Happy Hedgehogs!

 The rain/snow/slushy is making it a terribly nasty day after such a beautiful weekend. Hope everyone is having a great day!  Some comfort foods for today, a barbeque chicken steamed bun, tamagyaki, kiwi slices and a edamame, broccoli, and grape tomato salad. It has itailen herbs sea salt and a little garlic tossed with olive oil. Its simply but yummy. Have a great afternoon everyone!

Thank goodness for cling wrap

Turkey, mayo, and cheese sandwhiches with banana chips, dried mixed berries, dried apples, and dried apricots (I love dried fruit...did ya notice?) and some carrots.  I started wrapping my sandwhich halfs up because the wheat bread was getting way to dry and stale when it would sit in there. But a heads up to all you bento gals, spring time= colorful saran wrap! Yayy! I normally can't find any cute colored cling wrap any other time of year, so I will be stocking up. Hope you all are having a great Friday!

I'm back! (and I brought some food with me)

I have been shamefully lazy, I apologize. I have been making bento, but forgetting to take pictures! I also had two days off in a row so I was lazing around the house. I am back now, and hopefully back on the picture taking, blog post making bandwagon :P.  I am sure you all missed me terribly (haha) Hope everyone had a great valentine's day! I will be making rounds tonight and post up comments for the past few days that I have missed.  In the bento for today we have mini dog puppies, swiss soft cheese, brocolli, and dried apples. The bottom teir has chocolate cake with cream cheese icing, dried prune, clemintines, and some strawberry all natural applesauce. Hope you all are having a great week!

videos for your veiwing pleasure

Sorry I have been MIA everyone. This work week has been super busy, and I had been making bento but unfortunatly no pictures were taken before they were devoured. So, this morning I have been lurking on youtube for abit, and decided to share a few cute bento related videos hope you enjoy!

Chili & Sandwhiches

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Sorry for the boring bento, but it has been a super busy work weekend for me. I actually made this friday, and haven't had time to post it until now. It was a pretty simple bologna, swiss and mustard sammie with clemintine, soft cheese, and chili! It's not a traditional chili by any means, it is more like a spicy vegetable soup but it was super yummy through all this cold weather!

Steamed bun recipe!

Okay, since I can't figure out how to neatly place my photos around my text I apologize if the pictures are out of order. My recipe is not exact either, so you may have to tweak it yourself at home. Recipe: 1 cup of Hungry jack pancake mix, (Extra light and fluffy is what I used) add about half a cup of water and mix until it looks like pancake batter. Then add a pinch of salt, and get some all purpose flour out.  You are going to want to add AP flour until you get a nice firm non sticky dough. I don't know how much it took, but it should look like the roll in the first picture. Knead for about ten minutes to get all the lumps and bumps out. This also helps give you a uniform color.  Roll into a baguette shape and cut into four peices.  I didn't take photos of me shaping any buns, sorry! I also want to explain the tin foil in the pot. I don't have a proper steamer, but to keep the buns from sitting in water I just balled some tin foil up. Set it in the pot and it keeps them elevated and the steam can get to all sides. 

                                                       

I filled the buns with a chicken and brocolli mixture and let them steam for about 20 minutes. I did cook the chicken through before steaming, just because raw chicken in dough could cause some serious contamination. I shaped them into a hedgehog, pig, bear and one was a traditional pleated bun.  Its really easy, like working with playdough.  Sorry the recipie isn't exact! But working with the pancake mix cuts out the need for yeast and letting it sit 2 hours to rise. There are several really great recipies online, but this is my own quick and easy version. If you try it out, let me know! I'm sure you can use any other kind of pre packaged pancake batter, but the light and fluffy seems to work the best for me. Hope you are all having a great weekend!

What weird looking onirgiri...

Using my new bento box! Two bologna and cheese "onigiri" sandwhiches, grapes, banana chips, and carrots with ligh ranch in the cup. Hope all is having a great day, the snow if finally melting here so everything is back in full swing around my town. Made some steamed buns today, will post up recipie tomorrow. It was quick and simple, and tasted amazing. Definitly something worth making everynow and then. Hope you all have a great day!

New bento goodies!

I got a package today! I was waiting patiently (okay...so not very patiently) for my new bento box to arrive. Last time we got a bad winter storm the USPS was not running and our mail was about 3 days late. So, considering hubs was off today due to bad road conditions I was a little bummed about the chances of my box arriving but it did!I also took the time to take some shots of my ever growing collection of bento boxes, and etc. Just a few pictures showing the size and how the box collapses and goes up.

When the box is collasped it's a little bigger than the bottom teir of a normal sized bento. You then unfold the sides up, and inside each corner is a ridge where you snap the box together. I tried taking a picture so you could see how it snaps together. Once it's expanded it's a little larger than my urura box.

Putting pictures up behind the break so it's not so time consuming to upload!