Bento #58: Pizza and a Salad

We do love lunches that make use of both halves of the tiffin.

In the back tier is a salad of spinach, cucumber, and lettuce, with a little green bird container of Newman's dressing (look hard; it's there!)

In the front tier is a slice of leftover anchovy-and-olive pizza from Decent Pizza, whose pizza is, in fact, pretty great.  There's also a plum and two strawberries to hold everything in place.

As it turns out, Our friend S's husband, J, loves anchovy pizza.  Oh, We do love someone who loves salty fish snacks.  And particularly on pizza, where nobody likes them!  Nobody except the discerning elite of pizza-eating, that is.

Bento #57: Breakfast!

When We woke up this morning, We did not want any of the food that was available in the fridge.  Salad again?  No!  An egg-based construction?  No!  We were a petulant King.  An angry and pouty King.

Fortunately, gumption and initiative are highly-prized virtues in the Sneaky Kingdom, and so your King did not wallow for long.  Oh, no.  Instead, We rolled up Our sleeves and made blueberry muffins.  We forget exactly what We ate for breakfast while the muffins were baking.

For the rest of lunch, We brought the rest of breakfast!  We started with blueberry yogurt--zero percent fat, which is unfortunate, but blueberry, which is awesome.  Life is a compromise.  In the big noodle-bear container, We have a plum and some grapes.  In the smaller panda container behind, there are two of Our freshly baked blueberry muffins.  Not pictured somewhere off to the side is some tea.  Also off to the side is Our iPod.  It was wearing Our favorite of its little covers--the one with multicolored skulls on it.

Bento #56: A Brief Vegan Detox

Here is the same salad, but now with tofu chunks!

When it is hot, sometimes, We want to eat just plain cold tofu.  Mild and cold, it's a nice cooling lunch for summertime. 

Aside from tofu, this salad contains mixed lettuce, spinach, cucumber, tomato, and raspberry-walnut vinaigrette.

Bentos #53, 54, and 55

All week long, We ate this salad:

Here's the first one.  Lettuce, spinach, chicken, tomato, and cucumber, with Newman's Raspberry Vinaigrette.  Look closely and see the Royal Toes!

Here it is again, this time perched at a rakish angle!

We started eating this one before We remembered the photo.  If you look, you can see Our running shoes in the photo--We forgot real shoes when we packed Our gym back that morning.  Sad but true.

But King, you must surely be thinking, Didn't you get tired of that lunch?  Not really--at the end of the week, We were still going strong.  However, it must be said that this box is sort of a contraption to try to wash, and We are now mightily tired of that process, which must be done every night so the blue gel bit has a chance to freeze overnight.

Bento #52: Tofu Stir Fry

Holy blurry photo, Batman!  Also, holy "We forgot to take a photo until well after digging in!"

This is tofu and veggie stir fry--spicy, with garlic chili paste.  In the back is kiwi and blueberry.

This was a very light lunch, but We were feeling light.  So it's calorically low, I'm sure, but it was actually very satisfying.  Perhaps the fiber?  We do not know, but it was delicious and exactly the right answer.

Bento #51: Spinachroll

Just like the Reubenroll, except a spinachroll!  With swiss cheese.  And here are some carrots, and some random soup, and two coffee candies.

The soup was a weird "But it's so cold in the office!" gesture.  It's a vegetable stock/soy sauce/Sriracha broth, with some frozen veggies, some leftover noodles, and some tofu cubes.  It would have been better with miso, but We are out.

The innards!

Bento #50: Everyone Loves Savory Pastry!

Here is a reubenroll, some carrots with spicy peanut dip, a kiwi, and two little coffee-flavored hard candies for dessert.

Have We ever told you that Our favorite sandwich is a reuben?  Well, it is.  We love a pungently savory flavor.  We also love pickled things.  To that end, the mighty reuben.  No lie--it was the reuben that was Our last holdout for being a vegetarian.  For a while, We even held it out as our one exclusionary principle--no land animals but in the reuben!  But We did not make this compromise, instead choosing occasional fish as Our holdout. 

But during the Omnivore Reboot, We decided that we would bake these rolls for a picnic.  They contain some basic reuben flavoring: corned beef, swiss cheese, Russian dressing.  Because We were baking these to take them to the 4th of July in the park, We did not add sauerkraut, as We did not know the taste preferences of the others in the party.  Turns out, they love sauerkraut.  We should have included it!  Next time.  These rolls were crazy delicious.  We scarfed down three of them in one day.

This principle, by the way, can be applied to any sandwich, as long as it isn't overly wet or dependent on raw veggies: wet will escape and raw will wilt.  Take your favorite bread recipe and divide it in eight parts.  Roll each ball to about 1/4" thickness.  Lay out your sandwich components on the sheet of dough, roll it up, pinch the roll closed, and let rise.  Brush with egg, slash, and bake at the usual temperature for about 30 minutes.  Seriously, you won't regret this.

Bento #49: Saved by Onigiri

From an empty lunch, that is.

