Tag Archives: bento

Kindergarten bento – Dinner leftover (23/Sep/16)

23/09/2016

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. 

Kindergarten bento – No tomatoes! (20/Sep/16)

20/09/2016

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

Kindergarten bento – Miffi nori seaweed (15/Sep/16)

15/09/2016

Menu: Sauté chicken, Boiled green beans, Tomatoes, Pumpkin & egg salad, Rice with Miffi shaped nori seaweed

Western pear (as oppose to Japanese ‘nashi’ pear) for dessert


Just in case anyone is wondering, I did not cut out the shape of Miffi on a piece of nori seaweed. We can buy these that are pre-cut (in shapes of Miffi, Mickey Mouse, Thomas the tank engine, Ampanman…). Very useful, but it may get soggy and look squashed and wrinkled when opening the lid… Due to the moisture kept in the bento box as I didn’t have time to fully cool down the rice… Oh well it at least looks nice in the picture here 😉

Kindergarten bento – Miso soup veggie (13/Sep/16)

13/09/2016

Menu: Grilled cod with saikyo miso marinade, Spinach omelet, Veggies from miso soup, Rice with goma-shio (sesame & salt sprinkle)

Sliced kiwi for dessert


Our daughter loves miso soup, especially with cabbage. She had a cold for a week and at long last is getting better. At the same time her appetite is coming back as well, and I made her favorite miso soup as part of her dinner. She gobbled all the cabbage & carrots in the soup before eating anything else on her dinner plate. She must’ve craved veggies after a week of eating only yogurt, jelly and apple mousse. So this morning I thought why not putting in the leftover miso soup veggies although it is not common at all to reuse them for bento. For Japanese, miso soup is miso soup, it’s not ‘okazu’, the side dish. It never occurred to me until now either, but there should be no problem to pack your soup ingredients in your lunch box. There is no such rule, and no one can blame you for that. Plus my daughter loves them, and they are very tasty.

It may sound funny to hear my excuse for using the miso soup veggies, but sometimes you feel hesitant to break one’s habits repeated for years and years. Well, I also admit that I was being lazy in the morning and wanted to stay in bed for 5 extra minutes rather than getting up to make one extra dish for bento from scratch.

Off sick day bento (6/Sep/16)

08/09/2016

Our daughter got some fever and coughs after going swimming on Monday. I thought it was due to some fatigue, but her temperature did not go down in the morning unfortunately. She must stay home, but I’ve got some problem. I go to this kimono lesson on Tuesdays while she’s at school, and it happened to be the finalM lesson of the current course when the instructor hands out the completion certificate. I wanted to go, and our poor girl seemed ok despite the fever, so I called my dad, who is now retired and studying for the license for a real estate specialist (don’t ask why), for a help. Luckily he was available to look after our girl for a few hours, so I made bento for both of them so that they could eat the packed lunches while I’m gone.

Menu: Grilled salmon (marinated in shio-koji) rice, Coleslaw, Spinach omelet, Cherry tomato

Grape jelly for dessert


My dad ate it all, but my sick girl didn’t touch anything… except for the jelly, which I didn’t prepare… That’s how it goes in life, isn’t it?

Kindergarten bento –  Disappeared seaweed (5/Sep/16)

06/09/2016

Menu: Shirasu (small sardine) on rice with thinly cut nori seaweed strings (disappeared), Chicken/daikon/carrot/pound fish nimono (simmered), Spinach & bacon sauté, Boiled egg

Japanese “kyoho” grapes for dessert


While I was applying the sun block on our daughter’s face on our way out to school in the morning, I suddenly remembered that I had totally forgotten to take a picture of her bento. I asked my husband, who seemed to have some free hands, to quickly unwrap the bento and take some photos with my iPhone (which he did submissively, sensing my urgency I suppose, which was a little surprise for me as I thought he’d wave me off). 

Later, looking at the images he took, I realised that the nori seaweed sprinkles I carefully laid out on top of the shirasu & rice had completely disappeared except for the 3 strings… I put at least 20 of them… Dah, they must have gotten stuck on the back of the lid! 

I should be a bit more careful going forward on the height of the contents I put in… After our daughter came home I opened the (almost) empty bento box, and unavoidably and expectedly found all the squashed nori strings on the back of its lid… If her teacher Miss N saw it, I’m sure it brought her a smile. It’s a sign of mother’s love, trying her very best to help her child grow by stuffing so much food that just wouldn’t fit in a teeny tiny bento box. 

Kindergarten bento – Fried chicken (2/Sep/16)

02/09/2016

Menu: Fried chicken, boiled broccoli, Cherry tomatoes, Steamed pumpkin, Rice with furikake


Finally, our little girl’s kindergarten resumed for the second term in the Japanese school year, and so did my daily bento making.

Our daughter doesn’t like chunks of meat, so I diced the fried chicken and put it in her lunch today. For fried chicken, I marinated the bite sized chicken thighs in the sake, soy sauce, and mirin mixture (1,2,3 proportion just like nikudon) plus grounded ginger, then tossed them in katakuriko, potato starch, and shallow fried them in coconut oil. 
I like using katakuriko for fried chicken. It always make the batter very crispy😎

Summer school bento – Leftovers (26/Jul/16)

02/08/2016

Menu: Leftover chicken burger, Kiriboshi daikon, Jako wakana rice with egg crumble on top, Diced cucumber

Frozen Apple mousse and kiwi for dessert 

I used all the leftover from the dinner the previous evening as we leave for our summer holiday the next day. Ended up like that above. 

No bento for the next three weeks, which means no need to wake up early for the bento making. Hurray!