Bent on Bento

When I read about Vegetarian Bento contest for the month of May organized by Maki at Just Bento, I knew I wanted to give it a shot.  For one thing, vegetarian bentos would result in not-too-oily bentos to wash up after, and it is definitely a healthier option. 

So I concocted a simple vegetarian lunch today.  It was yummy, and it certainly made me feel healthier!

My vegetarian bento consists of organic pasta in various colors, served with chunky tomato bolognese sauce.  I had triangle-shaped celery and baby carrots with ranch dressing, and for dessert, a few slices of delicious organic strawberries.

Vegetarian bentos are fun to make, this might be the first of many to come! 🙂

Adults carrots, celery, pasta, strawberries, tomato

Trust me, I am no pro at creating intricate bentos that people wow at, but the Who-R-U? Bento contest run by Javapot made me curious enough to challenge myself… that, and the fact that the prize of the awesome Thermos set was calling out to me…

Anyway, I made it before the deadline of the contest and here is the end result:

The contest required the contestant to create a bento reflecting the bento packer himself/herself.  Inspired in part by this fabulously done bento, I created one along the same lines, with a few changes here and there.

My tiger head (which looks more like a kitty cat now) represents my blog identity: The Bento Tigress.  Also, my Chinese zodiac sign is the tiger, so this fits me perfectly!  The tiger’s head is made from egg fried rice, eyes from hard-boiled eggs and nori, the ears are from sliced frankfurters, the nose is a sliced piece of carrot and the mouth is from hard-boiled eggs too.

The simple colorful pasta shapes of garden creatures represents my love for nature, and the musical notes made from nori represents my love for anything music.  Also, I love Italian food like pasta, and the chunky bolognese sauce is the perfect accompaniment for it.

The heart-shaped sausage shows that I am a tender-hearted person, the food picks that held the sausage pieces together turned out looking like outstretched arms ready for a hug! 🙂

What about the teddy bear shaped nori?  Well teddy bears are fuzzy and adorable and full of love, right? … just like me!  Well, not the fuzzy part but you get my drift! 😛

At the top left corner, I added some flowered red grapes with carrots.  I love flowers!  Oh, and the brocolli is my current favorite vegetable!

Creating this bento was a lot of fun!  I am not sure how long I really took to complete it, but it was about an hour or so, because I had to pause intermittently to take care of my baby. 🙂

Adults, Toddlers & Kids broccoli, carrots, egg, grapes, pasta, rice, sausages

I bought some fancy-shaped pasta yesterday and thought it would be cool to incorporate that element into Ethan’s dinner bento.  So his bento yesterday evening was a simple sausage and pasta salad with Mickey & Friends pasta shapes, slices of chicken franks/sausages and some broccoli.  I also offered some chicken fries (frozen cooked ones which I baked in the oven for about 15 minutes or so) served with ranch dressing.

Ethan immediately ate the franks (he loves them), but only ate ONE Mickey-shaped pasta, after Daddy and Mommy each had one too.  He did not even touch the chicken fries, but tasted the ranch dressing a little.  He made a face though. LOL

I am now on the lookout for alphabet chicken nuggets, so if anyone knows where I can find these, please let me know 🙂

Toddlers & Kids broccoli, chicken, frankfurters, pasta, sausages

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