I had a lot of fun with bentos this week. I tried a couple of new things and I also treated myself to a bunch of new supplies.

Tuesday, the cupboards were almost bare, so I had to assemble a lunch almost entirely from the freezer. I had leftover pancakes from our Sunday brunch in there though and that inspired me to make Wyatt breakfast for lunch. He was thrilled. I thawed a couple pancakes in the toaster oven and put 1 1/2 in the box (he ate the fourth half for breakfast). I also added a little container of syrup (that’s the black circle in the middle), blueberries and a half sausage leftover from the same brunch. There’s a fruit leather guy in there to cute things up too.

I thawed and drained the blueberries before putting them in the lunch in order to minimize the mess when he eats his lunch at school. To do that, I just put them in a strainer and ran hot water over them. I then blotted them dry with a paper towel and put them in a silicon baking cup to help contain any more liquid that might seep out.

This is the little jar I put the syrup in. Hella cute, no? It’s small enough that the syrup didn’t get everywhere, but it gave Wyatt the illusion that he’s getting lots of sugar and he found that very exciting. I got it at the Archie McPhee brick and mortar store in their surplus area (sorry — they don’t sell them on the site). These used to be used in first class meals on an airline.

Wednesday’s lunch was pretty typical: strawberries, turkey roll-ups, grapes and a heart shaped onigiri made with leftover dinner rice. I haven’t put one of those in for awhile because Wyatt wasn’t eating them, but he polished this one off.

Thursday he had grapes, a strawberry, another onigiri shaped like a bear this time and store-bought baked tofu.

Friday’s lunch was very exciting because Wyatt had a new red bento box and lots of fun new accessories to take to school (more on that in a second).  I put in the last of the strawberries, ham “ribbons” threaded onto little skewers and a cheese stick. There was also a little cup of puffins cereal below the cheese stick, but those aren’t visible in this photo.

Daiso

The big bento fun for me this week came in the form of a trip to the Daiso store in Union City. Daiso is a chain of 100 Yen stores — basically the Japanese equivalent of an American dollar store, except everything is $1.50 instead of a dollar.  I’ve been reading about the Bay Area Daiso’s for awhile and yesterday Augie and I made the 45 minute drive to Union City to check one out.

When I first walked in the store, I immediately spotted a large sign in the middle of the store proclaiming “Bento (Lunch)” and made a bee-line to the area to check it out.

Internet, I have a confession to make:

I went totally nuts.

I like making bentos and I enjoy my small collection of cute bento accessories. That’s no secret. But I’ve never really been one to freak out over the bento supplies. Scrapbook paper — yes. Bento supplies — no.

I have four small, plain boxes that I rotate for Wyatt’s lunches and my Mr. Bento that I use to take my lunch to work and I have always felt that that was more than enough boxes for our needs. I also like my little picks and food separators and I’m very enthusiastic about the wonders of silicon baking cups. But when I was faced with that small island of bento supplies, a bento demon buried deep inside of me rose up and took possession of my body. My hands started dropping things into the basket of the stroller right and left. It was all so cute and there were so many different sizes and shapes and the colors were so bright and cheerful and there was just so much of it — more than I’d ever seen in one place before. And, gee whiz — who knows when I’ll be able to get back to a Daiso again!

Internet, I bought eight bento boxes. EIGHT! And that was after I exhibited some self control. Before I went to the check-out I reviewed what I’d put in my basket and put back four boxes that were kind of boring and that I didn’t think were really necessary. The eight boxes I purchased were ones I needed, of course, but the other four were just superfluous. Here’s what I got:

The top two are for me. The fruit one is a large-ish locking style box. The one with the leaves is a double-decker one. The other five are for Wyatt’s lunches — a big locking style box and two little ones and two stacking boxes. There is also a red stacking box that isn’t pictured here because Wyatt had it at school with him when I took this photo. I’ll try to get a shot of that some other time.

I also bought a bunch of cute accessories:

Clockwise from top left: fancy animal food picks with an ocean theme, picks with little flags on them, two felt penguin lunch box belts, monkey condiment cups, a car lunch box belt and more little animal picks. (I used some of those in Friday’s lunch.)

I also went crazy for the food separator sheets. Five packages of those, ladies and gentlemen. FIVE. The ones with the food up in the top left are Wyatt’s favorites. I think he likes them because they have pictures of catsup and cocoa on them — two of his favorite foods in life. I have a feeling those will be appearing in his lunches quite a bit.

