Bento #37 – Featuring wafuu vegetables! April 26, 2009

I was browsing through my ever helpful bento book & one of the recommended bento items was a bag of Japanese mixed vegetables. I am only familiar with the kind we get in local supermarkets (corn kernels, green peas, carrots) so I was curious about it…When I was on my weekly trip to Hatchin, I was surprised to find out that they are selling bags of this Japanese-style mixed veggies so I grabbed a pack, without even knowing how to use it!!

Bento no. 37

Thankfully, the ever helpful bento book had instructions, & I got myself a bottle of tsuyu for simmering the vegetables. The bag contains about 6 or 7 different kinds: imo, carrot, shiitake, renkon, takenoko and I forgot the rest. ^_^ Basically, I only had to simmer them in tsuyu diluted in water. And because the veggies are pre-boiled before being packed and frozen, I didn’t have to cook them for a long time to soften.

Remembering Bento #1 – the lunchbox that started it all December 17, 2008

My very first bento!

This one here is my very first attempt at a bento, made on Dec. 26th last year. As always, it was not for me, harhar. This was for my boyfriend — I had a smaller version. Obviously, he eats more so he needs a lot more rice than I do.

Looks yummy, because I wasn’t the one who cooked the food!  It was Schatz’s mom, haha. That’s right, I was just the “food stylist”. Anyway, deconstructing the lunchbox:

1. Steamed white rice with furikake
2. A generous helping of takuan/daikon on top of the rice – this is one of the Japanese versions of “atchara”. Takuan is pickled radish.
3. Main dish is left over Christmas ham — simmered in orange juice. Yummy! Might try this one again very soon.
4. Buttered asparagus, if my memory serves me right.

I’ve been on and off with obento since then, but I hope that things will be a lot more regular now that I have many new ideas for my daily lunchboxes. I am slowly learning to cook more things, experimenting with this and that and learning bento designs and stuff — it’s all very exciting for me with this “domestic” hobby of mine.

My ‘kawaii cuisine’ adventures begin today! March 27, 2008

I’ve started living alone in January. I’ve finally moved out of my family’s house and now fully independent. OK, I’m renting the flat, so I’m not exactly 100% independent. But still…yada yada. The nice thing about living alone is that I do everything for myself and I have lots of space for…more creative pursuits. Haha. Like bento, for one. And so to sort of chronicle my independent life, and my improvements in bento-making, I decided to start my own Hitorigurashi O-bento, aka ‘Living Alone Bento’. Somehow, translating that in English doesn’t sound too happy, does it?

I’m such a bento newbie and a struggling cook, but I feel that these past months of experimenting with food has given me some degree of culinary confidence (powtah, sarap pakinggan nun a) and now I am inspired to keep on making bento (and buying bento stuff over Ebay? That counts too…). I do hope I’d be able to keep this up, so I can keep track of my progress as a bento maker.

So here begins Cat’s culinary adventures in kawaii cuisine! *insert sound*

For the first entry, my baon for March 18 (at least I think it was March 18. It says so on the pic date stamp). I make 2 obento for each day, because I like to have my dinner at work (while watching Jdorama, harhar).

Bento #3 This was my lunch for the day. I used my 2-tier PutiFresh apple lunch box. In the bottom tier, I had plain rice sprinkled with my noritama furikake, then shaped into a heart and a star using my onigiri molds. I had extra rice so I shaped that into a small ball. It tasted OK, but I guess I’m getting tired of the taste of nori, so I might have to lay off it for a while. Good thing I got this pack of furikake with 5 different varieties: nori, tamago, sake, tarako and…I forgot the last one ^^;; Also, I forgot to pack in some soy sauce for the onigiri…kaya pala matabang!! Anyway, I got those kawaii animal-shaped sauce bottles from Ebay so I will have them in my future onigiri bento ^_^