Just Bento

Not vegan, but egg sandwiches are nice. Eggs are a standard filling here, but I have a feeling that I read that this is not so everywhere. So just in case you don't know how to make one: You hard boil some eggs (usually one per 2 slices of bread, give or take) When they are cooked but still warm you peel them and mash them, add salt and any or several of: butter, mayo, cream cheese, curry powder, chopped spring onions, ditto parsley or other fresh herb. You need enough of the butter, mayo or cream cheese (or sour cream now that I think of it) to get the mashed egg to a spreading consistency. Then you use it as if it were peanut butter. But not with jelly. It is nice with lettuce or cheese though.

A couple of other suggestions, that my Mum used to put in my sandwiches when I was small: squashed dates; sultanas; Marmite and walnuts. You probably won't understand that last one - Marmite is a yeast concentrate spread. It's dark brown and very salty and should be used sparingly. NOT like peanut butter. Vegemite is similar. You can maybe buy these things in specialty shops in places where there are lots of Australians and New Zealanders. The English like Marmite too, but their Marmite is a little different. Still goes well with walnuts though.

Hummus is nice! I have also seen idea for other types of bean spreads though I have not tried any myself.

Go to Vegan Yum Yum blog and search out her eggplant and tomato sandwiches, also check out "What the Hell does a Vegan eat anyway ?"Blog they have sandwich ideas that would make non-vegans convert.

How about one of my favorites? Toasted english muffin spread with avocado, thinly sliced tomato, and alfalfa sprouts. Spread muffin with avocado, add tomato and sprouts, put top on and enjoy! You can pack the ingredients separately so the muffin doesn't get soggy. I have these all the time and love them.

A nice pesto spread with asparagus or other veggies is good too. Or a pita pocket filled with veggies/salad.

A local chain of patisserie/confectioners makes a great vegetarian sandwich. It consists of asparagus spears cooked until they are quite soft and then dressed in some secret dressing, sliced boiled egg, and a little mayonnaise, all on a multigrain roll with pumpkin seeds on the outside. I love it to death and have been trying to figure out that dressing. The trick also is to cook the asparagus until soft - they form a sort of paste which is really nice, though it goes against the 'asparagus must be crispy' thing you hear all the time.

If you can eat cheese, there are a zillion variations of cheese sandwich. A favorite of mine is a Brie with lots of watercress and a little Dijon mustard.

As far as vegan sandwiches go, grilled vegetables are great. A properly made ratatouille is heaven on bread. Hummus is a must. Grilled or panfried seitan, tofu, all work. You'll find a lot of vegan burger-type things and spreads and dips on the main site too.

I don't understand crispy asparagus. I don't think the flavor develops fully until it's a bit soft. Crispy asparagus just tastes kind of wood like to me.
Of course, you can over do it and make it like pudding( though that may be what Maki's sandwich is made of, lol.)
but too hard isn't tasty to me. One of my sister-in-laws basically just warms them up for like less than a minute, yuck.

That avocado sandwich sounds good! My mom used to make an open faces sandwich with mayo on an english muffin and top with chopped red onions, then pop it under the broiler for a couple minutes. Sounds weird, but it's really good!

vegetarian, not vegan: frittata or omelette!
"il panino con la frittata" is quite tipical in Italy. Usually made with a bread roll or slices of bread rather than sandwich bread however. I don't particularly like it but a lot of people are fond of it.
You can make a simple frittata with just eggs, or add vegetables (I'm fond of spinach frittata)

This is my favorite sandwich of all time:

sourdough baguette sliced horizontally in half, or sourdough bread, pesto, fresh tomatoes, and cherve (goat cheese). If you don't like goat cheese, try fresh mozzerella.

Spread the cherve on one slice of bread and shake some black pepper onto it. Put the pesto on the other slice. put the tomoatoes on top of the cherve. Put the pesto bread on top.

-also, try adding in grilled asparagus, or grilled eggplant

delicious!

I just came up with a great recipe for vegan schmear. It's yummy on sandwiches. Spread it on thickly with tomato, spinach, and carrot or make a sweet and savory sammy with banana, berries, and schmear. The recipe is on my blog: http://seesawfodder.blogspot.com/2009/02/vegan-schmear.html

Hello!
I had to move because of my job for 5 months from my hometown to Alicante (in the eastern coast of Spain) and I had for dinner the same sandwich everyday: (not vegan but I guess you can make some variations and it's quite healthy anyway):

- toasted brown sandwich bread
- fresh cheese
- tomato slices
- turkey or ham

It was so delicious. I had it with a little salad and some fruit and had sweet dreams every single night!
Probably you can add it to a bento if you include every part separately or the bread will get soggy because of the tomato.

http://jizaacaso.deviantart.com

Marinated, baked tempeh makes a lovely replacement for sandwich "meat," and it's not overly processed like commercial sandwich meat replacements. There are several recipes out there for googling, but if all you want is tasty nutrition to boost your mustard and lettuce (and Marmite, if you're up to it), it's fine plain, too.

I tried a recipe for a French Tartine on one of my days off last month and it turned out to be really tasty. I remembered the recipe from the Two Fat Ladies television show from years ago. The original had anchovies, which I didn't use, but it was really, really good. It's a pressed sandwich, with fresh tomato and green beans (I used sugar snap peas because they were the freshest) similar to a ratatouille sandwich like Maki mentioned, but uncooked. It was very filling, but I didn't feel overly full afterward, and I made a pretty big sandwich. I think it would perfect for using up really ripe tomatoes that are getting soft.

