happy marching! Avocado & fruit in the bottom with a penguin pick to watch over the marching band, and the top filled with meat and cheese & crackers left over from the Super Bowl party.

Last Bento of 2011

At the last minute yesterday I decided to throw together a quick bento lunch. My last bento of the year. And sadly, there weren't that many of them to start with.

This stacking bento has a container of fruit; kiwi and pear with a wedge of brie...oh brie, how I love thee. The larger container has a fried egg sandwich on a flatout fold bread and a little bit of garbanzo beans. I just found out in August that I LOVE garbanzo beans - straight out of the can! They're delicious on salad.

The background is a scarf I picked up on our recent trip to London. Maybe I'll have time to throw together a little post about our trip to England.

Happy New Year to all. Here's to a year of more doing, less stress, less crazy, and hopefully a few more bentos. Cheers!

Bento by the river

I finally got around to making us a bento lunch, mostly to get my hubby out of the house. He's been working hard on a project and I couldn't let him miss this lovely warm-ish weather we're having today. We haven't had too many super nice days this summer, and we can already feel a crispness in the air. Fall isn't far from us. Some of the trees are already starting to show little spots of yellow leaves.

I snapped this pic with my phone. Not too bad for a phone picture. The mountain in the distance is Pioneer Peak, and that little dark green nub below it is called the butte. The elevation of the butte is only about 850'.




Our bentos today were made quickly, and aren't terribly creative, but they were tasty and served their purpose.

Mine is at the top of the photo and had turkey and cheese stacks, caprese salad with fresh from the greenhouse cucumber, graham crackers, and apricots on top of brown sugar yogurt.  Dave's was quite similar, but he had an actual turkey and cheese sandwich, same apricots with yogurt, and popped bbq chips.

This is one of my late-blooming Martha Washington geraniums. Beautiful!

A Spring Bento

The last couple of weeks we've had some really nice weather. It's been in the 40s and sunny a lot. Yesterday it was a little gloomy so I made a happy spring-ish bento for lunch.

Tomato, basil, mozzarella and a little balsamic vinegar. Tuna salad in a small pita and fresh pineapple & strawberries. A piece of the basil made it's way onto the pineapple by accident, and it was delish!

Today, our weather has gotten worse. Snow. I shouldn't be surprised really, we pretty much always get snow in April. We'll probably even get more later in the month, but mentally I had hoped to be past this and headed into spring.

This is the view out my home office window. The snow is starting to stick and come down heavier now. Maybe it won't last long...*fingers crossed*...and those of you that live in warm places (like Florida!) send some sun my way!

Bento & Sky

We are supposed to get a big snowstorm tonight - storm warning and all. They are calling for 12" but it's still kind of decent looking out. I took this scenery pic today at lunch time. We drove across town and sat in the sun while we ate. I just love the dramatic sky and clouds we get in the winter.

Not only did we have sun we also had a simple bento lunch. I had the one on the left - strawberries, pineapple, string cheese (it's buried under the animal crackers) animal crackers, celery & pb, and a flatout with cream cheese, carrot, & raisin. Dave's was basically the same, minus the fresh fruit. He had a babybel cheese too.

February Bento

New year...and only one bento so far. I had hoped to have more by now but that just hasn't been the case. As I've said before we mostly eat lunch at home and it's often dinner leftovers or a quick sandwich or something like that. I want to get back to attempting some bento lunches it just hasn't really happened. But, we're still early in the year so I've got plenty of time, right?!

We both had heart shaped egg salad sandwiches (though the bread was kinda small and barely shows the heart shapes), mini babybel, and flavored pretzel thins. I had roasted edemame, and fresh kiwi & pineapple. Dave had trail mix and probably a couple of golden oreos.

A bento!

Terrible photo - delicious dinner! This was a bento dinner I had at a sushi place in Eagle River, AK after my girlfriend and I went to a movie in Anchorage. She had been here before and said it was really good, so I thought I needed to sample it too!

Dinner was delish! I ordered a combo dinner and it came in this bento box. Teriyaki chicken, rice, California roll, and tempura shrimp....shhhrrriiiiiiimmmpp! I could eat my weight in shrimp nearly every day. I love love love it. This tempura shrimp was really good too. When I was almost done eating I looked under the little bowl of sauce and found steamed edemame in the pod! Surprise! Mmmm. There was so much food I couldn't eat it all, so I brought home the chicken & some rice for Dave.

Definitely great find for another dinner stop. Speaking of dinner...I could use some now.

It's a Bento!!

This was our Meatless Monday Bento for this week. The top one was Dave's - carrot raisin roll up, apples & peanut butter, and a baby bel ladybug on top of wheat thins.

Mine had the same carrot raisin roll ups, part of an apple, vanilla creme brule mini rice cakes, and some tomatoes (from my garden), mozzarella & basil (also from my garden) drizzled with a little balsamic. Those little carrot raisin roll ups are really tasty and not too bad on the points.

