Bent on Bento

I decided to be creative and came up with homemade cheeseburgers over the weekend. I loosely followed Chef Michael Smith’s recipe for Cheddar Cheese Burgers, and with 1lb of organic beef, I managed to make 6 not-too-large burger patties.

We had burgers for our meals on Sunday, and today, hubby had a Cheeseburger bento for lunch.  In the morning, I put a little bit of butter in the sesame seed buns, took the burger patty from the fridge, and placed it in between the buns.  Then I microwaved them for about 16 seconds.  Next, I placed a slice of cheese, a slice of tomato, some lettuce leaves and some mayo in betwee.  I secured the cheeseburger with a foodpick, added a packet of tomato ketchup and there…I had lunch prepared!

Instead of fries, I threw in some Ranch-flavored chips, and I also added some grapes for dessert. 

I asked my hubby if he wanted a double cheeseburger (2 meat patties), but he said I could have the other one, so I had the same thing for my lunch today 🙂

Making burgers at home might seem like a great idea, but it isn’t completely so.  I didn’t use a grill, so I panfried the burger patties, which resulted in my whole stove and kitchen becoming rather oily.  And I certainly didn’t like that.  The next time I make burger patties, I’d bring them to a barbecue for outdoor grilling instead!

Adults beef, burger, cheese

I absolutely love pasta, and I thought, what better way to combine my love for pasta and bento-ing than to create a bento with pasta?

So this is what my hubby brought to work today.  I had the same thing, but I didn’t put it in a lunchbox because I was working from home and hence I just ate it off a plate.

For some reason, I prefer linguine to spaghetti, maybe because it is slightly thicker.  I made the sauce the night before and this morning, all I had to do was to heat it up and pack it in a lunchbox.  The sauce was made with organic ground beef, chopped bombay onions and chunky bolognese style gravy which I bought from the store.  I added three gigantic turkey meatballs to the sauce for the added protein, and also, because I think pasta tastes so much better with meatballs.  So this morning, I only had to make sure the linguine was cooked al dente and that was it.

I sprinkled some Italian seasoning on the linguine, laid it on some fresh lettuce and added some seedless grapes on the side for fiber.

Adults beef, pasta, turkey