mr. bento enjoys mr. potato

today's lunch consisted of wonderfully delicious veggie chik'n nuggets, sweet potato soup with a touch of sage, low sodium goldfish crackers with cashews and sunflower seeds, and a fresh spinach salad with walnuts the sweet potato soup was a definite hit, and i'm glad i have more of that left in the carton in fridge. it's fairly low in sodium too, for soup.

this was the first of the bento lunches that was prepared completely in the morning, with no preparations the night before. hopefully one night soon i'll be making sushi with smoked salmon and cream cheese... yum.

a relaxing day off for mr. bento

due to a planned lunch at il valleto today, mr. bento took a bath last night, and took the day off, relaxing at home with herm. it's almost time for the weekend...

mr. bento dislikes swiss chard

after taking a day off, mr. bento came back into work today, full of a variety of healthy foods. i've recently been on a diet to control high blood pressure, since i don't want to go on prescription medication. one of the suggested foods is chard, so i steamed up some swiss chard last night and added it to mr. bento along with a hard boiled egg. i must say... chard is pretty damn nasty. i will make another attempt though, and i've been told braising it with vegetable stock could do the trick...

other entries today included a caramel corn rice cake topped with yogurt raisins, some white mac n cheese spirals, and something i haven't had in a pretty long while - lychee fruit.

mr. bento likes steamed fish

wasabi green peas with a slice of crystallized ginger, steamed tilapia with garlic/red pepper/soy over spinach and bean sprouts, rice ball with seasoning, and orange slices with dried blueberries. yummy i say. this was the first time i ever steamed fish, and i'm definitely going to be doing that a lot more in the future. not only is it healthier, but it simply tastes better.

sadly tomorrow i have to catch a flight at 730 AM for work, so mr. bento won't be coming along for a business lunch.

fanks!

big thanks goes out to mat from hellaboss for the amazon banner image he just made for me, you can see it over there on the right. just so everyone knows, thats where you can get your own mr. bento!

the missing mr. bento beverage

while mr. bento may serve as an excellent container for food and soup, and although he is shaped like your everyday thermos®, there is no capacity for holding a small beverage in his insulated interior. i guess i could possibly put tea in the soup container, but then that would leave out my 4th meal item (which happens to be dessert in the form of fruit today). since i'm eating lunch at work, and have a plentiful stock of green teas in my little cubby-drawer thing, i can easily have hot tea during my lunch. currently i'm having organic honey lemon green tea from the republic of tea. but, some of you out there may not have easy access to tea-heating appliances where you work, so what do you do for a beverage, just throw mr. bento inside of his bag into yet another bag, and put a drink in there? hrm?

i've debating bringing in little drink boxes of soymilk, but they are just so damn expensive. oh well, tea or water is better anyway.

mr. bento's first day at the office

today was the day for my first mr. bento lunch creation, which consisted of a rice ball with seasoning, avocado maki, edamame, and orange slices. everything is from either the co op or the strip.

the avocado maki was my virgin experience in sushi making. i picked up the bamboo mat and rice paddle at sur la table in the south side works on saturday, and gave it a go last night. i made my own sushi su for the sushi rice, and everything turned out perfect, and damn sticky. i've got another rice ball left for another day... :)

mr. bento welcome home party

here's a pic from the amazing day when mr. bento arrived at my household, delivered from amazon. as you can see, mr. bento comes with his own chopsticks/case, 2 side dish bowls, 1 soup bowl, 1 rice bowl, and his own carrying sack / satchel / manpurse / backpack / bag.

coinciding with the mr. bento welcome home party, my kitchen remodeling is also finally about done.

welcome to mr. bento rodeo!

after recently purchasing the wonderful mr. bento japanese lunchbox from amazon, i knew i had to share my newly found bento joy with the rest of the internets, so here goes mr. bento rodeo. the site will serve as both a portal for mr. bento related news & information, and also serve as a food diary for myself. if anyone else is interested in contributing their lunches or contributing to bento news, i could add additional users to the blog.

you may be asking yourself... why "mr. bento rodeo"? well the reason is simple, because it sounds good, has no real meaning, and therefore may make you laugh. so, here's dot, greeting you in this first post.