Moving Is Hell Bento

So I am days away from the first official day of my move. Me and Mr. Sonoma Bento are moving to a larger apartment in our complex, so I am really looking forward to more space, but NOT really looking forward to all of the boxes and cleaning that await me in the next week. Yuck. Yesterday I spent two hours scrubbing the oven. :-( So this will be the last bento for a little while, until I get everything unpacked and am not worried about cleaning an appliance again so my landlord can inspect it.

In this bento: Yakionigiri from Trader Joes (love these!), baby carrots, a mandarin orange, a few cherry tomatoes from Trader Joes (not very flavorful this time of year), leftover salmon from Sam's For Play Cafe (dinner last night), and steamed broccoli shoots from Triple T tossed with a mustard and chili flakes vinaigrette.

This is a brand new bento box (well, kind of brand new) that I picked up at Border's bookstore. They carry products from Paperchase, and this is one of a set of four bento boxes. I really love these boxes because they are so cute, and with four different sizes for one low price, they are really versatile. Plus the lids seem to fit really well.

Wish me luck with the move! See you around mid March. :-)

Sonoma Bento 100th Bento Winner!

Sorry I did not post this yesterday! Work has suddenly become very busy with a transition that will take much of my time between now and the new year. Most of my bentos between now and then will look like this:

Certainly not yucky, but not too fancy either. Leftovers bento with sauteed zucchini in the purple cup, slices of persimmon from Redwood Empire Farms, slices of cucumber, leftover pieces of ham, baby carrots, and a slice of watermelon radish from Wild Rose Ranch. I love this set of bento boxes from Paperchase! If you have a Borders Books near by, be sure to see if they have snack boxes and bento boxes from Paperchase.

And now the big announcement! I had to put together a spreadsheet of all the entries, since some people did not separate their entries into different posts. Wanted to make sure everyone got the right amount of chances to win! The winner of my 100th Bento contest is: ALICE WANG! Congrats! I hope you enjoy all of the bento goodies and I can't wait to see what fun stuff you come up with!

To everyone who entered: THANK YOU for following this blog and for being so excited about seasonal eating and nutritious lunches. Bento boxes are great for so many reasons, including this added benefit of meeting new people. :) Happy Holidays!

Salad Nicoise Bento

I just received my prize from the Food Ninja contest ("It's a Major Award!") and I am thrilled with it. It's a ManPans frying pan with a lid. This puppy is really well made and heats up super fast. I decided to break it in with a Martha Stewart Everyday Food recipe and it came out really well. I made steaks with baslamic dijon sauce, boiled new potatoes with herbs, and steamed green beans with lemon and butter. Today's bento uses leftovers from that meal (not the steaks, we scarfed those down).

In the large container: a hard boiled egg, tuna in oil, boiled new potatoes with herbs, and steamed green beans. In the smaller container: a mandarin orange, walnuts from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, and a Ghirardelli chocolate. The bento boxes are from a set of four that I picked up at Border's Books.

Here's the ManPans frying pan in action. It heated up really fast and kept the heat well. Normally my burners have cool spots in the middle, but this pan heated up evenly across the surface. And the sauce came together in a flash.

Here's our dinner. This sauce was really tasty and super easy. I recommend checking out Martha's Everyday Food section for easy dinner ideas. And big thanks to La Fuji Mama, Bella Limento, and Salty Seattle for hosting the Food Ninja contest.

Crepes Bento

Today a bunch of twitter friends having a little Twitter Food Party. It's fun: we agree on a dish, and then everyone makes their own version of it. Today it's PANCAKES! You can be loose with your interpretation, like savory or sweet, and also different cultures come into play. I thought about Pfannekuchen (a German pancake with fruit - sooooo good), but I settled on crepes.

In this bento: crepes (filled with thinly sliced white mushrooms, provolone cheese, and roasted turkey breast), baby carrots, roasted brussel sprouts with walnuts from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market and Point Reyes Original Blue Cheese, flower shaped watermelon radish slices from Wild Rose Ranch, 'rabbit' apples from Lambert's Apples, and some steamed edamame.

I got this bento box at Borders Books this past week. I saw Sheri of Happy Little Bento post some pictures of their new bento boxes (made by Paperchase) and I just had to go out and get it. This is actually the largest of 4 boxes, each nesting inside of the next. Each one has a different little xmas image on top. So darling! And I got four bento boxes (yes, the small one is pretty small) for 10 bucks! Woot!

If you are on twitter, check out #twitterfoodparty for all of the fun pancake dishes today. And join us next time for foodie fun!