New LunchBots Bento!

I am so excited about my new LunchBots bento box. It is beautiful and I was thrilled to be able to find it for sale here in Sonoma County! This past weekend I went on a scooter ride with my pal Carina. She JUST got her scooter, so this was a really fun adventure for us. We went out to Sebastopol to go to the farmers market there and to have lunch and shop. I found a whole bunch of awesome LunchBots bento boxes at Silk Moon, which is a store on Main Street. It is such a fun shop, I also got some really cute monster chip bag clips, I will have to show them to you in another post. So on to the bento!

I got the LunchBots Trio, which has three compartments. It is really pretty and came with either a silver lid or this red lid. I like red because it is super dramatic (like me!) so that's the one I chose. In my bento" slices of peach from Twin Peaks, a chicken salad with artichoke hearts and green beans from The Patch, and an undressed caprese salad with tomatoes from The Patch. I did the math and this whole bento only came out to 311 calories! Yay for me!

Here you can see the lid of the LunchBots bento box. It fits really snugly, and nothing spilled into the other compartments, even when I put my bento in my backpack and scooted into work today. Woo hoo!

Here is the super delicious lunch I shared with my friend Carina on Sunday at the Sebastopol Farmers Market. We got this 'fritada' from Mateo Granados' Yucatan Kitchen, which has an awesome booth at this market and other markets. The egg 'fritada' had potatoes, onions, and squash in it and was really delicious. It came with olive oil toasted bread, a creamy aioli, quick sauteed market vegetables, and a black bean puree. If you get a chance, be sure to try food from Mateo at the farmers markets. He sources many of the ingredients from the market that day. :)

Here's Carina and I showing off our delicious food at the Sebastopol Farmers Market. They are now open year round from 10am to 1:30pm at the plaza. 

Chicken Salad with Artichoke Hearts and Green Beans

Meat from 1 roasted chicken thigh (skin removed and meat roughly chopped)

1 oz marinated artichoke hearts, diced

10 green beans, chopped into bite sized pieces and steamed

1 tablespoon greek vinaigrette dressing

freshly ground pepper

Combine ingredients and chill. Serves one. 

Leftovers Bento and Last Chance to Enter Giveaway!

You still have a few hours to put your name in the hat for my bento giveaway! I would love it if you want to contribute a simple recipe to the contest, but you don't have to in order to enter the contest. All you have to do is be a follower of Sonoma Bento! So hurry and get your name in the drawing. :)

I made this bento with leftovers from a meal I made for my mom and dad who were here this past weekend for a visit. We had pork loin with apricot/apple chutney and an orzo pasta salad with cherry tomatoes and padron peppers. I used apples from Twin Peaks, padron peppers from Beet Generation, and cherry tomatoes from The Patch in these recipes. Also in this bento: baby carrots, and an apple rabbit (who has his own little piece of carrot to munch on. :)

I've included this bento in Shannon's What's For Lunch Wednesdays blog. Check it out for other great bento ideas. Come back tomorrow to see who the winner of the contest will be! It could be YOU!

Recipe Contest Bento

Hi bento pals! Sorry I have not posted in a while. I got sick last week and am still trying to get over the sniffles and cough that are SO annoying. This is my 160th bento post, and that means another donation to Redwood Empire Food Bank! Every 20 posts I make a $20 donation to Redwood Empire Food Bank. They provide meals to literally thousands of hungry people in the North Bay every day. As a food blogger I have the luxury to buy the foods I like and take time to make them look pretty, as well as share my bento lunches with my friends. For some people in my community, lunch may not be an option every day. They might have to pay the rent instead of buy groceries. This is my way of helping my community feed itself. I encourage YOU to make a similar commitment. Find a charity you can get behind and let your blog help those who need help the most!

Ok, now for the fun part. It's GIVEAWAY time!

Here is my bento for today: slices of garlic rubbed steak, a kalamata olive, roasted baby potatoes, broccoli spears, orange cherry tomatoes from The Patch, a small gala apple from Twin Peaks Orchard, and a few baby carrots. I decided that for this bento giveaway, I would encourage you to share a recipe for a simple bento ingredient. Your recipe should have no more than five ingredients, like the roasted potatoes in my bento. I will share my recipe for the potatoes at the end of this post. Here is what you can win:

The bento prize pack has a green two tiered bento box, a handmade bento box strap (the little fishy made by me!), two punches for cute nori designs, a set of vegetable cutters, and a cookbook!

Here is the bento box you will win. It has two tiers and the upper tier has a fitted lid so you can add saucy items and they won't spill on everything else.

There are two fun craft punches: one is a frog shape, and the other is a smiling face shape. These are great for punching little details out of sheets of nori (dried seaweed) and adding interesting details to your bento box lunches.

I love these vegetable cutters for adding quick cuteness to bento box lunches. There are three flower shapes in this set of cutters.

Here is the cookbook you will win. It is filled with great, simple recipes that will work in bento lunches. The recipes focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients. I really like this cookbook and have a copy that I use at home quite often!

Now for the promised roasted potato recipe. I used a spice blend from Savory Spice Shop in Santa Rosa, but feel free to use whatever spice blend you would like to flavor your version.

