: : Bento Box ~ Difficulty in Meal Preparation : :

The one thing I realised about the various bento recipes and pictures out there, is the high usage of forbidden ingredients in the low sodium diet i.e. cheese, ham, processed food. Plus, a lot of the Japanese bento recipes are currently using a lot of sugar in their meals.

I kinda cheated on using ham for tomorrow’s meal but have to seriously cut back on it. Same goes for the sugar. I have to see whether there are some alternatives or other more traditional Japanese-type of recipes that may help. Then, see if it can be combined with the usual Chinese home-cooking that my Granny does.

Although, I’m still trying to top the 5-7 servings of grains and veggies. Am rethinking how to deal with breakfast and slowly cut out milk from the diet. Not exactly that easy.

: : Bento #2 ~ Getting better but still a bit sloppy : :

Ok, getting slightly better at bento-ing but the difficulty is trying not to use ham. Too much salt is not good for Wena. 🙁

bento2_box1

The pink apple case is a jelly mould : 10 for RM2.80. 

Left mould : celery slices at the bottom. On top are carrot shape food with a slice of ham.

Right mould : A layer of tomato sauce at the very bottom with the middle layer of organic alphabet pasta (60% wholegrain).

Middle : Scrambled eggs wrapped in a mould.

bento2_box2

Both apple cases hold the same thing. I was getting worried that I wouldn’t have enough veggies so was trying to just stuff wherever I could with it. Each case holds french beans with some nori seaweed strips as well as a quail’s egg each. On top are carrots and hams. One thing about using the cookie cutters, I’m going to get a soft plastic mallet to gentle hammer the darn cookie cutters. Only a few pieces of ham so hopefully not too bad on the salt intake. Next time though, can’t have it in here. Sigh. Anyway, leftover scraps of carrots and ham went into a peanutty roast terrine at the bottom.

nutty_veggie_roast1

Tried out making a terrine with peanuts, cashew nuts, cheddar cheese, ham, onions, golden mushrooms, carrots, wholemeal breadcrumbs and one egg. Turned out better than I expected. A bit high in calories so have to be very careful when taking a slice.

nutty_veggie_roast2

Doesn’t look too bad, no? I have to check out other terrine recipes, especially vegetarians ones that doesn’t call for cheese or peanuts. Maybe have to start thinking of trying out with beans. Granny said that it’s not something that she would eat too often but she couldn’t stop eating it. Haha!

Tomorrow, have to go and buy a packet of red and brown rice from Umang’s office. Also, on Tuesday, I’ll be getting my bento sets. The cookie cutters had already arrived, now just the containers. Which will probably flipped my Granny a bit considering that there’s already a lot of plastic containers everywhere. I haven’t told her yet about my intention to goto Daiso at the Curve to check out for some bento stuff. I hope that there are still some left in there.

: : Bento Beginner : :

Bento #1 - box 1

Bento #1 - Box 2

 Sloppy work but what the hey. First time beginner. 🙂 Egg filling between 2 honey wholemeal bread. All vegetables except for the cherry tomatoes had been steamed.

Postnote : My 2nd cousin Davin has made this interesting commentary about the 2nd picture.

Is that someone sitting on the balcony of the longhouse looking over the Mountains (broccoli) on the left and Clouds (cauliflower) on the right?