Bento #84: TMT and Rye Crackers. Also, explanations

Hello, citizenry!  After a long pause, We are back!  Here is Our first lunch of the new year.

It is TMT, which you have seen before, with rye crackers to put under it; baby carrots neatly acting as a divider; a tangerine, a coffee candy, and a little dip cup. What is in the dip cup, you may ask?

Citizens, it is cold out in the Kingdom.  And it's not overly sunny, either.  In fact, for several days running it was rather the Rainy Kingdom.  This makes your King hunger for soup.  But no instant soup was to be had in the kingdom!  What to do?  Well, this.  In the little cup is miso and ebi furikake.  It made this:

The idea comes from dear Maki at Just Bento.  No need for fancy instant soup, she says.  Make your own!  And how was it?  Well, citizens, it was a mixed result.  Hot and wet?  Yes.  Were the sesame seeds particularly delicious?  Yes!  We must now put sesame seeds in miso soup all the time!  Was it, though, awesome?  It was not.  We think this may have been partially because We put in too much water, or partially because it was a very light miso--a darker brown or red miso might do better.  So not a fail, but neither is it yet a resounding success.

And now, for the explanations.  Your King has been absent not because of laziness (though that's certainly happened before, as We fully acknowledge).  Instead, your King was struck down by a Terrible and Virulent Plague!  As you know, We teach at a university.  Let it be said: undergraduates are walking cesspools of infection.  Little ambulatory petri dishes.  And the Royal Physician suspects that it is from these little disease vectors that We caught a Virus.  A terrible, rampaging Virus that has Lingering Effects.  In short, We had something in the same style as mono, where We essentially had the 'flu for about a week and a half, and then took something like 2 months to recover.  During that terrible time, We had monstrous headaches every day, had to sleep about 11 hours a day, and really only had about 5 useful hours of consciousness per day.  We were barely staying afloat, thanks to the assistance of lots and lots of Advil.  In fact, We were taking, at the doctor's suggestion, 4 Advil at a time!  Monstrous handfuls of pills.  On the positive side, We have rarely felt so very much like dear Dr. House.

And truthfully, We are still not back to absolute peak.  We are still prone to tiredness, and still require much more sleep than usual.  But We are much better than before.  We can get Our heart rate above 140 without passing out. We can walk to school, or go use the exercise equipment at the gym.  We can concentrate on something for longer than an hour.  We have not eaten a handful of pills in almost two weeks!  So We are almost mended. 

Nice, proper lunches will help Us achieve full recovery.  So it is Our intention to work extra hard to feed Ourself well, so as to encourage the best possible health.  Prepare to see these lunches!

Meanwhile, next post, expect another roundup.  Just because We were not showing lunches to you does not mean that We neglected to take photos for you.

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 #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 #17: Can We really have wanted this again?

What could it be?  Here it is, sitting all cutely wrapped up on Our desk...

Bam!  It's fried rice.  How could We want fried rice again after that epic no-dollars fried rice debacle in January, you ask?  Well, We don't know.  But there it is.  It's the same fried rice, except with brown rice instead of white.  And an apple, which We didn't eat right away, but ate as a snack before going to the gym.  And genmaicha.  Evidently, We were so excited to eat our repeat fried rice that We couldn't hold the camera still--all Our photos were blurry (sorry).

Gratuitious close-up fried rice love. P.S.: We put about a teaspoon of fish sauce in this fried rice, making it non-vegetarian.  But, it must be said, extra delicious.

Bento #9: Egg and Cheese

Here we have pretty much a repeat: Tea egg, Babybel cheese, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, peanut dip in the bear face, brown rice (w/out furikake!  I'm so sad to be out), instant non-vegetarian miso soup (don't tell, but there's bonito in there), and gingersnaps.  And tea.

Our love for instant miso soup at work is huge, especially as it's cold (or what passes for it) in this corner of the world.  We went on a miso-quest for a while, and found out that the only good instant miso soups are the 2-part kind: a dry packet and a wet packet.  Also, all the good ones are non-vegetarian.  All the veggie ones are terrible.  We could bring our own miso balls, of course, to be made into soup later--but they seem not as good as the terrible-for-Us-We're-sure-and-also-made-of-animals insta-kind.