We visited a historic farm yesterday and took a picnic with us. I made bentos for all of us for the first time. It’s been a really long time since I made a bento box for an adult which is weird to me since I started out making bentos for myself.

Here is Wyatt’s bento. He had grapes, mini blueberry muffins, a chicken gruyere sausage and some apple chunks dipped in pineapple juice to prevent browning.

This was my bento. I’ve just re-started Weight Watchers post-baby, so mine was packed with 0 point veggies. The sausage was 5 points and the apples were another point for a total of 6 points.

Zach’s bento had two of the same sausages, some cubes of Monterey Jack cheese, veggies and apples.

We all agreed that this was a great way to do a picnic lunch. They were easier to eat than a big box of stuff dumped together, we didn’t over eat and we didn’t throw anything away.

Several people have noticed the baked tofu that I put in Wyatt’s lunches and have asked me for the recipe. Well, the sad truth is that I’m a very lazy person and I don’t make all that baked tofu — I buy it. It never crossed my mind that I could make it myself until people started asking my how I did it. I usually get it at Trader Joe’s but I also pick it up at the regular grocery stores like Safeway and Lucky (I usually find Wildwood brand there, but I think there are others too). We aren’t too picky about what flavors we buy, but Wyatt tends to like the sweeter flavors like the teriyaki and the honey sesame so those are the kinds I usually get.

The other day Creative Claudia sent me this comment:

I wanted to let you know that I have now successfully baked my own tofu and it is quite delish!
I googled “how to bake tofu” and came up with the simple answer of marinating it in soy sauce for 10 minutes and then baking it in the oven at about 350 degrees F–turning over halfway through. I marinated my hard tofu (after slicing it into 4 or 5 slices) in soy sauce and sesame oil for 10+ minutes. I then baked it in my toaster oven (400 degrees F) watching for it to “brown” so that I could turn it over. That took about 8-12 minutes. I turned it over and baked it for about 10 minutes more. This was probably more time than it needed but I was busy cooking the rest of our meal while it baked. SOOOOOOOO very simple!!!

Claudia’s cooking adventure inspired me and I decided that I had to try baking my own tofu. Here’s what I did:

I started with extra-firm silken tofu. I had used half a package for an Asian Noodle Salad from Martha’s site (fantastically delicious, by the way). So I decided to experiment with the other half of the package. I wanted to get out as much moisture as I could in order to duplicate the firm, dense texture of the baked tofu that I buy so the first step was to put the tofu on a paper towel to drain off as much water as possible. After I’d let it sit a few minutes I remembered a technique I’d used in the past where I pressed the tofu with a can. This helps to drain more water out and I thought it might make it denser as well. I put another plate on top of the tofu and then put a heavy can on top of that, like so:

Once the tofu had drained for a while (maybe 20 minutes?) I sliced it into eight pieces and put them in a marinade. The marinade I made was pretty simple: 3 T of lime juice, 2 T soy sauce and 2 teaspoons of sesame oil.

When it went into the marinade it wassnowy white, but after I’d turned it over a few times, it looked like this:

I marinated it for quite a while (most of the afternoon) and then I baked it for about 10 minutes per side in the toaster oven at 350.

This is how it looked when it came out. Pretty delicious looking, huh?

I refridgerated it for the rest of the afternoon and then tried it out on Wyatt at dinner time. I was pretty low key about it when I presented it because I wasn’t sure how it would go over. While not identical in appearance, it looked enough like the usual tofu I give him that I thought he might try it. While he did try it, the verdict was not good. Wyatt took one bite, chewed it for a second, and then ran to the trash can and spit it out. He then went and got a dish towel off the handle of the stove and wiped his tongue with it. I think there might have been retching involved as well. When he was finished removing every trace of the tofu from his tongue he told me, “Mama, that was the worst tofu in the whole entire WORLD!”

All righty then! Not a big success.

I tried it though and I thought it was quite tasty. It also was significantly cheaper to make this myself — about a quarter or third of the price — than to buy the baked tofu at the store. I will definitely make it again for myself.

I’m wondering if the marinade was the part that he really objected to. In retrospect, I realize that the flavors I chose were geared more to my palate than to his. I think I might try making it again with a teriyaki sauce and see if that goes over any better.

