List of M Foods

On Monday, I blogged about the Letter M AlphaBento that I created. Now, I present you with a non-comprehensive list of foods beginning with the letter M. Perhaps, this will inspire you to create your own letter M AlphaBento for your child ... Or for yourself!

Breads/Grains:
Marble rye bread
Mezze rigatoni pasta (small rigatoni)
Mezzelune pasta (half-moon shapes)
Mostaccioli pasta (larger than penne)
Muffins
Multigrain bread

Dairy:
Marscapone cheese
Milk
Monterey Jack cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Muenster cheese

Desserts:
Macaroon
Marble cake
Marshmallows
Milky Way candy bar
Molten chocolate lava cake
Monkey bread
Mousse

Fruits:
Mandarin oranges
Mango
Melon
Mulberries

Meats/Protein:
Macadamia nuts
Meatloaf
Mutton

Vegetables:
Marinara sauce
Mashed potatoes
Mushrooms

Combos:

Macaroni & cheese

Manicotti

Monte Cristo sandwiches

What will you create?

M Bento

"And now we return to our regular scheduled bento-ing..." It's been a while since I've posted any alphabentos on the blog. There's been quite a few wonderfully delicious interruptions. First, there was the Olympic Torch and the Olympic Rings - Take a Guess, followed by the Olympic Rings Reveal. Also wedged into February was Valentine's Day. Lastly, I followed up with some Olympic sports - Ice Hockey, Curling, Figure Skating and Snowboarding. What a busy few weeks!

So for now, I'm back to posting about what I call "alphabentos". In case you're new here (please tell your friends about my blog!!), I am working my way through the alphabet, making a bento lunch for each of the 26 letters. Here's how I began bento-ing. I hope to be an inspiration to you! You too can create a fun, delicious & nutritious lunch. Okay, enough about that. Moving on to the Letter M lunch.

The previous night, I whipped up Meatloaf and Mashed potatoes for dinner. After serving up the portions for my family, I reserved enough food for the next day's bento lunches. Then - and only then - did I allow seconds. I mean, I make a terrific family-recipe meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and my growing-like-weeds-kids know it. If I don't reserve some food for the next day's lunches, there might not be any leftovers!

Rolling up slices of Muenster cheese, I tucked these orange-rimmed "cigars" into a corner by the meatloaf.

On the second tier of the M bento, I placed Mandarin oranges and Melon into a silicone cup; this keeps the fruit juices from soggifying (yup, I just made up a word) the Mushrooms next door.

Lastly, for dessert, I added a silicone cup of Monkey bread, which is basically cinnamon-sugar, pull-apart bread. For sake of ease, I used a store-bought monkey bread from the freezer section; honestly, it was just alright, but it did the trick. I see that Pillsbury has its own Monkey Bread recipe. Click on the link, and you will be salivating in seconds. I sure wish I had used that recipe! Oh well, next time.

So if you decide to make your own alphabento, I'd sure love to know about it! Look for a more comprehensive list of M foods to be posted later this week. Maybe your first alphabento could be the Letter M!

Olympics - Snowboarding

Snowboarding became an Olympic sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Shaun White, a leading US snowboarder, has participated in three Winter Games, earning a total of 18 Olympic medals.

My kids love watching Shaun White, performing his flips and tricks. (Sorry, I don't know much about snowboarding lingo.) I read somewhere that Shaun White loves Chinese food, so this bento lunch is in his honor.

The first layer of the bento is filled with a peppery stir fry. Strips of marinaded beef combine with matchstick carrots, broccoli florets, sliced onions and baby bok choy to create a delicious, veggie-packed meal.

Packed into the second layer is a bed of white rice, sprinkled with diagonally sliced green onions and topped with a nori snowboarder.

Olympics - Ice skating

Growing up, my fondest memories of the Winter Olympics were watching ice skating with my family. My favorites in women's figure skating were Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan. In the men's competition, I favored Paul Wylie and was awed by Viktor Petrenko.

This Winter Olympics, I chose to highlight Gracie Gold as the Olympian athlete of this ice skating-themed lunch. I read an article that Gracie and her twin sister enjoy sharing ahi tuna and sushi. Therefore, I give you 'Ahi Tuna Sushi Deconstructed.'

