Pressure Cooker Bento

Ok, I decided to try to figure out how to make a good Bento lunch in a few minutes, and realized that the pressure cooker is the perfect tool for this!! Rice goes in the bottom with enough water to cook it, on the wire rack I have ingredients for the traditional potato salad, bell pepper slices, asparagus, an egg and olive tapenade quiche, and two eggsin their shells. All veggies are frozen, I keep them in ziplock bags in my freezer. I set it for about 5 minutes on high pressure, and viola! Pull it all out, arrange it in my Bento box, add soy mayo to the potato salad, ball and season the rice, and lunch for my husband is complete!

Vegetable Cutters

I got the cutest vegetable cutters today! I haven't used them yet, but here are some pics, I thought the box was so cute in a really bad English kinda way...

These came from Amazon HERE!

$5 shipped for a Bento Box? Today only, so read on...

I got the new Bento Box I ordered for my husband, today in the mail. It is super cute and very well made! I ordered it from Amazon. Well, today there is a an Amazon gift card deal HERE for a $5 gift card for $10 on Amazon. This is fantastic! You can order the box I ordered in either red or blue, and add in some veggie cutters and perhaps a cute rice mold all for $5!!

Here are some links from my Amazon Bento store, note, the prices in my store are the same as the prices on Amazon, but by buying through my links Amazon pays me a commission for the referral. It is free for you and money for me (not very much money though, lol!), and well, we all win! If you would prefer for me not to get a commission, you are welcome to just search for the same products on Amazon.

The Bento Box in the photos below

Veggie Cutters to make carrots cuter

Egg Molds

The link to my whole Bento Store

Enjoy!!!

Bento at Whole Foods

I decided to check Whole Foods today for precious Bento supplies, and I am so glad I did!
I found an entire display of Laptop Lunches with the cloth cases between $23 and $45 and the little plastic insert containers for $14.99!

And more Bento at Whole Foods...

And in the water aisle with the water bottles I found even more!

Adorable St. Patrick's Day cookie cutter set!

I totally wish I had a cute set like this for today!

St. Patrick's Day Cookie Cutters

I would have cut my sandwich a whole lot better! Well, the day is still young, maybe the dollar store will have something!

St. Patricks Day Bento!!

I made a cute Shamrock shaped sandwich, a Bento rabbit out of apple, added green jelly beans and fresh blackberries, and two cute picks full of grape tomatoes! All of it is placed on a salad bed of green lettuce. A little Luck O' the Irish for today!

Free Printable Shamrock

I found this in a Google search, and decided it would be perfect to print for a note or perhaps to place on top of a container for my Bento today... pictures will be coming as soon as I finish!

My 99 Cent store run today.

I found some great things for Bento at my local 99 Cent store today. I read on another blog (www.lunchbucketbento.blogspot.com)that she found Hello Kitty Bento boxes at the 99 cent store here in Phoenix back in 2007. I was going on a run to LeeLee Asian market which she also mentioned in the same article, so I figured since there is a 99 cent store one more block up I would stop there as well. I was seriously glad I did! I got the cute pink Blow Pop container there, two sandwich cutters, one puzzle and one that removes the crust and slices it in half, one cute set of Easter cookie cutters, some really cute small sauce containers, and a salad container with the fork and a salad dressing container built into the lid. I was totally excited about all of it!!!
Well, then I also found my favorite Sarah Lee soft and smooth bread there, Earthbound Farms organic lettuce, grape tomatoes, blackberries, and apples too!! All of it looked fresh and perfect, and at $1 each i walked out one happy camper!!

Fixed my photo!!

It was upside down the first time I posted it, but now it is all fixed and better!!! My very first Bento in the adorable Blow Pop container I found at the 99 cent store today!

Bento Supplies Revisited

A few posts down I have a photo of my Bento supplies so far. I cleaned out an entire cupboard in our kitchen, and created a peaceful storage space for all of the supplies I already have, and for those I intend to gather. I have a nice lunch bag for my husband bought on clearance from Pottery Barn Kids a few months ago with his initials on it.
He had a few different containers that go inside the bag, but each of them had some kind of problem. He has a nice glass container that I got so he could microwave things safely, but mysteriously, it is missing it's lid. He has a blue plastic container with a cute lid that has a knife and fork built in, but last week he broke the fork. He had a cute container that folded up into a cube, but I think he left that in our hotel room in Colorado. Suffice it to say, his lunch stuff is in pretty sad shape!

I began by ordering a Bento box for him. I am on a budget, and this was not a part of that budget, so I got the cheapest thing I could find that had good reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Urara-Blue-Dragonfly-Japanese-Bento/dp/B001TK5HYO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1331957230&sr=8-3

I ordered it from "All Things For Sale" because it says under the comments section that they include a free Bento band with your order. I haven't recieved it yet, so I will have to report back if this is true or not.

Bento Philosophy

Yesterday as soon as I began my explorations into Bento making, I started collecting the supplies I already had. I had a few cookie cutters, a nice set of nesting heart cookie cutters from the recent post-Valentine's Day sales at Target, two pancake/egg cookers leftover from some time in the distant and remote past, and my husband's existing lunch boxes that I have been collecting for the past year.

When my husband is in town, he likes me to make him a lunch every day. I admittedly was not very happy about this whole lunch making idea when we first got married. I had been single a long time, and making lunch for my man seemed like something he could do himself. Well, I watched a few Bento videos on you tube yesterday, and I realized how wrong I have been. I love my husband, and Bento is a way to show love through something he is going to eat anyway. Here is a link to the video that changed my perception:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lovw5uohkCA

And this cute video, showing a woman making her very first Bento for her husband:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4vckSdFttc

So, not only is this whole Bento process fun, and a great outlet for my own creativity, it is also a wonderful way to show my husband that I love him. We also have three children between us, and while we don't have them during the school year, we do have them the entire summer, so I am thinking Bento might be fun for all of us to do together.

My Bento supplies so far:

My First Bento

This is the first Bento I have made. It was my dinner tonight, and it was delicious! It has a couple of pieces of lettuce as a bed for my sandwich. The sandwich is natural Jif (no crazy hydrogenation in it) and apple butter from AJs market. I added a Valentines day pack of goldfish, some teeny carrot slices, some teeny grape tomatoes, and two delicious blackberries for dessert. I have to admit, I normally hate vegetables. Not today. Make the vegetables little enough and display them prettily, and wow! Even I will eat them!!

Ok, I am new at this, and this came from my phone, and I don't know why the photo is upside down!!
And I don't know how to fix it!!

Bento, my new obsession

I have known about Bento for years. I used to secretly covet my friend Maiko's beautiful lunches in their adorable Hello Kitty Bento boxes when I was in the 4th grade. I admit it. I never knew way back then why her lunches were so adorable while mine were pretty awful in their brown paper bags.
Well yesterday (yes, just yesterday) I saw a post on Facebook about pink slime in school lunches. One of my friends added a comment underneath linking to a beautiful blog about Bento lunches. I was immediately and totally transfixed!! Maiko's lunches!!! Yay!!!