Our fridge was way empty when We made this lunch.  But if there are two things that are always available in the Sneaky Kingdom, it's eggs and rice.   Here are two onigiri made with ebi furikake and hard-boiled egg mashed into very small bits mixed in.  By the way, egg white does not stick well to rice.  Just saying.  Next to the onigiri are grapes, several of which picked up the ebi flavoring.  Shrimpy grapes are not quite as nice as standard ones.

In the tier behind, there's carrot sticks and kiwi slices.  Yum; kiwi!  We do love different fruits for Our bentos.  And finally, in the lid, there's a slice of fruitcake which the Queen Mother sent Us.  Yum; fruitcake!  Though We do wish she'd convert to standard dried fruits instead of the lurid candied kind, which can make the bread too sugary.  Still, very sweet of her to send it so that it could be Our bento dessert!  It was good with tea.

Oh, and the knitted widget behind the lunch?  That is Our work hat.  You see, the air conditioning is kept so high in the building We work at that We often have to bundle up in winter clothes so as not to freeze.  This seems ludicrous to Us, and yet, there it is.  So that is a hat that would be appropriate for fall in Our Original Kingdom up north.  Here, where it is Sunny, We keep the hat in Our office for a/c resistance purposes.  Oh, and the staff often resorts to opening the windows and letting the 97-degree air from outside in, to try to warm the room up a little. We--by which We, the King, mean everyone who works there--is aware that this is stupid, and yet, we don't have access to thermostat controls.  So instead, lots of wasted energy.  If someone else would like to draw a  moral here, by all means, do it.

Bento #48: El Fiesta del Luncho!

Orale! 

We actually have no idea what We're doing with that word.  :)

But this was a seriously tasty lunch, though.  You see before you a lovely quesadilla with refried beans, cheese, and cilantro, with a bear face of black bean and corn salsa for dipping.  There's also a tomato-and-onion salad, which stunk up the Digital Studio wherein We tutor, some carrot sticks, and a sweet l'il kiwi.

We would have preferred to pack this lunch differently--more compactly, somehow--but We could not figure out how to do that in the time allowed Us in the morning. 

Strangely, We had a dream about bentoing last night.  We dreamed We went to an old junk store that, crazily, amid a huge pile of broken Christmas things, had a table crammed with bento boxes and tools and containers.  But nothing fit--We couldn't match lids to bases, chopsticks to holders, or box to bag.  A very frustrating dream that has left Us with the urge to make a perfect, perfect bento this morning.  If We do, We will be sure to post the Perfect Bento next.

Bento #47: Not Quite a Burrito

If We had had tortillas, this would have been a burrito.  This sandwich, on Kingdom bread, is refried beans, tomatoes, and spinach.  Tucked alongside is a carrot and some grapes. 

If you haven't tried putting refried beans on every kind of savory sandwich imaginable, you must do it.  Use it instead of mayo for Enhanced Savory Effects.  It's particularly good if there's sprouts on your sandwich--but We did not have any.

Bento #46: Rice is nice! But it's just a grain.

We love to eat rice.  Let it be said, this is a grain-loving Kingdom.  But We cannot always eat Our rice fried.  The heart rebels.  The heart says, Please, another application!  So We return to a much-loved format: the rice pudding.

This particular rice pudding is brown rice, in an egg-heavy custard pudding, flavored with blueberries and nutmeg.  It is a delicious, delicious pudding!  In the background, you can see some grapes and pineapple, to offset the heaviness of the pudding.

And here is a full photo of the bento jar.  Cute! The insulation is not all it's cracked up to be, but it is so adorable, We can't bring Ourself to fault it. 

We love--just love--that in this photo, the carrying bag has a tiny beefy arm emerging from it, Trogdor-style. 

And the lunchbox comes in the niiiight!
Lunchbox!
Lunchbox!

Bento #45: Cooling Fruit Salad for Really Hot Afternoons

As you may have heard Us mention, it has become somewhat warm in the kingdom lately.  By which We mean it has become very, very hot.

Speaking of hot, We ate this after a yoga class that unexpectedly turned out to be a hot class.  Thank goodness there was this cool fruit salad afterward!

This salad contains grapes, peaches, and blueberries, and is mixed with a cup of lowfat plain yogurt.  It is refreshing and delicious and not too sweet.  We often eat this for breakfast, but it is also a good lunch.  The only thing that would have made it better is walnuts. 

Bento #44: Endless Parade of Sandwiches Continues

And it's green!  Here's an egg-salad sandwich, some celery sticks, some green grapes, and a little green jar of peanut dip.

In the background, there's a teeny thermal jar of coffee and a water bottle.  Both came from the same place--our friend B!  Thanks, B, for supplying our beverage needs--hydration is important in the Kingdom!

Yum; innards.  What's the preferred egg-salad mix in the Kingdom, you ask?  Why, mayo, grainy mustard, and smoked paprika, of course.  With a water-based vegetable element to sort of loosen things up.  Here, We have chosen tomatoes.  Lettuce is good, too. Both is best, but unfortunately, the King rarely has lettuce on hand due to its low nutritional content.  Crunchy water, while delicious, doesn't pay the vitamin bills, it seems.

This is the last sandwich for a while, We promise!  (Trust Us; We're sick of 'em too.)