Finally a Bento!

Finally a bento lunch for us - and it's September now. How did that happen?! I packed these lunches as a picnic lunch thinking we would get out of the house today for lunch and enjoy a little sun. We ended up eating at the office, but that's okay, it was a change of scenery anyway. Sorry about the flash & bad indoor lighting, but at least there is a picture.

The box on the left is my new box my hubby got me for our anniversary! I love it! It has little Russian stacking dolls on the clear lid, and the little handles that snap down on the sides. It's smaller than I realized, but that's okay, I used my Mio snack box too!

My lunch has pb&j on a sandwich thin (cut in heart shapes), local garlic dill cheese curds, and fresh raspberries mixed with a little sour cream and powdered sugar. Mio has cut up cantaloupe.

D's box has turkey & cheese on a heart shaped sandwich thin, Laughing Cow blue cheese with pretzels, and a couple of golden oreos. (both of the heart sandwiches are 2 stacked on top of each other)

Bento Finds

Here are my bento finds from our recent vacation. One of these days I'll actually post some vacation photos, but right now it's hard to narrow them down to just a few.

There may have been a couple more items, but these are the ones I remember right now. And no, I didn't find any actual bento boxes (though the round one will work for something) in West Virginia.

- 4 plastic rounds to go under cakes. I thought these might be cute for bento photo backgrounds. Found them at IKEA for almost nothing. That's what I love about IKEA. Good thing there isn't one in Alaska.

- mini silicone baking cups

- Cupcake Creations papers in eclaire & muffin top shapes. Found these in a kitchen store in the Strip District in Pittsburgh, PA. They say you can bake in them without using a pan. I've been wanting to make muffin tops for a while now, but I don't have a pan. These should do the job.

- chocolate cat cookies from Trader Joe's. These are quite tasty and I thought they would be cute tucked into a bento lunch. Now I just have to make a couple of bentos before we eat all the cute kitty cookies.

- round plastic container with locking sides. There were 2 of these, but one didn't survive the trip back home. :( sniff, sniff. The surviving container is the smaller of the 2.

A much overdue Thank You!

First let me start with the overdue "Thank You" to a bento friend for sending a sweet little Mio box for my slowly growing bento box stash. (Thanks Judy!) I love this little box! It's the perfect size for a snack. For this inaugural snack I had some black grapes (really hard to see in the black box) and some of my new fave Weight Watchers mini Ginger Snap cookies. They have a nice little spice to them and are fantastic with coffee.

This next shot is a variety of columbine growing in my garden. I love how they look like little clusters of fireworks. This year this columbine is about 4 1/2 feet tall! Speaking of fireworks, I hope everyone has a great 4th of July!

A June Bento

Here's a bento from a week and a half ago. Honestly, it seems like much longer ago than it was. We've been keeping very busy, and the days are just flying by.

The pink box on the left is mine. We both have a turkey wrap made with some leftover spinach roll filling (that was delish in a turkey wrap!), in front of the wrap in my box is Matanuska Creamery Garlic Dill cheese curds from our local dariy! YUM! I've also got some roasted edemame, Pirates Booty, a couple bites of carrot, and some cucumber. Oh, and the Oreo fun stix are mine. D has golden Oreos, cheddar Sun Chips, turkey spinach wrap, garlic cheese curds, carrots, and roasted almonds.

Playing Catch Up

Where has the time gone? It's already mid-June. Warmer weather, trees, and flowers are in full swing in Alaska - FINALLY! It's been so nice out the last couple of weeks.

It seems that things are settling down a bit. The last several weeks I've had 2 weeks of being sick :( and then a week and a half of busy-ness with business, errands, and trying to get a quilt top finished in time for an outdoor quilt show. I did get the quilt top done at 11:30 the night before the show, which was followed by a short night of sleep and an early morning working, racing back to see part of a parade, and then getting to the quilt show. I hope to get the quilt show photos up very soon.

My goal for this week is a couple of bentos (they really help cut down on the lunches out), some catch-up blogging (I've got a backlog of photos and things to share), and a generally less busy week. Hope it is fantastic for all!

One last post & bento for April

It was pretty out at lunch time, and kinda warm (52° according to the car thermometer) so we went for a drive rather than eating at home. Soaked up some sunshine and enjoyed our lunches out.

The pink box is mine and the green for D. Both wraps are turkey and cheese, but mine has additional slices of cucumber and is sitting near a cut up radish. I've also got fresh strawberries and pineapple and a little bear face made from a Babybel cheese and carrots for ears. D has carrots, wrapped Babybel and underneath the cheese is a small cup of granola. I made the granola bars again, but they didn't hold together in bars. They do however make great granola cereal which I had this morning with vanilla almond milk over it. So yummy. Oh, and the little penguin man has more bleu cheese dressing for dipping the carrots.