Beginning with a bed of brown rice (it's what I had on hand),  I arranged slices of cooked ahi tuna, layered with baby spinch (for color and definition). Sliced avocado and julienned carrots line the outskirts of the bento. A few florets of broccoli add color and act as a side dish to the deconstructed sushi. Lastly, upon the rice, I laid a nori figure skater.

Olympic Games - Curling

One of my friends requested a bento featuring the Olympic sport of curling, so here it is. But first, a little background.

Curling is a sport in which 4-person teams slide granite stones across the ice, using special brooms to guide the stone towards a circular target area. Curling has been an official Winter Olympic sport since the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.

This bento is loosely based on the favorite lunch spot of US Curling Olympian, Jared Zezel - Erbert & Gerbert's in Hibbing, Minnesota. Taken from Erbert & Gerbert's Facebook page: "Hibbing's own Team USA Curling Member Jared Zezel's favorite Erbert & Gerberts meal: Flash on wheat no mayo and a cup of Fiery Chili. Eat like an Olympian!!!!"

On a bed of cauliflower florets lies a curling Olympian made out of nori (edible seaweed sheet). I placed a small portion of chili in one section of the lunchbox, while a sandwich of capicola, ham and salami graces the other section.

My reality, in the midst of lunch making

Today, I want to share with you some of my reality. I struggle to balance my time - don't we all? (Please tell me you do too!) As the focus of this blog, I desire to create fun, healthy lunches for my kids and husband. However, I am learning that I am not SuperWoman. If making lunches for my kids and writing this blog becomes more important than living life and being with them, then I've got my priorities mixed up.

I planned to create 3 Olympic bentos for this week, posting them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. However, life happens. My kids happen. I'm choosing to snuggle up WITH them today, instead of crafting a 'really cool' lunch FOR them.

That is why there is no Olympic Curling Bento today. Perhaps, I will post it tomorrow. One thing I do know, I'm gonna choose to enjoy time with my kiddos while they are on winter break.

So I'll see you tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

Olympic Games - Hockey

"Ice hockey originated in Canada in the early 19th century, based on several similar sports played in Europe, although the word “hockey” comes from the old French word “hocquet”, meaning “stick”. Six-a-side men’s ice hockey has been on the program of every edition of the Winter Games since 1924 in Chamonix. Women’s ice hockey was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1992, and made its official debut in 1998 in Nagano." (www.Olympic.org, regarding Ice Hockey)

 In a 2010 interview with NHL, Zach Parise, the captain of the USA hockey team, mentioned that his favorite food is chicken tacos. Well, tacos are way too messy to send as a portable lunch. So as a tribute to Zach Parise, here are "Chicken Tacos Deconstructed".

This lunch is SO easy to make, sort of. Here's the difficult part - cutting out an Olympic hockey pictogram from a sheet of nori (edible, pressed seaweed). The good news - the rest of it is easy to create.

The nori hockey player is laid on a packed bed of rice. Packed into the opposite corner is cooked, shredded chicken, topped with shredded cheese. As a barrier between the rice and the chicken, I placed three small silicone cups. Each lunch recipient chose which toppings go in the cups - sour cream, chopped tomatoes, shredded cheese or guacamole. Instead of tortillas (which are too messy for the kiddos!), I sent along some tortilla chips.

At lunchtime, the kids will be able to mix together the rice, chicken and toppings, and then scoop it up with the tortilla chips. Delicious!

Olympic Rings Reveal

On Monday, I asked you, my readers, to make your best guess regarding which foods I used to create Olympic Rings in this bento. Here are some of the guesses. The blue ring: dyed egg or dyed daikon radish. The yellow ring: bell pepper or yellow squash. The black ring: seaweed. The green ring: bell pepper, cucumber or zucchini. The red ring: bell pepper. All very good guesses.

The blue ring is a dyed, hard-boiled egg slice. After hard-boiling a few eggs, I completely cooled, peeled and sliced them. I looked through the slices to discover which egg slices looked the most like a perfect ring. Then, I removed the yolk from those chosen slices. Mixing quite a few drops of blue food coloring with a bit of water, I added each slice individually into the blue water for about 30 seconds. Carefully lifting egg rings from the water, I placed each one onto a prepared stack of paper towels to air dry. When all the egg slices had been dyed, I gently pressed another paper towel on top to finish the drying process. (I hard-boiled a few eggs at a time, just in case some of them didn't turn out right. Then once I sliced all of the eggs, I had quite a few slices from which to choose the most perfect rings.)

