As I reported last time [1], I am currently living in a kitchenless house. I thought we'd be further along in procuring cooking equipment, but due to various circumstances such as a backed up septic tank, wonky electricity and such, that hasn't happened. So far we are living on salads and bread, take-out sandwiches and - yes, fast food too. There are times like this for everyone right? We did finally get the rice cooker working (the transformer was acting funny) this morning, so I can finally start making rice at least.
Here's a typical lunch these days - sandwiches from a local bakery. Really nice, but at 5 Euros per sandwich (about US $6.20) they aren't cheap.
While I haven't been making real bentos, I did finally finish making this little number:
[2]
This is a bento made of felt stuffed with polyfill - a plushie bento if you will. The base is a kit I got in Japan, which I modified a bit. It has everything you would want in a well-balanced bento:
- 2 onigiri (rice balls) [3] - one is mixed with furikake [4], one has nori around it
- a breaded fried shrimp (I don't have a recipe for this on Just Bento as of yet, but there's one in the book ^_^)
- a piece of tamagoyaki [5] - a multi-egg one from the thickness, not a 1-egg one [6]
- Japanese potato salad [7]
- lettuce leaves
- a mini hamburger [8] complete with ketchup in the shape of a heart
- 2 apple bunnies or usagi ringo [9]
- a slice of kiwi
- blanched broccoli florets - great for filling those gaps
- and even a octopus wiener.
Here it is from a slightly different angle:
[10]
Anyway, I am going to try to sort out our kitchenless-kitchen situation in the next few days, so that I can get back to making edible bentos! Although I must say, making felt food is so fun that I feel an obsession coming on...