Beets and Sausage Bento

I used more of the delicious items from my weekend trip to the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market in today's bento. I roasted one of the chioggia beets from Singing Frogs Farm in a 425 degree oven, wrapped in foil, for about 45 minutes. I sliced big chunks of it and then cut those chunks with cookie cutters to make the flower shaped beet slices in this bento.

Also in this bento: beet greens, rice, Texas Style Hot Links from Franco's One World Sausages, sugar snap peas, and cherries. The little seeds in the middle of the beet are black sesame seeds.

I also sauteed the beet greens with olive oil, garlic, and shallots as a bed for the beets. After the greens were done, I squeezed a bit of lemon juice on them, then tossed them with a bit of crumbled Point Reyes blue cheese, toasted walnuts, and chopped Italian orange peel. Italian orange peel is preserved orange peel, similar to candied fruits you might find in a fruitcake. But not disgusting, ha ha. 

A big ol pile of assorted beets at the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market.

I hope you will join me on June 28th at the Sonoma Marin Fair for my bento demonstration. It will be at noon and I will show you how to pack a bento, and I will also have a starter bento kit for a lucky member of the audience. 

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!