First Day Of College Bento

So today was my first day of college! There was free pizza, but why have pizza when you can have a cute and delicious bento lunch instead!

Photographically speaking, these photos aren't the best (an ugly window sill background). But I had made a really cute set up in front of my living room window last night before I went to sleep, and this morning there was way better light coming in a different window than the one I was set up by, so I just set it on the window sill, trying to be quick so I wasn't late my first day.

So, looking past all that ugly background grey-ness, today, in my bento, there is:

A Kale & Couscous Salad with Green Garlic Dressing (I used green onion), a recipe you can find on one of my favorite blogs, here: naturallyella

Cherry tomatoes hollowed out and filled with greek yogurt (I use plain greek yogurt as a replacement for sour cream because I think they taste very similar) and sprinkled with chives (these are eaten on a nacho chip - not pictured)

Fun flowery (natural) hotdogs (cut like a checkerboard and then boiled for about 3 minutes)

Cucumber flowers

Processed mozzarella cheese and ham flowers with spinach for leaves.

Carrot slivers

And a separate container with a small orange, blackberries and raspberries.

Tomorrow I will not be bringing a bento lunch to school, as it's orientation day and I am probably just going for half of the day. 

Cute Caterpillar Bento

I made another quick bento today! This one is organized a little better but was still quick and simple.

In my bento:

Homemade chickpea and cucumber salad with red onion, parsley, olive oil and lemon.

Red grapes with a bear and a lion food pick.

Natural Pecan Nut-Thin caterpillar with mozzarella eyes, mouth and antennae. I cut the antennae with a knife I have that's squiggle-ey shaped, the eyes with a small straw, and the mouth with a large straw and a small straw. (The orange sticks he's sitting in are some kind of spicy Asian snack)

Red bell pepper heart with salami and cheese hearts.

The caterpillar is sitting in a metal muffin tin with a paper doily in it. I love doilies (^*^)

only a week and 5 days until my first day of college! 

I hope everyone's having a great weekend!

Simple Polka-dot Elephant Bento

I made a really simple Bento today to take to my boyfriend's. I was rushing and didn't have anything prepared so it's definitely not the best it could be. I would have organized it a lot better and also used something else instead of processed cheese.

In my bento:

A spinach salad with red onion, boiled eggs and red and green bell pepper.

Red and green grapes with a hello kitty and a mouse food pick.

Sliced strawberries and cheese hearts with a hello kitty food pick.

Underneath the strawberries: salad dressing made with extra virgin olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon and balsamic vinegar.

I made the elephant with an oval cookie cutter and I cut the bottom flat. I used half of a little heart cutter to make the shape between the trunk and legs, and a large straw for between the legs. I also used a large straw to make the strawberry polka-dots and the mini cheese polka-dots are made with a small straw.

I'm not sure how much I like this bento, and I'm not overly proud of it because there's not a lot to it, but much better and cuter bentos are to come!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Creamy Pesto Lettuce Wraps With Shrimp & Feta Recipe

I'm a person who LOVES sandwiches, wraps, pitas etc. But when a sandwich has been sitting in a lunch box for hours, and goes soggy by the time you eat it, I find that really gross. I decided a perfect way to avoid that is to pack your sandwich fillings separate from your bread and then you put it together when you eat it! The same thing goes for pitas and wraps as well. Such as lettuce wraps! Which is something I've recently gained a liking for. It's basically a salad in the form of a wrap - and I love both of those things!

Today I'm going to share with you a very simple lettuce wrap recipe I came up with the other day. It's basically just a template you can go off of and change it up as much as you like! Put your favorite ingredients in it. (Or don't change it at all, this recipe was perfectly delicious!)

This recipe would also be perfect for a pot luck, or a family dinner, where you could have all the different fillings in separate dishes and everyone would make their own! Have lots of variety so everyone can have their favorites.

Creamy Pesto Lettuce Wraps With Shrimp & Feta

Makes 4 lettuce wraps.
Ingredients:

• 4 Large Lettuce Leaves
• 1 cup Red Onion, Chopped
• 1 cup Cooked Shrimp, Chopped
• 1 cup Cucumber, Julienned
• 1 cup Cherry Tomatoes, Sliced
• 4 Tbsp Feta, Crumbled
• 3 Tbsp Plain Greek Yogurt
• 1 Tbsp Pesto

Directions:
Prepare the first 6 ingredients and place them all in separate dishes.
Combine the yogurt and pesto in a small dish to create a creamy pesto sauce (if you would like it more pesto-ey you can add 2 Tbsp of each instead, or just use plain pesto as it is!).

If you are packing these in a lunch, at this point you would instead combine all the veggies, shrimp and feta in a baggie or container, and then pack the lettuce leaves and the pesto sauce separately to put it all together later.

Lay out a lettuce leaf, and spread a Tbsp of the creamy Pesto sauce in the middle. Add 1/4 of each ingredient in a pile along the line of pesto sauce. Roll up the leaf like a wrap, very gently, and secure with a toothpick.

Repeat with remaining 3 lettuce leaves. Serve Immediately. 

