Pitta Patter

tomorrow's lunch is rather carbohydrate centred, but we don't have much else left in the house. I've got some homemade potato cakes, a happy star potato snack, some lemon and chilli bites, and some mini pittas with salad and chicken.

Weiner for Wednesday

Squeeee! I love making these Piggy breads from 'Cute yummy time'- They're very easy and SUPER cute! I've filled them with cheese and salami- yum. He is accompanied by some wrapped cheese, wasabi peanuts, sausage flowers, a square boiled egg (!) and some lemon and chilli bites.

then for dessert, I have some yoghurt mixed with raisins and some very happy looking apricots!

tasty tortilla tuesday

This bento contains spanish tortilla, which I used one of my great new cutters on, ham, a sausage crab, a Quorn sausage roll, seafood sticks (underneath the brie), red pepper feta salad, and lettuce salad, with some delicious tabasco olives as well.

Shhhhooooooooeeeessssssssssssss!

Well, what do you think? a bit over the top maybe, but that's kind of the point. Must have been designed by some sort of genius... or me! I like the random blue bit... it just seemed right.

This is a great website, called Upper Street London, where you can design your own shoes then get them made and delivered. And the prices aren't too bad... This pair would cost me £212 which is quite a lot, but considering you can wander round saying to people 'oh you love me shoes? well, of course I designed them daahling' that seems reasonable (oh, the smugness!). This seems like a great idea- you would feel so very creative even though it's probably a bit of a gimmick. Still, I suppose it would be unlikely that you would come across anyone else with the same shoes on when you're out on the town.

WANT WANT WANT!!! but sadly cannot afford :(

Check out the website at http://www.upperstreet.com/

a not-very-carroty birthday carrot cake

So its my birthday tomorrow. (21st birthday of course) so I have spent the day baking and bentoing. My carrot cakes are assuming legendary status so I thought I'd make a couple so I can take one into work tomorrow and the Hubs can take one into his work. But didn't I have to forget the shopping list when we went shopping last night? I managed to remember everything I needed, except for yellow sugarpaste, so I have been unable to make little carrots to put on the top. I don't think a carrot cake is a carrot cake without little sugarpaste carrots, so I'm calling this a not-so-carroty carrot cake.

Miffy Bento

I've made this Miffy onigiri bento as my week 6 bento summer school homework- it's not perfect but I think its probably my best bento so far. Miffy is made out of small and large onigiri, with a paprika omelette dress. I've also packed in some hot dog flowers, crabsticks, a sausage roll,  red pepper and feta salad, strawberries, and a sesame snap.

London Lunch

On Thursday I went down to London for a business meeting and its bring your own lunch at these things- NHS spending on sandwiches has decreased dramatically recently. I took my lego bento box which caused quite a stir at the meeting- I suspect JBox may end up with a few more customers following my recommendation.

Anyway, I was very proud of myself- managed to get to LDN and back with no mishaps, save for being a bit late. If anyone had told me a year ago that i would be the sort of person who could do that, I'd have keeled over. In fact, this time last year was the PEBC exam in London, and I would have been totally lost had Hubs not been with me. So much has changed since- we've decided not to go ahead with the move to Canada, and its things like this, the fact that I have such opportunity to grow in this job, that has made that HUGE decision for us.

So, after all this philosophical navel gazing, back to the lunch. I'm not particularly happy about the colours in this box but i had worked late Wednesday night and had lots to do to prepare for the LDN trip. So this box contains a mini ham sandwich, Greek style chicken, and olives and tofu, with raspberries and sesame snaps

You say potato, I say yummy potato cakes!

oooh yummy! my colleague Vince at work today was talking about a recipe for potato and courgette cakes and all the way home i was thinking about how much i love potato cakes. Then i realised i had lots of potatoes so i went ahead and made some. I made all sorts of shapes, hearts (like the ones in my box here), stars, round ones, flowers etc. They were very easy to make as well. I also have some cajun prawns, seafood sticks, red pepper and feta salad, and then some yoghurt and strawberry panda biscuits as a sweet.

Bento Summer School Homework Week 5- Sandwich bento

Hi folks,
so here is my first attempt at homework for the bento summer school. A dinosaur peanut butter and chocolate sandwich on a blue coloured spanish omelette, with pilau rice, dried fruit, and strawberries. I did try using green food colouring powder on the bread, but then decided that was a very bad idea as it looked rather mouldy!

Rainbow Bento and Bento for Hubs

Hey folks,
I'm starting to get a few new followers now- thank you so much for your interest in my humble little blog. I'm really enjoying blogging and I'm hoping that my bentos are starting to improve a bit as a result.
I've only just discovered the bento summer school (now up to week five) so I'm going to start trying to keep up with that. there was a homework exercise on rainbow colours, so I made an impromptu rainbow style bento for myself tonight.

I've also made bento for the hubs, following a recipe in the kawaii bento boxes book- I think it looks pretty much like it does in the book.
These bentos contain chinese style egg fried rice with carrot decorations, beef and pepper stir fry, ham, and glazed yellow peppers.

sushisushisushi!

Check out my tutorial for making maki roll sushi- do you like it? do you find it easy to follow? let me know your comments and ideas and I'll try to make more tutorials for your cooking pleasure! you'll find it here or go to the recipes and tutorials section of the site.

Monday bento

mmm yum this should be a lovely lunch. Egg foo yung, chicken nuggets and edamame, with strawberry rice pudding for dessert.

Kawaii Cute shop!

Hey all, look at this amazingly kawaii little noodle bowl that I picked up when shopping in Newcastle yesterday. Its from Paperchase, who seem to be starting to get the odd bento item in stock. Well of course I simply had to have the matching chopsticks to go with it! 

bean and bagel bento

My parents just got back from a cruise in Cyprus ad various other places. In Crete they picked up a Greek Spice pack for me, so this bento contains Greek seasoned chicken, spicy wok fried edamame beans (hopefully I'll be able to eat some as many of my workmates also have a penchant for edamame beans so they'll all want a try!), salmon and cream cheese mini bagels, turnip and carrot mash, and some cottage cheese.

New bento delivery!

ooooh excitement of the day... my J-list delivery. I've been looking forward to getting my Lego bento box for a while. I also got some monkey mayo cups, a crab weiner shaper, and some new chopsticks, as mine are getting a bit tatty. The bento box is very clever, it has two layers and a compartment with chopsticks inside.

So, after getting back from badminton, I got straight down to bento-ing:

I've got carrot sticks, sesame spinach, macaroni cheese, rolled ham and cheese sandwiches, and boiled eggs for my lunch tomorrow.

blingbling cake

I was asked by a family member who had seen the Flower bouquet cake that I had made to bake a cake for her daughter's 40th birthday. She thought she'd like something 'blingy' with her name on, so i thought, what is more blingy than sparkly jewellery?

I decided to do a 'Carrie' style name necklace with other bits of jewellery. And I've draped some emerald green sugarpaste on the cake as well,  as that is her favourite colour. I used some fab little sugar diamonds that I have been dying to buy from the cake shop- this gave me the perfect excuse.

Lets hope she likes it. I have reservations about it as it was a hot day today and the buttercream in the middle melted a bit so i couldn't get a nice smooth finish on the sugarpaste :( hopefully the shiny silver bits will do enough to distract from the lopsided nature of it.

Friday Flower

Another rather lazy bento tonight- salad with chilli dressing (I get an organic veg box delivered from North Country Organics on a Thursday- they're very good.), topped with a houmous flower and a stuffed vine leaf. Then I have fruit salad on the side. hopefully this will be enough to stop me buying a massive fatty sandwich for lunch!