Measure Your Feet Day Bento

What the...?! Why yes, January 23rd is Measure Your Feet Day! A strange 'holiday' indeed. But a properly measured foot hopefully leads to comfortable footwear, so I guess I can understand why it is important. Did you know that your feet can grow after you turn 40? It's true! A combination of weight, loss of elasticity, and weakening tissues can result in up to a half-size growth every ten years after the age of 40. Bizarre! So go get your feet properly measured with one of those foot measuring contraptions, you know, this thing here.

To celebrate Measure Your Feet Day, and to keep the people at the Brannock Device company in business, I made this footsie bento! It contains a cheddar and German bologna sandwich with a cheese foot (not anatomically correct), a few blackberries, yellow pepper slices, carrots, and broccoli from Triple T Ranch. I finally made it to the farmers market this past weekend, so I will have some local produce in my next bentos, yay!

This is the one time I DO suggest putting your foot in your mouth.

This bento is also the 180th post on Sonoma Bento, which means I am making another donation to Redwood Empire Food Bank. Every 20th post I make a $20 donation to my local food bank. Not everyone has access to healthy food, or to the abundance that many of us enjoy. I encourage you to find a way to help feed your community as well!

National Static Electricity Day Bento

January 9th is National Static Electricity Day, so my lunch is particularly shocking. Ha ha! I used my LunchBots Trio bento box to make today's lunch:

In this bento: leftover mushroom couscous with two bolts of static electricity (provolone cheese), piece of chicken thigh (marinated in soy sauce, honey, pepper, lime, olive oil, and Peruvian Chile Lime Seasoning from Savory Spice Shop) on a bed of arugula with pomegranate arils, a few blackberries, broccoli, carrot, and cucumber. 

Now go run around on the carpet in your socks and shock someone you love. *ZAP*

I have included this lunch in Shannon's What's For Lunch Wednesday group. Check it out for other great bento lunch ideas!

Good Husband Bento

Ok, so all that whining I did about my husband breaking a bento box, I take it back. Oh, he still broke a box, but he just spent an exhausting 4 days dealing with snot-nosed, coughy, achy, whiny, lethargic, sick me. I got WIPED OUT by this latest bug. Seriously, I spent all day on Sunday just sleeping, coughing, and sucking on cough drops. I think I mentholated my brain.

So to make up for it, now that I am finally back to a somewhat-healthy state again, I made a Good Husband Bento. No silly stuff, it's not cute, and I even put it in a plain bento box. But it's filled with yummy stuff and will hopefully be a good lunch for him at work today.

In this no nonsense, Good Husband Bento: baby carrots, frozen edamame, Aidell's Teriyaki Chicken Meatballs, steamed broccoli from Triple T Ranch tossed with a soy sauce vinaigrette, a few walnut halves from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, half of a mandarin orange from De'Santis Farms, and a plain salted onigiri rice ball. The poor man even slept on the couch (mostly so he wouldn't get the plague, but also so I wouldn't have to worry about keeping him up all night with my hacking and sniffling)!

My bento is similar, although with better lighting. I have a 'side car' bento filled with the other part of the mandarin orange, a few blackberries, walnuts, and dried apricots. Also broccoli and baby carrots. You may have noticed my BRAND NEW Hello Kitty Thermal Jar. Heh heh! Got it while I was in Seattle at Uwajimaya. Today is her first trial run, and I am pretty impressed. I packed it with pretty hot jook at 8:30am (using a recipe from Sheri at Happy Little Bento), and it's still nicely warm at 1pm. I will try to eat earlier when I pack the thermal jar, just to be on the safe side.

Oh you wanted to see inside the jar? Here you go!

Lots of love to my hubs for being a good guy, who only accidentally ends up in the dog house for breaking something, but mostly deserves yummy bentos. I couldn't wish for a better Valentine.

I shared this on Shannon's What's For Lunch Wednesdays. Check it out to see what other bento buddies are whipping up!

Conversation Hearts Bento

CasaBento is having another contest on their facebook page, and this was my second entry for the contest. Sadly, they had so many great entries that mine didn't make it into the top eight. But it sure is fun to check out the other great bentos. You can vote now for your favorite Valentine's Day themed bento on Casa Bento's facebook page. Good luck to all of the finalists!

This bento was made with some help from my friend CocoCarina who suggested the "Bento Love" verbage for one of the conversation hearts. I thought "Bite Me" would be fun and playful for the second heart, since you do actually eat this and biting is encouraged. :) The "candy hearts" are actually made from egg sheet (I used Lia's great tutorial on Bentolicious to make the egg sheet) and alphabet pasta colored with food coloring pen for the words. Also in this bento: rice, edamame, char sui bbq pork, a blackberry, steamed broccoli from Triple T, french breakfast radishes from Ortiz Farms, and baby carrots. The doily in the photo was actually made by my husband's mom, Phyllis.

Happy Almost Valentine's Day!