For both the yellow and the red rings, I used a mandoline to cut even slices from mini bell peppers.

The green ring came from a cucumber. Using my mandoline (such an awesome Christmas present from my husband!), I sliced several rounds of cucumber. With a sharp knife, I carved out the inside of the cucumber, making it look like a ring.

The black ring - well, let me tell you! That one gave me some trouble at first. I mean, what food is naturally black AND round? An olive! But no olive was big enough to coordinate well with the other rings. Enter onto the lunch scene - nori! It is edible seaweed, pressed into sheets. Usually, it is used for wrapping sushi or creating cute faces on rice balls. Instead, I used a 1" circle punch (found in the scrapbooking aisle of a craft store) to punch a hole in a square piece of nori. Then with scissors, I oh-so-carefully rounded the edges to complete the ring. 

Meanwhile, I had rice cooking in my wonderful rice cooker. When it was finished, I packed the rice into one layer of the bento box. Once it had cooled a bit, I placed the blue, black and red rings onto the rice as the background; in the foreground, yellow and green rings overlapped the existing rings, seemingly connecting them.

To round out the lunch, I repeated the colors of the Olympic Rings in the second layer of the bento. Blueberries proceed yellow, mini pepper strips. The middle section showcases black olives. Quartered cucumber slices constitute the green section, followed by red, mini pepper strips.

Valentine's Day Lunch

Yes, I realize that it is not Valentine's Day. However, I thought that I would post this lunch now for three reasons:
(1) To remind you that Valentine's Day is coming. It's on Friday.
(2) To give you an idea.
(3) To enable you to have time to get the ingredients to make a special lunch.

Here's what I did. First, I cooked heart-shaped pasta and tossed it with a bit of olive oil and seasonings. My mother-in-love gave the pasta to me, so I couldn't tell you where to buy it. But I'm sure if you Google it, you can find it.

Next, I cut baby carrots diagonally, twisted them around to match up the ends, and then speared them with a toothpick. Honestly, the toothpick was really hard to skewer the carrots with. Perhaps, you could try a food pick instead.

Moving on to the second layer: I cut a thick slice of pineapple and then pressed a heart-shaped cookie cutter into the slice, to make a pineapple heart. Because fresh pineapple is super juicy, I put it into a silicone cup to keep the juice from ruining the rest of the lunch.

This next part - the heart-shaped egg - was a bit more time-consuming. There are two ways to make a heart-shaped, hard-boiled egg. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures. Instead I'll include links on HOW to achieve this lovely look.
(1) Egg mold: Hard boil an egg. While it's still warm, peel it, and place it in this heart-shaped egg mold. Refrigerate until cool, and then pop it out of the mold. Voila - a heart!
(2) OR follow these directions on how to make a heart-shaped egg, using cardboard, a skewer & rubber bands.

Strawberries: This one is super easy! Follow this link to discover how to make heart-shaped strawberries.

Store-bought sugar cookie dough is transformed into Valentine cookies, using cookie cutters and red & pink M&M's. (The darn cookie dough expanded in the oven making an enormous cookie. Whoops!)

Lastly, here's an extra tidbit that I didn't utilize in this lunch, since my kids dislike raw tomatoes. But perhaps you can use it - how to make heart-shaped tomatoes!

Let me know what you come up with!

Olympic Rings Bento - Take a Guess!

Right now, the entire world is celebrating the Olympics. If you didn't catch my Olympic Torch Bento to kick off the Opening Ceremonies, take a peek now.

Today, I made the Olympic Rings in lunch form. However, I am not showing you ALL of the lunch today. Why? Because ... I want you to guess what foods I used to make the Rings.

Leave your best guess in the comments. I will post the entire lunch and HOW I made it on Wednesday.

Olympic Torch Lunch

It's time for the Olympics! Can't wait to watch the Opening Ceremonies with my husband and kiddos tonight. It'll kinda be a "first" for us; four years ago, LoveBug and SuperBoy were WAY too young to remember the Winter Games.
Here is my kick-off tribute to the Olympic Games!

The most time-consuming project was constructing the torch base, made out of whole-wheat tortillas transformed into quesadillas.

Using a pizza cutter, I cut a torch-shaped triangle out of a whole-wheat tortilla. After cutting one triangle, I placed it into the bento box to make sure that it fit. Guess what? It didn't! Good thing I tried it first, before cutting ALL of the triangles. Once I figured out the correct size, I then used the first triangle to as a pattern to cut the rest of them.

