Weekly Bento : WEEK ONE

this week's bento

We are midweek here in Japan, but since I have time and still plenty of leftovers to last me tomorrow and Friday, I thought it would be nice to just go over the bento of this week right now:)

As I mentioned previously, I will not be eating school lunches for personal reasons, so I will be making lunches each week. Hopefully I will be able to keep myself organized enough to continue making healthy ones.

So, let’s go over what all is in this bento, shall we? In the top box we have a green bean & fried tofu dish made with no extra oil (used the oil already in the fried tofu to cook it all), Japanese sweet omelet, bree cheese, vegetable eggroll, and two strawberries. The bottom contains white rice with a pickled plum in the middle and stewed eggplant, paprika, and salmon.

This week, I shall share one recipe with you, and that will be….

yum yum yum!

Stewed Eggplant, Paprika, and Salmon
Ingredients
2 salmon fillets
2 eggplants
1 red paprika
1 yellow paprika
1/2 cup of dashi
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
cooking wine

Directions
cut up the salmon into bite sized pieces and brush them with cooking oil
toast the eggplant and paprikas in a toaster oven for 5 minutes or until soft.
In a saucepan, mix together all wet ingredients (I actually added a bit of corn starch to thicken it a little)
slice eggplant and paprika into bit sized pieces and add to the saucepan for a few minutes.
grill salmon in the oven for 3 minutes and then add to the saucepan for another 5 – 10.

Rating out of 5

Flowering Viewing

While I did not get to do a proper Hanami this year as I did last year, one of my co-workers offered to drive me and two others to a man-made lake in Kawagoe where the cherry blossome were in full bloom and we had lunch. I took pictures with my regular digital camera, as well as some with my new phone that has different settings on it.

ENJOY!

This Month in 給食 – FINALE: March 2011

With this, my blogging about school lunch comes to a sudden halt. My school lunch ended on a high note as I was able to eat the 6年生の楽しみ給食 (6th grader’s special lunch) that consisted of apple jelly, fried chicken, two hashed potato star thingies, two sweet breads, and all in all yummy things.

I am not sure the reasoning exactly, although I think it has something to do with the power outages and not knowing if they would be able to prepare food as well as the gas “crisis,” but the city decided to cancel school lunch for the rest of the term. I am unsure what this means for the new school term starting in April, but we will just have to wait and see.

This Month in 給食: February 2011

This is rather late, but at least it is up now. I will try to get the March lunches up soon. Yes, I know that some lunches are shown twice, but between the 4 schools that I go two…repeats usually occur….which is disturbing considering that sometimes a lunch served one week shows up at another school the following week.

Just got power back after the scheduled outage. My area is in group 4, which meant that tonight the power was out from 6:30 to 10:00 in the evening. I ended up sleeping through it. All the silence was actually nice and I slept pretty well – which means I am wide awake now.

Strawberry Cake Kit Kat

strawberry cake!

I really really wanted to get these. I have had good luck with the pink variety Kit Kats, and the wrapping on these were just so cute!

There will soon be a new feature here at Tobidasu! Due to some changes in my health, nothing serious but some things that I should look out for, I will not be eating school lunches anymore *points to angry tweet from earlier today* Instead, I will be making bentos each and every day. Chances are, I will be eating the same thing for an entire week, but I will be replacing This Month in 給食 with [insert witty title TBA] Bentos!

This will include pictures and recipes:) There will probably even be some things that Mom can eat and help her healing process. Here is a little preview:

recent bento

In the bottom container, we have white rice that has been enhanced with vitamins and a pickled plum.

In the top container, there is steamed brocoli, string bean and fried tofu salad, Spanish omelet, fresh strawberries, fried chicken in an orange sauce, and a small stuffed cabbage roll.

February’s lunches end on Monday, and then there are only 18 more days of school lunches – although, I have stopped taking pictures at the Jr. high because a little twit nearly broke my camera a few months back.

I’m Dreaming of a White…Valentine’s Day?

No, I am not talking about some cheesy remake of the Irving Berlin song, but we literally had a white Valentine’s Day here in Japan this year.

After finishing work, it started to rain a bit, but I managed to make it home before anything too crazy started.

Then…. 6 pm rolled around and this happened:

These were all taken the next day around 8 am and the snow was still sticking in places around 11 pm. I was just glad that I had taken the day off work…riding my bike in this mess would not have been a pleasant experience.

This Month in 給食: January 2011

Ug, I have been so busy with wedding plans, elementary school lessons, trying not to strangle the high school couple that makes out in my apartment complex’s parking lot every morning…to blog properly. So, this is a little late, but, here are the lunches for January.

Recently, there has been an increase in school lunches that are heavy in salt – something that my body is not happy about – so I have been making a lot of my own lunches. I am starting to think that the next school year I will just not sign up for school lunch and make my own every day. Sure, that is going to be a lot of extra work for me in the morning…but no sense in signing up for it if I can’t eat a lot of the meals.

The lunch in the red box is my bento lunch box that I put together for myself:D

Japanese Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

daigaku imo Kit Kats!

This is one of my favorite Japanese dishes, but I can never get the recipe right when I try to make it myself. There are a few places that have opened up in my neighborhood that sell them. Makes my bike ride to and from work smell fantastic! Not sure if these would be a good Kit Kat though…

RSVP

So, in all wedding invitations in Japan, you include postcards for your guests to circle whether or not they will come. Many people include messages or well wishes, but my host sister went above and beyond everyone else. Which is why I am going to share that with you:

check out my host sister's artwork!

Awesome Google Logo

the super spiffy coming of age day google banner~

So, it is Coming of Age Day here in Japan and I just had to share the awesome logo that Google has up in honor of it. Isn’t that neat?!