Soba Bento

Cold soba noodles make for a great bento, especially when they look so pretty nestled in a magic round bento box. This bento features noodles with veggies, topped with basil and toasted peanuts, steamed broccoli, carrots, and a nice big radish.

Soba noodles cook up quickly, so I threw together a quick sauce for the noodles as the water was heating up and the noodles were cooking. Here's a rough recipe.

Soba Noodle Dressing 

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons creamy peanut butter

pinch of freshly grated ginger root

1/2 teaspoon pressed garlic

grind of black pepper

1/2 teaspoon seasoned rice vinegar

squeeze of lime juice

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 teaspoon sriracha sauce

Add all ingredients in a bowl and whisk. Add about 1 ounce cooked hot soba noodles to sauce and toss to combine. Add veggies to taste and cool in refrigerator. Makes one serving.

Note: my old url was snapped up, so I have changed to www.sonomabento.net. Bookmark it today!

Mother Daughter Bento-ing Part Deux

I have made bento box lunches with my daughter, and she loved it. During my recent trip to Seattle, I decided to try making bentos with my sister and my mom. It's Mother Daughter Bentos!

My sister Sarah and I headed to Southcenter Mall to find a cool bento box for her, and to get ingredients at Seafood City. We tried a place called Tokyo Lifestyle, but their selection of bento boxes was not great. The one she got was at Borders, made by Paperchase. It's four separate boxes for 10 bucks, such a deal, and they are really cute, with images of little smiling fruits, veggies, and other food on them.

My sister works on her two tiered bento here. We had soba noodles tossed with a homemade sauce, ground turkey soboro, hard boiled quail eggs, carrots, sugar snap peas, oranges, scallions, lettuce, and red pepper.

Sarah is choppin red peppers! We also bought some edamame, but used the sugar snap peas instead. They worked really well.

Me and my sister with our bentos! We made enough food for dinner for the three of us, and stowed the filled bento boxes away for lunch the next day.

Me and my mom (who finished her treatment for breast cancer and looks great!) with our completed bentos. I had given mom this bento box a while ago, but this was the first time she used it.

Here's a closer look at mom's bento. Very nice arrangement! We had to smoosh the ingredients down a bit, but she had a bento box strap to hold the tiers together.

My bento box, which is actually just a food storage container I got at Daiso. But it's so easy to use and has a great tight fitting lid, so it doesn't spill. I used this as my in flight bento on my flight back to Sonoma County.

All of our bento box lunches tucked safely away in the fridge. I know it is not 'oishii' to make bentos the day before, but I was leaving too early in the morning for us all to do this together.

 

Of course, the main reason I was in Seattle was to visit my brand new niece, Molly Ruby. She's the first baby born to any of the siblings in our family, so it's a pretty big deal. Here's a video montage of some pics from my visit with Molly. I can't wait to make her some baby bentos!

Willi's Wine Bar Bento

Dang, I love my job. Working in radio means cool people come in to talk about cool stuff all of the time. And sometimes they bring GOODIES. Yesterday, Mark and Terri Stark of Willi's Wine Bar came in to talk about their amazing flagship restaurant. Mark and Terri also own 3 other restaurants in Sonoma County: Willi's Seafood and Raw Bar, Monti's Rotisserie and Bar, and Stark's Steakhouse. Their food and service are both phenomenally good at each and every location, but not so expensive that you can't afford to go there a few times a year. I used to go about once a month to one of their places, but I've got to be more budget conscious these days. And so you can imagine how excited I was to see them at the station with goodies to share! They brought Moroccan Lamp Chops (which my coworker refused to share, and I don't blame him) and crab tacos. There was enough leftover crab mixture to use it in my bento today. Yesss!

I topped the crab filling with a bit of Chimayo Mild Chile Powder from The Savory Spice Shop in Santa Rosa. Also in this compartment: cold soba noodles tossed with olive oil and toasted sesame oil as well as a little splash of seasoned rice vinegar. I topped the cold soba noodles with green onion, julienned carrots, and julienned cucumber. For decoration, I added black and white sesame seeds.

In the lower compartment: steamed edamame, cherry tomatoes from Ridgeview Farms, watermelon 'flowers' from Ridgeview Farms, a slice of lime (for the watermelon) and a fish container of soy sauce for the cold soba noodles.

As you can see, I had to decorate one of the orange cherry tomatoes with a little face. He looks kind of like a Jack O'lantern! A Jack O'tomater.

So yummy, thanks Mark and Terri for your awesome restaurants. Feel free to bring goodies by whenever you want! :-)