Contents:

• Vegan mushroom rice made in a rice cooker (using pleurotus or oyster mushrooms)
• Pan-fried lemon chicken nuggets
• Sweet pepper kinpira (see notes)
• Blanched green beans

For this bento, The Guy used two of his favorite foods, the mushroom rice and the chicken nuggets. (I myself am particuarly fond of those nuggets, hot or cold. They are great with pasta or mashed potatoes as well as with rice.) He was a bit stumped as to what vegetables to use, but we had a few green beans left and we always seem to have some bell peppers lying around, so he made a kinpira with the peppers (the recipe is in the Just Bento Cookbook, or you can work off of the recipes here for other kinpiras). He did a fancy 'French-cut' on the beans and blanched them.

It did take him a bit of time to make this bento, but he chalks this up to inexperience and lack of planning plus 'having to look up the recipes'. Also, he says that the rice should definitely be made in advance (the night before, or frozen and just defrosted). It's kind of gratifying to hear, because he's getting all the things I've been preaching over the years on this site - without having read it much! ^_^

Here's the two bentos together (mine is the white box). He thought that the mushroom rice looked too beige, so added some chopped up shiso leaf as garnish. The flavors of shiso and mushroom together were interesting!

Here's a closeup of the non-rice parts. Very colorfully arranged, don't you think?

Incidentally, some of you asked for The Guy's take on this bento-making experience. He's not the blogging type but he does have a Twitter account, and he gave me permission to post it here so you can ask him directly - @pdfguru (that's what he does, by the way - PDF-guruing. And his real name is Max, not The Guy. ^_^;)