bento 3: day trip to south-east asia!

so pretty much the book vegan lunchbox changed my life as i knowit and is awesome. the following spring rolls are from that book. so these spring rolls are made with rice paper which comes flat and hard like noodles, but then you put it in water and it turns into a sticky translucent round wrapper of sorts. i just wrapped the ingredients here burrito style and it worked out fine. brett got pretty much the same lunch 2 days in a row so i think it needs not two entries. *the pictures are kind of small today because i used the blogger uploader instead of flickr. in the future i'll try and use flickr i think

seriously, though, they should erect monuments to these spring rolls, and temples and cities and everything. there's this orange glazed baked tofu that is worth fighting for, whomever you have to fight, and then some apple, scallions, and cabbage. oh and cilantro. which i put in a nice little line over the top so when you roll it up you can see it. because i am clever.


i feel like someone who wasn't lazy like i am could make these a lot prettier too, if they had a mind to. the problem is i'm not much of a recipe person. pretty much if there's more than three steps i just free-style it. that's kind of what i did with the tofu actually because it called for marinating for an hour. katie has a lot better things to do than wait around for tofu to marinate. now, i suppose i could have gone off and done other things while it marinated. but logic doesn't play a very large role in my world.

any way, the sauce is a peanut sauce which i can take or leave. its nice but a pain to make. everything splashes everywhere because peanut butter does not like being mixed and it's a general disaster, etc, etc. any way, i mixed vinegar, peanut butter, hot sauce, and a sprinkle of garlic. its good and i like it better over noodles but i gave some to brett. which he liked ok, but on day two of this (today) i packed him the same lunch and he said he could take or leave the peanut sauce. okay good, 'cause i hate making it!!

so here is some mango again (we're rippin' through that mango up in here!) and some kind of grainy watermelon from market basket but hey that's what you get in may in nh. and then: RICE PUDDING. now, rice pudding is delicious. this is a fact that i will not allow to be contested. but it was hard to find a vegan rice pudding that had less than 3 steps (see previous paragraphs) and involved a kind of rice i can actually get in nh (i can't get black jasmine forbidden rice around the corner) and which sounded appetizing to me. some recipes just sounded like coconut milk poured over rice. which might be okay i guess but not for me. and so then i did find a chocolate rice pudding recipe that sounded pretty good, but i wanted a tropical flavor for this dish to go with the nice spring rolls. SO i sort of winged it (wang it?) and put a can of light coconut milk in a pot with a little less than half a cup of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. i let this get heated up and then i added 3 cups of already cooked brown rice and simmered the crap out of it. at the end i was worried it wouldn't get puddingy enough so i added a tiny bit of cornstarch. it came together pretty well though! next time i might try adding more liquid so there's more pudding, less rice, but it was very delicious! and i think a less-than-three-step recipe. which is key because i'm very important and busy and stuff.

bento 2: i heart you

okay so brett's review is in: he enjoyed his hot dog bento, but he wanted the bun packed separate from his hot dog because "the bun was too cold." okay! the rest of the lunch was okay: he liked the mangos, he liked the salad, hot dogs are awesome, etc, etc. i asked him if he wanted a sandwich for tomorrow and he requested more hot dogs but we only had vegan ones so here is hot dog bento redux, with vegan dogs. (and buns packed separately for temperature regulation)


that is a mini jello (a vegan agar-agary one) that you may see peeking out of the middle (in front of the bun-less not-dogs) and another one on the upper right. then there are onions and bbq sauce--i know, who eats bbq on their hot dogs? apparently brett. what a vegan monstrosity.

also that thing in the back is a green-tea mochi. i think they're kinda gross but brett loves them. someone at his work today asked if he had someone japanese in his family and he was like nope... just katie, who loves lo's seafood and asian market like nothing else on this earth. and whose diet consists largely of scallion pancakes from there and is going to be 700 lbs by september (no offense to my 700 lb readers)


more mango and spargel and salad. no carrot goldfish because it was graduation day at my school today and i spent most of the day sitting in the hot sun. and the rest of the day moving furniture in the hot sun. ...and there's an SVU marathon on...

bento 1: goldfish garden!

hi my name's katie and this is my blog. i like bento boxes and i like my boyfriend. most of the time. so here you will see me making lunch for my boyfriend, or rather the lunches i make for him, and right now its about BENTOS! because they are awesome. sometimes i might show my own lunch. but i don't have to pack a lunch currently. but that doesn't mean it's not fabu.

i go to school at colby college (bleh) but right now i'm home for summer and----that means lots of time to pack brett's lunches!


this is what i made today! not the best pictures ever for some reason. i don't have a good bento box for brett yet so this is two regular old plastic containers. (tuppaware? is that how you spell it?)


i am a vegan but for those of you who know brett and me he is obviously not. so here you have a hot dog at the bottom and then across the top left to right there's some noodle/cabbage salad with a ginger dressing, ketchup in the middle, and on the right is some asparagus. (spargel, for those who know me, das wichtigest gemuese der welt (oder etwas)). any way!


this is a salad with spinach and spring greens, some carrot goldfish (i have a special little cutter), cukes, onions, and tomatoes. there are also some little plastic fishies filled with dressing. they are supposed to be for soy sauce and they don't work fabulously for dressing but hey its day 1 we're only going up from here. the yellow thingers are chopped up mango. WHICH IS AMAZING.

i also gave him two little mochi, one green tea and one sesame. they're not in the picture though. there's also a tiny jelly i just remembered in between the ketchup and the hot dog i think its in the close up. ideally i want to get some big springy lettuce leaves to stuff in between the edges of his hot dog and stuff but i think it came out pretty well for my first one. there you have it!