On a griddle, I lined up a few tortilla triangles, sprinkled them with cheese and then topped them with the other triangles. Once the cheese had melted, I flipped them, cooking them on the other side.

Once they were pleasantly toasted, I took them off the griddle, let them cool for a tiny bit, and then cut them apart.

I stacked the quesadilla torches in the middle of a lunch container. (Please note how THIS particular container is NOT an actual bento box, but rather a Sterilite Ultra Seal container. You can use almost any container to create a bento lunch.)

Above the quesadilla torches, I placed a small bed of rice, molding it into the corner of the container. This is the hidden base for the torch's flame.

After cutting mini peppers into strips to resemble flames, I carefully arranged them over the rice, thereby creating the symbolic flame.

Broccoli florets fill in one side of the container, while a cup full of clementine segments & cheese sticks halves complete the other side. I added a small container of soy sauce (the yellow star) as a condiment for the rice.

I hope you will be watching the Olympic Games. In the next few weeks, look for some more Olympics-themed bentos to be popping up on my blog. Can't wait to show you what I have in store!

Foods Beginning with Letter L

Making your own L lunch can be quite simple to put together. Let me give you some ideas.

(1) Combine Lumaconi (large, pasta shells) and Le Chevrot cheese for your own Letter L mac 'n' cheese.

(2) Package up items for make-your-own Lettuce wraps. In a lunch container, place the fillings and toppings, keeping them separate. Wrap lettuce cups separately from the fillings. It's an interactive lunch.

(3) Begin with London broil. Add a side of Lavash bread and a few slices of Le Cabrie cheese. Pick your favorite Letter L fruits and veggies. And there you have it ... a picnic-style Letter L Lunch!

(4) Copy my Luscious, Lemony Letter L Lunch. (If you post it, please remember to direct people back to my website, to my original idea. Thanks.)

Breads/Grains:
Lavash
Linguine
Lumaconi (large shells)

Dairy:
Latte
Le Cabrie (cross between Brie & Cheevre)
Le Chevrot (goat's milk cheese, with buttery taste)
Limburger cheese

Desserts:
Lemon poppyseed bread
Lemon square
Licorice
Lollipop

Fruits:
Lemon
Lime
Loganberry
Lychee

Meats/Protein:
Lamb
Lemon sole
Lentil
Liver
Lobster
London broil

Vegetables:
Leeks
Lettuce
Lemongrass
Lima beans

Combos:
Lasagna
Lettuce wraps (like PF Chang's - yum!)
Lo mein

Luscious, Lemony Letter 'L' Lunch

According to Webster's dictionary, the definition of luscious is something "richly luxurious or appealing to the senses." Usually, the word "luscious" makes me think foods full of calories, such as huge, decadent desserts or giant portions of delicious appetizers. Personally, I think a little bit of a luscious food is more than enough; knowing that you have a small amount to eat, makes you savor each and every bite.

With a bento, the portions seem small. That's because bentos are designed to carry the right amount of food and nutrients for its recipient. Therefore, in my own, non-nutrition-degree opinion, it is okay to include a luscious food in one's bento once in a while, especially since the portion size is much more in line with actual needed portion sizes, rather than the Americanized idea of portions.

This Letter L bento is a perfect marriage between lusciousness and portion-control.

Honestly, the components of this lunch are quite simple. And yet, because of bright lemony colors contrasted against hues of salad greens, this bento brings "lunch" up to a whole new level.

First off, the base of the lunch is Lasagna. Not to praise myself, but ... I make an amazing lasagna: ground beef simmered in herbs and red wine, homemade red sauce smothering the noodles, mozzarella & Parmesan melting on top. (Are you drooling yet?!) BUT I went the easy route for this lunch; here's my secret - it's a Stouffer's lasagna. Yup, you read that right - store-bought Stouffer's. We had it for dinner, and then I packaged up the leftovers into the bento lunches.

Next, I added a bunch of different Lettuces in the second layer. Squirt with a spritz of Lemon, and wow ... healthy deliciousness!

For dessert, I cut a homemade Lemon bar to fit into a heart-shaped silicone cup. These lemon bars are one of the best desserts ever - slightly sweet and yet a tiny bit tart. SO good!

This is something that YOU could easily take to work. In fact, I bet that all of your coworkers might be rather jealous of your lunch. Try it, and let me know how it turns out!