Leftover grilled skirt steak with salt-roasted fingerling potatoes (those are perfect bento size!). Spaghetti, brussels sprouts, grapes and edamame. My color mix is SO off! Still adjusting to being the only adult in the house, with too much going on! Can't give bento the time it deserves. 

I haven't used this tiffin in so long, but now that Muffin wants more food I think this might be good to return to since it holds a LOT. The problem is that the tiers are so deep it is a challenge to fit food in there tightly. I have to stack things. Today she has leftover tortellini, and then in the top tier some lettuce, cucumber, broccoli, chicken pieces, dipping sauce, and some GS cookies in the purple plastic wrap.

Another soba noodle Friday! Muffin was so happy to see this, she asked if she could have the leftover soba for breakfast. Today I mixed in some leftover chicken bits from takeout dinner the other night. As always, the soba is tossed with Thai spicy peanut sauce. In the top tier I just made a salad. I was out late last night for a bike ride and had a wreck (everything is okay!) which made getting up this morning a little more challenging since I really just wanted to stay in bed!


Muffin's sidecar is two little onigiri like yesterday, but also I put in some edamame. I'm realizing onigiri is a terrific little sidecar snack. Next time I will fill them with something.

These mini pita are so cute. Ham sandwiches with little cheese men. Veggies in top tier are broccoli, carrot, cucumber and roasted potato chunks.


For mid-morning snack Muffin gets two onigiri in our new Hello Kitty sidecar we got at Sanrio in Times Square.

This is the bento I meant for yesterday! Umbrella and spring flowers, plus little animals coming out to play in the rain. The ham rolls are supposed to look sort of like flowers, but I think that exists only in my imagination. I also packed a sidecar for Muffin with bagel and cream cheese.

I had this lovely vision of doing a long overdue theme bento, with an umbrella and rain showers, and a little girl. I set the timer on my rice cooker so that it would have lovely rice for me in the morning, and went to bed thinking of the rainy day bento. I got up and voila -- no rice! The clock setting was off by an hour, not sure how that happened.

So, with only 15 minutes or so to pack a bento, and still no groceries restocked from vacation week, this is what we got: Ham rollups with some filler snap peas, egg, carrots and some grapes. Lid has chocolate and a wipe for Muffin's hands. Penguin has mustard for the rollups. I like the colors, it's kind of spring-like.

The rain should still be here through Wednesday so hopefully rainy day bento tomorrow!

The Daily Bento was on spring break last week, in NYC! It was a lovely, bento-free week. And although I did make a post-vacation rushed bento this morning, it was so ugly that I didn't even take a picture! Hopefully better work to show everyone tomorrow.

It's the last day of school before Easter so Muffin gets a bunny onigiri. He has ham tummy and inner ears. I kind of dropped the ball by not continuing the theme, but I didn't have much time this morning. I should have done a garden, carrot in his hand and some colored egg looking things, but I'm rusty.

( bunny is ready for his closeup... )

Same ham sandwich as on Monday but this time I cut it in half to make it sort of look a little different. Also pasta spirals, grapes, broccoli and Thin Mints.

Hubby stir fried some really spicy beef last night. I'm thinking it should be great for bento since strongly-flavored foods fare better at room temperature. Muffin gets rice, veggies and some of those huge grapes.


Yay, a bento for me! I have veggies, beef, rice, and some chocolate cookies in the plastic wrap.

I should get myself a box because the one I really like is the red one (above) that I use daily for Muffin. Maybe I should just swipe that. Or get back to the Lock and Lock. I just like a more streamlined, grown-up look for my bento. One reason I packed a bento for myself is to see how the spicy beef is at lunchtime to test my theory of strongly-flavored foods are a little more bland at room temperature.

Here is an example of how easy bento can be for someone who has only ever made the standard brown-bag sandwich lunch. I woke up late this morning and decided I only had time for a pretty boring lunch -- ham sandwich on a bun, grapes, cucumber, and some carrot sticks. I was tempted to just toss all this into a paper bag. Instead, I broke out the sandwich box and lined it with wax paper. I tucked in the sandwich, the put the carrot sticks in a cute little pink container (it's under the grapes). Grapes go in a pretty waxed paper cup to keep them from getting the sandwich soggy. Cucumber tucked in corner for same reason. And I put in some pasta spirals to fill the gaps and look  festive.

See? It's all about presentation. Just use your normal everyday foods, probably smaller portions and more variety, tuck them into a cute container and you've made bento!

If it's Friday, then it must be soba!
I think with bento it's important to develop a repetoire of quick and easy recipes based on household staples. That way, even when you are exhausted and out of time, you can still whip together a cute little bento instead of just a PB&J. For us, one of those staples is soba noodles with Thai peanut sauce, so this is where we go when I hit a wall. Egg, broccoli, cucumber, snap peas, two huge grapes and little carrot rolls with edamame tucked inside. 

Oooh, look, I got all arty with the tilted photo! I love finding wonderful new carbs to pack in a bento and risotto is perfect. Saffron risotto that hubby made last night (WIN!). Little sausage patties again, honking big grapes, veg and some Girl Scout cookies.

We are low on groceries, and I'm tired of putting eggs in Muffin's bento for protein. This morning I was digging around and found breakfast sausage! So I shaped some tiny patties and put that in. Also leftover brown rice that I tried to do something different with, and pasta spirals because it wasn't enough rice to be a good nutritional balance. And some Girl Scout cookies!

Today was brown rice, mini lamb/beef meatloaf and veg. I don't know what happened, but at lunchtime Muffin called up Dad and said that her bento smelled so bad that she couldn't even open the box. It was smelling up her whole backpack, and the classroom! Dad had to rush her an emergency chicken sandwich. When they got home they dumped it before I could examine. It appears that either the lamb smell was so strong that it freaked her out, or the meatloaf actually went bad in a few hours. No idea which. We will not be having lamb meatloaf again!

This is some gorgeous imported pasta that my husband got at a trade show. It's natural coloring, so pretty! This shape is called "Mother In Law's Tongue." Muffin gets that tossed with olive oil and salt, peas and in the top layer egg, carrot, salami, snap peas and a few rotini for their pretty shape. This is an Italian bento!

I decided to try inarizushi with a rice mash up instead of just sushi rice. The rice is a mix of brown, white, teriyaki sauce, cooked chicken and beef bits, and peas. Top layer has egg, blanched broccoli, cauliflower and snap peas, and pickled beets. Trail mix in sidecar.

Today Muffin gets a stack of cheese quesadillas on corn tortillas. These are so fast and easy to make, and they work really well in a bento because you can eat them at room temperature. Salsa in the sidecar. I also put in another sidecar with a trail mix for her mid-morning snack.

Muffin has been saying the bento are too small, so yesterday I packed a ham sandwich in two sidecars for her to have as a snack. I suspect the real problem is that she doesn't eat breakfast. Or much breakfast. So she's starving by mid-morning. She's just not a breakfast person, I guess. Also I used leftover white rice from takeout Thai food. Wow, what a big difference from the brown and semi-brown we've been using! This stuff is like fluffy cotton candy by comparison! But I like the pretty white color.


I've learned that chicken breast is my friend. Muffin loves it, and I can cook it with an endless variety of sauces to go in the bento. This was earlier in the week, I cooked the pieces of chicken with a Thai chile sauce. She loved it.

Rushed day and cleaning out the refrigerator. This is a spring-like bento with brown rice, furikake, beets, pineapple, cucumber flowers, snap peas, and hot dog. Ketchup in the little tulip container. I will be happy to work through the rest of this brown rice as semi brown is much better!