Optional: If the lettuce wrap can be wrapped around multiple times, then secured with the pesto sauce, or if more lettuce leaves are wrapped around with pesto sauce in between, you could chop the lettuce wrap into sushi-like pieces for a fun and different way to eat them or pack them in a lunch!

Ideas for other ingredients you could add:
Chicken
Bell peppers
Olives
Hamburger meat (for a taco-like wrap)
Tuna
Salmon
Beans
Quinoa
Rice

Just get creative with it! There is also all kinds of different sauces you could use depending on your ingredients. A spicy sauce would go good with hamburger meat or beans. A zesty salad dressing might be good with olives! 
Experiment and find your favorite!
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Easy Left-Over-Chicken Salad Dip Recipe

Today I had to get a little creative (most days I do that by choice, but today was different - I usually have a lot of options), my fridge had barely anything in it. We need groceries.

Anyways, I was craving some sort of taco or pita, but had neither pita bread, tortillas or taco shells. So, I just went with making the filling I would've made, and had it as a dip with crackers. It ended up tasting sOOooOOOooo good, and I felt the need to share it with you guys, as it would make a perfect little dish added to a packed lunch!

I pretty much just went with what I had in my fridge to create the recipe.

Note: This recipe makes a very small amount (the amount shown in the photo); just a single serving. Make the recipe as large as you want! It would be perfect for a pot luck if you made a huge batch!

Ingredients:

• Left-Over oven-baked chicken, pulled apart into little pieces (however much you prefer, I used only what I had, about half a cup or less)
• Pecan Nut-Thins (or other salted crackers)
• 1/4 cup Red Bell Pepper, Chopped
• 1/4 cup Cucumber, Julienned
• 2 Tbsp Low-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt
• 1 Tbsp Real Mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp chopped green onion
• Few Pinches of Pepper, or Fresh Cracked Pepper

Add whatever other ingredients you think you may like in this dish! I had few ingredients on hand at the time. Adding things like red onion, carrots, alfalfa or bean sprouts, olives or any kind of cheese may be a nice touch to it!

Directions:

Mix together the yogurt, mayo and pepper in a small dish. Set aside.
Put pulled apart chicken into a medium sized bowl.

To the bowl of chicken, add chopped peppers, julienned carrots and whatever else you would like!

Add your yogurt mixture to the chicken and vegetables and mix together until everything is coated evenly. Transfer to serving dish, garnish with green onion and serve with salted crackers (the salt from the crackers adds a nice flavor to the dip, consider adding salt to the recipe if not serving them with salted crackers).

This recipe is extremely quick and easy and can be modified to your individual taste, or made in large batches. Refrigerate if not eating right away, and refrigerate leftovers.

Enjoy!

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Bento Lunch Supplies

I'm so excited to make my first bento but I know a ton of work, and a ton of supplies go into making these things. I've spent this last month taking trips to the dollar store and finding the cheapest ways to do this (being a college student and all). I think I have almost everything I need! I already had a TON of cookie cutters from a couple christmas's ago, when I loved to bake and my mother got me a giant tub of 100 cookie cutters.

And I had some other cute things in my dining room closet already as well - (that I'll purchase more of when I run out because they're perfect for my lunches!)

Looking at all kinds of bento blogs, I've gotten all different sorts of inspiration and ideas. I saw a couple people using these little plastic fruit containers (that originally hold candy powder) as a container for soy sauce or things like shredded parmesan cheese. So I set out the other day to a couple places and found some at a favorite candy store of mine! It's my favorite because they have an entire Hello Kitty section (and a couple other Sanrio characters). So I was really happy when I also found little Keroppi (Sanrio frog character) metal tins, with tiny circle candies my boyfriend was happy to eat for me since I'm not much of a candy person. And now I can use them to put little extras or dips in lunches! The out-of-focus Hello Kitty cupcake tin in this photo was something I already had from months ago that I kept for its adorableness and knew I'd use it for something someday.

At the dollar store I found cute napkins I can pack every day, some extra lunch containers that came in a pack of three (pink, blue and green), and yet another candy container (of Hello Kitty)that has a zipper and fabric on it and is not metal all along the inside so whatever I end up putting in it will not be something wet, or will be put in plastic first.

I also found a plastic container suitable for yogurt and granola (or something else that requires a dry and a wet ingredient) because the two compartments are divided by the cover! I found a nice sandwich-sized container as well, and also already own a multiple-compartment pink lunch container.

I aaaaalways see bento lunch makers using these adorable food picks that you just can't find on little Prince Edward Island (at least, not the cute ones), and I could just go order some online but then I'd have to pay for shipping. I'm very crafty, so if I can make something instead of buy it, I will. So I made a bunch of little adorable food picks (just bought the picks at the grocery store, and glued little stickers and things on them, coating the sticky side completely in mod podge or glue)and was pleased with how they turned out.

And I already had some mini clothes pins with the same and similar stickers/characters on them I made probably a year ago, that would add some extra cuteness.

So there's how I got pretty much all the supplies I need, and for very cheap! Proof that it's possible on every budget. Even if you don't start out with as many things as I did, you can make do with what you have and make it more personal and unique.

It's just 3 more weeks until my first day of school and I'll be able to share my very first bento! Until then I'll keep updating with any new supplies or ideas :)
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