Blustery Day Bento

Last night we had quite the wind storm, with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. It gave me a headache all day and kept me up at night. Grrr! So I decided if there is chaos out in the air, I would add some chaos to my lunch! The wind blew the cheese leaves from the inside of my sandwich to the top of it! ;-)

In this bento: a tuna fish sandwich topped with Havarti cheese leaves, broccoli spears, a radish, baby carrots, and dried apricots. 

Sorry I have been MIA for a while bento buddies! I have really gotten into my nail art designs and they kind of took over for a bit. I hope to find more balance now between my bento and my nail art. :-) Good news, though: all of this practice I have been doing with my nail art landed me a prize from the Muppets and OPI brand nail polish! See my award winning Fozzie manicure by clicking here. :-) Happy December!!

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.

Bastille Day Bento

Vive la France! Yesterday was Bastille Day, celebrating the fall of the Bastille prison in 1789 and the beginning of the French Revolution. As the daughter of a French teacher, I feel a patriotic kinship to mes amis francais! Plus they have so much delicious food, so what's not to celebrate?

I made a bento filled with a composed salad called Salad Nicoise, which lends itself easily to a bento presentation. The traditional elements of this salad come into debate, but the main things are anchovies, nicoise olives, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and lettuce. I am not a huge fan of anchovies, so I went for tuna in oil, and added cherry tomatoes, a quarter of a hard boiled egg, blanched green beans, olives, and boiled potatoes. I made a vinaigrette of dijon mustard to go over the salad, and put it in a little plastic container in the bento box. My hubby also ate this, but refuses to eat it out of a bento box, so I had to put it in a bowl. Sigh...

If you get a chance, check out one of my favorite blogs, The Daily Nail. The blogger there makes a new manicure each day, and she took my suggestion for a Bastille Day theme! I love these nails!

I included this bento lunch in the What's For Lunch Wednesday post. Check out all of the creative bento lunches on Shannon's blog!

Wine Pairing Suggestion: I had a sparkling wine from the Alsace region of France, and it went really well with this salad. You could also opt for the very French aperitif called Pernod, which takes some getting used to. I enjoy it with a bit of water poured over ice. The strong anise flavor is very refreshing.

Welcome to Sonoma Bento!

In this blog, I will share my ideas for creating beautiful, healthy bento box lunches, and ways to use ingredients from your local farmers market. You may also see a few posts about finger nail art, since I use most anything as a canvas for creativity. For the first post, I'm combining all three!
This bento contains a tunafish sandwich in a pita bread, carrots, radishes, broccoli, onigiri rice balls with slices of cucumber, greens from the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market and a local egg. The egg is from one of my coworkers who's daughter raises a few chickens. So cute!

And here are sushi roll nails I made to match my bento box lunch!

Recipe for Tunafish Pita Bread Sandwiches

1 can solid albacore tuna in water, drained
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 to 3 tablespoons wasabi paste (depending on your taste)
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon black sesame seeds
salt and pepper to taste
pita rounds

Combine first 6 ingredients in a bowl. Spread tunafish mixture on pita breads. Cut into halves and serve. Makes enough for 3 sandwiches.