I made it! A Week of Bento

So, I think I made a resolution sometime this year (presumably during the New Year, but who knows!) that I would bring lunch more often. Well, you know how resolutions go--I did pack a few lunches here and there, but mostly I resorted to buying lunch around my office (which I think I have complained about before). But I'm trying to make it a more consistent thing and so I set myself the goal of bringing lunch every day this week. And I made it! Above is today's lunch! Let's hop in the wayback machine and check out the rest of them :)


Monday's lunch: rice, stir fried snow pea shoots, braised cabbage, stewed pork belly and tofu, and fruit (local strawberries and blueberries, very much not-local mangoes.)


Tuesday's lunch: rice, the rest of the snow pea shoots, braised cabbage and pork meatballs (these are the mini versions of shi zi tou, or "lion heads"), rice, and more fruit. Oh, and Tintin and Snowy visited--doesn't Snowy look like he's very interested in the giant meatball?


Wednesday's lunch! I think this is my favorite lunch of the week--cold noodles with peanut sauce, topped with shredded cucumber, carrot, omelet strips and chicken. I brought the peanut sauce in a little yogurt jar and added it at lunch, so the noodles wouldn't get soggy. And of course, fruit! I love the color combination of the fruit, it's so pretty.


Thursday's lunch--ginger and shallot fried rice, watermelon and mango flowers, stir fried baby bok choy and tofu puffs, and sliced cucumber sprinkled with chili, with a piggie bottle of black vinegar. Can I just tell you that I apparently put way too much chili on those cucumbers? Which resulted in me sending an email to some of my coworkers with this message: "Eating cucumbers oh my god too much chili my MOUTH IS ON FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRREEEEEEEE!!!!" Also, I decided the fried rice was ugly enough that I had to try to ahem, draw the eye away from it by prettying up the rest of the lunch. Hence the fruit flowers! But even that's deceiving--all the scraps leftover from cutting out the flowers are on the bottom of that container. Waste not, want not! :)

So, I actually felt like I really got into the swing of packing lunch. I think the key is just to always have enough leftover to pack, even if it's leftovers from several meals. There's no way I'm waking up extra early to both cook and pack lunch! Also, washing my bentos out right away when I get home is important, because then I have no excuse NOT to pack (I am notorious for leaving my Mr. Bento containers unwashed for days.) Now let's just see how long I can keep this up!

Happy Friday everyone--the first of the knockout stage games start this weekend, so I'm sure I will be spending a fair amount of time shouting at a TV screen or biting my nails :)