I'm a bit under the weather at the moment, but I wanted to show you a sneak peak of a bento my mother made (she's visiting here for a month). It's very classic, very Japanese - but made with ingredients that are pretty easy to get here.

It features haiga-mai (sprouted brown rice) mixed with my mom's all-purpose Japanese-flavored winter-vegetable mix (recipe for the mix here) in one compartment...

...and in the other compartment is some more of the stewed carrot, potato and onion that featured in the previous bento (recipe is now here), plus a piece of griled salted salmon, some blanched spinach, this time with a bit of soy sauce and dashi, and tamagoyaki.

Basically all the parts are from bento stash. The rice was that vegetable mix mixed into defrosted premade rice; the spinach was from a batch that was blanched and squeezed out all at once; the salted salmon was premade and stored cut into pieces in the freezer; and my mother made a big batch of the stewed vegetables that lasted us for a couple of bentos and a few dinners too. The only thing made from scratch so to speak was the tamagoyaki. But it all tasted wonderfully fresh, and pretty healthy too (maybe a bit heavy on the carbs, which can be adjusted). In other words, a classic everyday Japanese bento.