Here is a link to the recipe (can we post links?)

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2008/07/23/tartine-provence/

I kept the sandwich wrapping in foil and just unwrapped it as I ate it, and had no problems with tomato stains (I am a stain magnet).

This Tartine sandwich sounds good x 10,000! I should prolly make dinner soon... *ahem* Seriously, sounds like great lunch to take kayaking; make it just before heading out and it'll be tasty by the time it's eaten. Thanks! Loved those two fat ladies..

Thanks to you guys and my own lack of planning before going to to grocery store, I came up with a delicious vegan sandwich. It was a curried chickpea mash (I used between 1/4 and 1/2 T of olive oil just enough for it to hold together and keep the bread from getting soggy) and soft asparagus on a whole grain and nut bread.

A delicious option I rediscovered while tail-gating in Napa (gourmet style!):

Sourdough baguette
Chevre/goat cheese
Dried fig
(and if you're not vegetarian add a slice of prosciutto!)

You get crusty bread + tang of the cheese + sweetness from the fig and saltiness of prosciutto. So good!

For vegetarian and vegan sandwiches you have a tons of solutions.
If you think pâté then you can do spreads as humus, or any pulse base spread that you can flavour with spices onions, garlic and so on.
Vegetable spreads are wonderful too: carrot and nutmeg spread, apple and onions, radish spread, mushroom spreads...
If you think ham alike: go for seitan. Make a big log of seitan that you flavour as preferred and slice very thinly thanks to a sashimi kind of knife.
Don't forget that marinated tofu can also be an option. Or dumplings made with them.

Now you have your base add salad, tomatoes, sprouts, mushrooms, spinach leaves,...

Don't forget to add a little spices and maybe some sort of mayonnaise, butter, mustard or tomato sauce.

With this in mind, you can make tons of great vegetarian and vegan sandwiches!

So, not particularly creative, but does anyone else love the simplicty of a simple sandwich of butter and cucumber slices?
They're like comfort food and kind of remind me a lot of when I was a little kid ^_^

I've taken to eaten pumpkin sandwiches in the past few months - sort of a Sunday afternoon comfort food when there's not much else in the fridge. Slices of pumpkin (I parboil, then grill them with some paprika, olive oil, salt and pepper) on soft bread. I'm still experimenting with accompaniments - sour cream, mayonnaise, grated cheese, spicy salad leaves, mustard etc. Most recently I had it with goats cheese and toasted pine nuts, which was pretty nice.

I also took it to work and the pumpkin didn't go soggy!

I rememered this:

take hamburguer bread, open it and make a mixture of tuna+mayo+onion. Put it on the bread slices and put in the oven until done. It tastes great but I don't know if it will be good for a bento...

Enui
I don't like cucumber either. However, if I slice cucumbers, add salt, let osmosis remove some of the fluid and rinse the cucumbers again, then I really DO like cucumbers. I use cucumber an awful lot now, particularly for quick tsukemono pickles. It's just when they are raw and 'unsalted' that they have whatever it is that cucumbers have that makes me dislike them so.
If you hate cucumbers but enjoy dill pickles I'd urge you to give it a go before you dismiss this vegetable entirely (and it doesn't have to be salted for long. 4-5 minutes in a colander usually does the trick).

As for vegan sandwich ideas:
- Bagels (any bread will do, but bagels are great for this) hummus, grated raw carrot and toasted sesame seeds are a delicious combination.
- Pitta bread with baba ganoush and salad is divine (if you have them to hand or can be bothered making them, then chargrilled or roasted peppers are great with this). Also rather nice is sliced beetroot (and sliced beetroot goes well with hummus also)
- Occasionally I make a Spanish style vegetarian lentil stew with flat brown lentils and tomatoes. The result is quite thick and tastes wonderful the next day when added to a sandwich (my omnivore husband loves these too, but he'll add chorizo slices if he has them). Mooncake mentioned lentil patties, but as long as you can spread what you've made it should work.
- I posted a recipe for a vegan bean mash that makes a wonderful 'wrap' when enveloped in flat bread. It can also be stuffed into a pitta pocket.
http://www.justbento.com/forum/spicy-mashed-bean-wrap-vegan
- You can make your own tapenade without anchovies (just mash together olives, capers and garlic with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.) It lasts in the fridge for at least a week (keep a film of olive oil over it) and will add a satisfying punch of flavour to almost any sandwich.

And for vegetarians, there's the classic Spanish Omelette in a baguette with some salad.

I don't know if this has come up or not but Maki-san's "Cooked-to-death hot sweet peppers", "Red peppers with maple syrup and chilli" and "Sweet pepper and Onion Confit" should work well on sanwish when cooked till dry..
I've tried "Red peppers with maple syrup and chilli" (plus thinly sliced onion for extra sweetness) on bread and they tasted good.. Sadly, I did not have maple syrup at that time so I used Hoisin sauce and chilli sauce ^^; Still works, but I think the original would taste even better.

PS: Coming from a poor design student who had splurged on a wonderful DSLR and is in desperate need to make ends meet.