Roasted Baby New Potatoes

1 to 2 pounds of small new potatoes, washed and scrubbed

olive oil to coat potatoes

1 to 2 teaspoons of Vietnamese Sweet Lemon Curry

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Arrange potatoes in a baking dish in one layer. Drizzle potatoes with olive oil. Sprinkle potatoes with seasonings and then gently mix the potatoes around in the oil and spices to coat all potatoes. Place baking dish in the oven and roast for 40 mintues to 1 hour until potatoes are cooked through and their skins are a bit wrinkled. Cool before adding potatoes to bento. Can store in the refrigerator for 4 days.

NOW it's your turn! :-) I would love to find out your simple recipes for bento ingredients! To enter the contest, simply fill out the form below. Please try to keep your recipes to 5 ingredients or less (salt and pepper do not count as ingredients) so that the recipes will be easy for anyone to try. You can also enter the contest simply by being a follower of this blog. You don't have to send in a recipe, but I would love to see what you like to prepare in your bento lunches. You can get extra entries in the contest by following me on facebook, twitter, and by following my new nail art blog at sonomanailart.blogspot.com. That makes a total of five possible entries per person. And yes, this contest is open INTERNATIONALLY! I will select a random entry from all entries on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 6pm Pacific Time. And I will share all of the recipes sent in on a special page on this blog, so everyone can enjoy your ideas and try them out.

Thanks so much for following my bento adventures and GOOD LUCK!

Just Bento Bento

I was thrilled that my recent trip to Seattle coincided with Makiko Itoh's appearance and book signing at Uwajimaya there. Maki wrote the wildly popular The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go which is available on Amazon already in its third printing! I got my copy at Uwajimaya and I looked inside the front cover to see which printing I got, and I think it's the first edition! Wow.

It's me and Maki at Uwajimaya! Maki's husband was nice enough to take this picture of us. Uwajimaya was PACKED that day. I've never seen it so busy. I think it was because they were celebrating some kind of anniversary, and had a free sake tasting later that day. I skipped the sake tasting. :)

This is my husband's favorite aisle at Uwajimaya: The Ramen Aisle. I have a pic somewhere of him with his arms spread out in the middle of this aisle. It's less like a kid in a candy store, and more like a devotional pose. Very funny.

The other side of the ramen aisle, aka Mecca.

I've only been able to read a few of the bento chapters in Maki's book so far, but one I wanted to try out right away was the Tamagoyaki bento. I added green onion to my Tamagoyaki omelette, which is one of Maki's suggestions. I have a pan made for tamagoyaki which makes it really easy to cook this omelette, but this time I tried rolling it on a sushi mat after it was cooked. It made a nice round tamagoyaki. I can't wait to try more recipes!

Also in this bento: steamed edamame, roasted red, purple, and yellow baby potatoes with pepper and bacon, apple rabbits made with apples from Lambert's Apples, walnuts from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, and slices of blood orange from Twin Peaks.

Bunny Bento

Whew, I sure missed making bento this past week! I was bunny sitting/house sitting for a coworker and I just did not feel comfortable making bentos. I didn't have my bento gear, and I didn't have the ingredients I am comfortable with on hand. Strange how we get stuck in patterns and when we aren't in that groove, it's just harder to do what we normally do.

In this bento: leftover spaghetti carbonara with a jack cheese bunny on top, slices of blood orange from Twin Peaks with a pink bunny pick, a bit of broccoli, and baby carrots. I made the spaghetti carbonara using a James Beard recipe from his book, James Beard's Beard On Pasta (James Beard Library of Great American Cooking). The eggs I used were from my friend and coworker Gwen who has her own chickens. It really turned out delicious, but it was somewhat difficult to make. Picture me tossing the hot pasta while my hubby slowly pours the egg mixture into the pan, blocking my view and dribbling some egg onto the stovetop, the pan is moving all over the place, and I am telling him to add a bit of the pasta water, and then some cheese, and now my arms are tired... whew!

Here's the little bun bun I was watching the past week. His name is Luigi, and he is just super darling. He loves broccoli, carrots and grapes. Maybe I should have added some grapes to this bento and it would have been perfect for Luigi. ('.,.')

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the official beginning of the Year of the Rabbit tomorrow!

Pearls Before Swine Bento

There are lots of fun guests who come through the studios at the radio station where I work. And yesterday, one of my favorite artists stopped by to spread some holiday cheer. Stephan Pastis is the creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. He is just as funny in person as his characters are in the strip. I had him sign a few things for Christmas presents (thanks Stephan!) and I also made this bento box with my favorite character from Pearls: Pig!

In this bento: pink rice in the shape of Pig with nori eyes and nostrils. Also radishes from Crescent Moon Farms, baby carrots, steamed broccoli, and pork patties. In the upper compartment: a mandarin orange from Twin Peaks, walnuts from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, and toffee made by my friends Kerry and Danielle.

Here's me and Stephan with the Pig bento. I think I like Pig the best because he is so gullible and innocent. I am pretty gullible, but not so innocent. Also, Pig tends to see the silver lining and I try to do that too.

Mmmmm, tastes like Pig ear. :)

Thanks to everyone for entering my 100th Bento contest! You still have a day to enter, and I love reading all of your suggestions for winter bentos. Now I have lots of ideas for when I get stuck. :)

Also, if you are on Facebook, CasaBento is hosting a best holiday bento contest. A few of us are finalists and would love your vote. Sheri of Happy Little Bento, Crystal of Adventures In Bentomaking, and me, Michelle of Sonoma Bento. Head to CasaBento's Facebook page to vote for your favorites.