Did you ever see the blog
Cooking Gallery? It is on my blogroll and among my favourite blogs to visit because it is full of fantastic bento ideas! And my kids like it too, but they cannot really take proper decorated bentos to school, it is not practical in NZ, so they usually have a sandwich, some fruit and when possible some raw veggies too, all stuff that can be eaten with fingers or with a bento pick. So bento tend to be fun meal to eat at home!
And just for children? No! Yesterday I was at home alone for lunch and I thought that I should eat more salad.
Kazuyo gave me some of her quails' eggs and inspired by
Cooking Gallery pretty 'faces' and figurines I made a fun bento just for myself.
To be honest with you if I had made this for the kids I would have taken out all my flower cutters to cut the veggies like flowers and so on, but here I limited myself in making a little sleeping doll. Of course I would like to have a set of nori pounchers like
these (I tried to cut the nori with scissors but it is hard), but I haven't seen them in New Zealand (let me know if you do!!) so I used some caraway seeds for the eyes and mouth. In the bento there are young spinach leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, cannelloni beans, olives, quail eggs, baby carrot and avocado. Dressed with lemon, olive oil and salt. If you don't have quail eggs, you can use bocconcini, or for a vegan version a small new potato.
And now to the spider... maybe the photo doesn't give it credit, but it was a big one! For some reasons these big Avondale spiders always make lots of appearances when my husband is away, so I have to deal with them. It was around midnight and I was just turning the light off to go to bed when I saw it next to me! Aghhhh! I run down to the kitchen to get an empty jar (1 liter plastic yogurt pot), but usually these creatures are on the floor or wall and I manage to catch them by 'cupping' them with the jar and sliding a piece of paper underneath
like I did in this post; this time it was on an angle and I had to get it in and quickly put the lid on. Tap tap tap ... It kept patting around the jar like mad with its legs and pincers and it was quite difficult to take a still photo!
I let it free outside in the garden, and run back inside locking an bolting the door! I know that Avondale spiders are not dangerous, but I just didn't want to sleep with one next to me..... creeeeeepy!!
Are you scared of spiders?
Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©
Leftovers from Japanese dinner make good a bento (lunchbox). Here from the bottom right there is tofu, pan fried with vegetable oil and sesame oil, then finished with soy sauce (gluten free, use tamari) and lemon juice. The Asian eggplants had a similar treatment (minus the sesame oil): at home we just love the soy sauce + lemon juice combo! Next to it some seaweed salad, this was bought ready made, something that I would happy do more often if I didn't think that they overdo it with artificial colouring! But I love seaweed and you can use the dried types - dried wakame soaked in water will make a nice salad. Finally there is leftover rice, topped with vegetable, nori and sesame seeds furikake (Japanese seasoning for rice, look for it in Asian stores, and choose the one without fish or other animal products).