Here are the lunches I sent to preschool this week:

Tuesday, I sent strawberries, a hot dog, catsup, bizarrely large and elongated grapes and cannellini beans. Wyatt used to eat beans all the time, but we just sort of got out of the habit of giving them to him and now it’s iffy on whether or not he’ll eat them. I’m trying to reintroduce them as a regular food though and you’ll be happy to know he ate about half of the beans I put in this lunch.

Wednesday’s lunch was one I wanted to eat myself. Mini blueberry muffin, grape tomatoes, fresh pineapple chunks, rolled up slices of deli turkey and chunk of harvarti cheese cut into a bear shape.

Thursday’s lunch was a little lighter than usual because it was cooking day at preschool. (It’s “B” week so they made biscuits with blackberry jam.) I sent salami, pineapple chunks and a hand full of Cheerios.

Friday Wyatt really wanted salami in his lunch, so I sent it again. I also sent strawberries, peas and grapes. Hopefully they’ll dillute some of the salt and fat in the spicy meat.

All righty then! Nothing too special about this week’s preschool lunches. I did try something new with the burrito in the thermos, but otherwise I don’t think there’s anything here that we haven’t seen before.

Tuesday I made Wyatt a little burrito out of refried beans and cheddar cheese. I heated it up because cold refried beans — yuck!  I then stuffed it in his thermos. It wasn’t exactly photogenic though so that’s why you can only see into the thermos a little way. I also sent grapes and an iced oatmeal cookie for a treat.

Wednesday I sent turkey pepperoni, a half a banana, grapes and a mini blueberry muffin.

Thursday I sent grapes again, along with leftover kielbasa from dinner the night before and some garlic toast cut into strips. I wasn’t sure if the garlic toast would be any good cold, but it was the hit of the lunch.

Friday’s lunch had a mini blueberry muffin, strawberries, turkey meatballs with catsup for dipping, and peas. I must say, I think I did a really good job picking the background paper for this photo. Doesn’t it coordinate perfectly? I like pretty paper….

This week I have a super bento post with two extra bento boxes for your viewing pleasure. That’s right — TWO extra! You get what you pay for here on my blog, that’s for sure.

Bonus Bento #1! Wyatt’s grandparents came to visit last week, so he only went to preschool two days. His schedule was a little wonky and I missed taking a photo of one of his bentos but I did get a picture of the other one, so this week we have an extra photo of the box I sent last week.

So last Tuesday I sent him off with a lunch I thought was great, but that I didn’t know if he would eat: fresh peach chunks, salami, a cup of frozen corn (thawed, of course) and a mini corn muffin. I was thrilled to see that he ate all of this lunch.

Yikes! Over-exposed much? Tuesday of this week, Wyatt got chunks of home made banana bread decorated with a giraffe cut from fruit leather, baked tofu, grapes and more corn.

Wednesday I sent: apple slices dipped in lemonade to prevent browning, a small slice of banana bread (hidden under the apples and covered with a food divider to keep it from getting soggy), a hotdog, catsup and carrot sticks.

Thursday I sent baked tofu again, along with strawberries, a full-sized blueberry muffin decorated with a fruit leather star and goldfish crackers. The goldfish were a gap-filler and I put them in to fill up the last bit of space after I’d packed the rest of the lunch. They’re in a silicon baking cup that I wedged in the box. The nice thing about those cups is that they conform to the space they’re given so even when I have an odd shaped space to fill like this one was, you can make them work.

Bonus Bento #2! Zach took Wyatt to child watch at the gym on Thursday night, and I decided to send dinner along with him as a treat at the last second. I grabbed a few things at hand that I knew Wyatt would eat: hot dog bun, grapes and some rolled up deli ham.

I slept a little late Friday morning, so Zach made Wyatt’s bento box.  I coached him a bit on the packing when I got up (mostly just telling him to stack the strawberries and meatballs all the way to the top of the box) but otherwise he did it all himself. He didn’t want me to take a picture, but I ignored him and did it anyway. He sent strawberries, pieces of sourdough bread and chopped up turkey meatballs from a bag in the freezer along with some catsup for dipping. I thought the meatballs were a good idea and I wonder why I’ve never thought to put those in before because Wyatt loves them. Maybe I should have Daddy pack the lunch more often!