Menu: Simmered taro potato & chicken thigh, Boiled Moroccan green beans, Ham omelet, Rice with “shirasu” baby sardines
Apple wedges (in bunny shape) for dessert
Apologies for my little girl.
Hi my honey bee, what you see in your lunch box today is almost exactly the same as you ate last evening for dinner. But Mama made an extra effort to cut out the bunny shape out of your favorite red apple for dessert. Hope you’ll enjoy your lunch today.
Love, Mama
Menu: Tori-soboro (chicken crumble) variation with chopped veggies and tofu, Roasted sweet potato, Goma-konbu, Baba-hamu-kyuri
Green grapes for dessert
Having some guests over the weekend. I didn’t have time for grocery shopping for bento making on Monday. Whipped up this packed lunch box using the ingredients stored in our pantry/fridge/freezer. Not too bad!
Menu: Macaroni bolognese with parmiggiano leggiano, Steamed broccoli, boiled green beans, Boiled egg
Kiwi & yogurt for dessert
Menu: Simmered sword fish, Spinach goma-ae, Pumpkin & egg salad, Steamed broccoli, Cherry tomato, Rice with goma-konbu
Apple wedges for dessert
Menu: Tori soboro & sautéed chopped spinach mixed in rice, Goma konbu, Kiriboshi daikon, Cherry tomato omelet, Boiled green beans
Japanese “nashi” pear for dessert
Menu: Yakiniku stir-fried pork slices (same recipe as nikudon pork, just not on rice), Spinach goma-ae, Kiriboshi daikon, Seared pumpkin, Cherry tomato
Japanese “kyoho” grapes for dessert
Menu: Grilled salmon, Steamed sweet potato & lightly fried bacon, Boiled egg, Cucumber & cherry tomato
Japanese “kyoho” grapes for dessert
Our little girl caught another cold, second one in a month, this time with some coughs and runny nose. In the evening before she seemed a little weak but fine, so I set the timer for the rice cooker and put my alarm for the daily bento making the following morning.
In the morning I usually wake up before her and start preparing the bento, so that’s what I did. Once everything was ready, I went in to her room and tried to wake up my little sleepy head. She usually mumbles something grumpily but resigns and wakes up eventually, but this morning she still seemed to be in her deep sleep. I quickly realised she was quite ill, and we decided to keep her home for the day.
The bento wasn’t really necessary today, but she ate most of it at our coffee table, despite her nasty coughs, continuous runny nose and a bit of fever. She used her own cutlery set and place mat that she uses at kindergarten everyday. She proudly laid everything very nicely on the table, just like she always does it at school, which made my heart tickle and made me want to hug her tightly.
Sometimes bento making gets so tedious I wish there was school lunch provided at her kindergarten, but I wouldn’t have seen her eating my handmade bento the way she did today. For this, every effort is worth it. For this, I will keep making bento for our girl.
Menu: Assorted mushrooms cooked with rice, Steamed sweet potato with tori-soboro, Spinach omelet, Cucumber & cherry tomato
Apple wedges for dessert
Autumn…. Season for mushrooms…. I love mushrooms for their strong earthy flavour and their fleshy texture. In Japan there are various types of mushroom such as shiitake, enoki, maitaké, shimeji, eringi… All come with different flavour, shape and texture. I put all of these in the Japanese earthware pan and cooked rice with them, with a little bit of seasoning. It came out very well, BUT, our daughter doesn’t like mushrooms… not yet. So for the packed lunch today, I put only teeny tiny bits of mushrooms that’s not even visible in rice, hoping she’d at least get used to the flavour and eventually show her liking. I’ll be crossing my fingers!
Menu: Fresh corns cooked with rice (with ‘ao-nori‘ seaweed powder on top), Cabbage millefeuille, La salade a la maman (mama’s tomato salad), Green bean omelet
Japanese ‘kyoho‘ grapes for dessert
Last night we had our good friends over for (early) dinner. Our daughter was so thrilled to have her friends over that she had a hard time focusing on eating at the dinner table. Inevitably her leftover has ended up in her bento box today.
The dishes I cooked this time somehow had a touch of French cuisine but with Japanese seasonings. I think our European friends liked this combination very much 🙂
– Fresh corns cooked with rice, in a Japanese “dó-nabe” earthware pot – I used this recipe from the website called Cookpad (sorry all in Japanese). I doubled the portion.
– Cabbage millefeuille – here is the recipe, also from Cookpad.
– La salade a la maman is a recipe passed on to me by my best friend’s mum who unfortunately passed away seven years ago. I’ve recreated her tasty salad numerous times since she taught me this wonderful recipe. It is one of the simplest, yet the most delicious salads I’ve ever tasted to this day. She told me she almost felt embarrassed to tell me the recipe because it was nothing special. But she always made delicious but effortless dishes. Everything she cooked for us, including this plain sandwich with ham (Jambon Beurre á Paris), was purely divine.
Menu: Tori-soboro (chicken crumble) on rice with chopped boiled komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach), Corn omelet, Boiled green beans, Potato & bacon stir fry
Japanese “nashi” pear for dessert
Our daughter finally came out of her lingering cold, and today she proudly claimed she had finished everything in her bento box. We gave each other a high five, but as she put her hand down she demanded, “I wanted you to put a little bit of tomatoes in there!”. I usually put tomatoes to add a bit of flair to the otherwise a bit too brown lunch box, but today I intentionally kept her bento more understated, in a wabi sabi style, maybe due to the influence of my aunt’s beautiful traditional Japanese house in the mountains we visited this past weekend. The house was built completely by her husband who is a professional carpenter. The tranquility of its space and surroundings really takes your breath away. But my attempt didn’t seem to get conveyed to our little girl…well not just yet.
One of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever been to
A hint of autumn brought back from the mountains
SMALL TOKYO KITCHEN 