No bento yesterday because I fell asleep on the couch on Monday evening and didn't have to courage to make something fancy in the morning. Yesterday's lunch was therefore just a cheese sandwich with some soup, hardly worth posting about, let alone taking pictures.

The bento has chicken shawarma, iceberg lettuce, some cherry tomatoes and aioli for the savoury part, some pitta bread as baran and clementine, white and blue grapes, lychees, blueberries, pomegranate seeds, apricot in the sweet section.


How-to Chicken Shawarma :

Ingredients for 2 servings :

* 1 box of mushrooms
* 1 red bell pepper
* shredded iceberg lettuce
* 2 onions
* 260g chicken fillet
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 1 TBS of shawarma spices
* 4 pitta breads
* aioli
Slice the chicken fillets into strips, and dice the mushrooms, bell pepper and onions. Put everything but the bell pepper in a bowl and mix with the shawarma spices.

Fry meat and veggies in a teaspoon of olive oil. Add the bell pepper a bit later on, so that it keeps a bit of crunch (and isn't all mushy).

Heat up the pita breads in a toaster, fill the warm bread with lettuce and the shawarma and serve with some aioli. The aioli can be homemade, but we always have a storebought jar in the fridge, so that's what I used last night.

That's all there is to it, quick simple and very tasty.

I didn't make any bentos last Thursday and Friday, because we both had working lunches planned. And no bentos, no blog postings.

However a new week has started and I have boarded the bento train again, at least until next Thursday. On Friday at noon, we are going to a restaurant with the whole office for our traditional New Year's lunch and after lunch we are free to go home as well.  So no bento then, but an early start of the weekend. :o)

My bento has jambalaya, cucumber slices, carrot sticks, green olives, a mini babybel and some cherry tomatoes.  The fruit section has clementine, white and blue grapes, blueberries, pomegranate seeds, apricot and plum.


Ingredients for 4 persons:

* 120g lean breakfast bacon (can be replaced by chicken as well)
* 1 onion
* 2 garlic cloves
* 250g mushrooms
* 1 red bell pepper
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 120g brown rice (uncooked)
* 1 TBS parsley
* a pinch of sugar
* to taste : salt, pepper, thyme (and if you like spicy, you can add tabasco sauce as well)
Dice the bacon, the onion, the garlic cloves, the mushrooms and the bell pepper.

Bake the bacon in the teaspoon of olive oil, add the vegetables and stew.

Add the uncooked rice, tomatoes and vegetable stock.  Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar (and tabasco if you want) and cook for 15 minutes.

Add the gambas and heat for an additional 5 minutes, finish with the tablespoon of parsley (and thyme).

December has come and gone and I have been so caught up in all that had to be done before the year came to a close, that I didn't update the blog for more than a month. The time has come however to take up the good habit again of posting my daily bentos.

January 4, 2010 :

The first working day of the year and the first day back at work since Christmas as well, added to the fact that it is freezing outside, you'll understand why my bento had to be as cheerful as possible. :o)

Lots of fruits and veggies in this one as another of my new year resolutions (besides updating this blog more regularly) is to lose weight (again) and between bentos and weightwatchers, I hope I'll be able to write down a pretty minus on the scale by the next Holidays.


January 5, 2010 :

More fruit in Tuesday's bento, as I knew I would get home late and I need to have something sweet and healthy to snack on, otherwise I always end up grabbing some (and then some more) chocolates in the office fridge (very yummy but better avoided).


January 6, 2010 :

Just one bento for a change today and I used my favourite black sakura bento again.

I don't know who stole the weekend, but I would really want to have it back. I have the feeling that I blinked on Friday night and all of a sudden it's almost Monday again. :o(

I didn't post Friday's bentos, so I'm doing it quickly before Monday blues gets to me.

My black sakura bento had carrot wrapped enoki, shitake, the last of the zucchini cakes, rice, cheese and carrot cut outs, some olives and cherry tomatoes and clementine for dessert.

Gamene from Bentozen, an inspiring bentoist who "decorates her soy chicken nuggets with little bear faces" (sic) kindly nominated me for a KREATIV BLOGGER award!  My first award ever,OMG .. the pressure   ^_^

But being nominated is only part of the game.  Apparently I should post seven interesting facts about myself, and then nominate seven other bloggers. Finding seven things to enumerate shouldn't be too hard, finding interesting ones might proof a challenge though.  Better trow myself into the deep end and get started with this ^_^


(1) Living in a country with three official languages (two of which I spoke at home), I was spoonfed linguistic love and unsurprisingly, when the time came to go to university, I decided I needed to learn some more.  I got my interpreter's degree back in 1996 and nowadays speak 6 languages (Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian & German).  And because I'm nerd/geek/loony* (* pick one - or all ^_^), I  am currently trying to learn Japanese.  Trying being the key word , because mastering kanji is HARD (and even that is an understatement).  It's also through my interest for Japan and all related things, that I ended up making bentos.

(2) I used to play the piano but haven't touched it in years. I should pick it up again (after tuning it because at the moment it sounds horrible) but always find some excuse not to : too much work, need to go shopping, would rather be crafting, ... On the other hand, I'd love to learn how to play saxophone.  Another entry on my bucket list.

(3) I love animals and have always had pets in my life. Currently I am being bossed around by two British shorthairs Lancelot & Lisa Lynn, Lotje and Lily for short.

(4) I passed my practical driving exam 7 years after taking the theoretical exam. As I didn't own a car, I found it useless to take the pratical exam. So I only got my driver's licence in 1999 at age 25.  I haven't had any accident since 2004 (while still driving 30.000 km/18.650 miles a year), and I'd love to keep it that way (knock on wood)

(5) I love travelling and am always busy planning our next trip (we try to travel abroad at least twice a year, as much as our 20 days off will allow).  There are so many cities and countries out there to be disovered, that we hardly ever go back to a place we already visited.  Asia remains a blank spot on our travel map for the moment, but visiting Hong Kong and Japan are other bucket list entries. My favourite destination so far was Brasil. I cannot wait to get back to South America, if you can imagine falling in love with a continent, I think I did.

(6) Two years ago I discovered the wonderful world of swapping and it led me into a world of crafts I never even knew existed.  I always loved drawing (did art school) and already worked on cross-stitching projects, but I have since then started making jewelry, mixed media projects (bookmarks, matchboxes), ATCs, and a whole lot more.  I haven't updated the crafty section of my blog for more than 6 months (as blogging was put on the backburner for a while), but I will probably start updating it again this weekend, as I have some ATCs to upload.
 
(7) For almost two years now I am an active lender on Kiva,  the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals like you and me to lend to entrepreneurs around the globe. Over the last 23 months I have contributed by loaning 25 USD at a time to 19 low income entrepreneurs or group of entrepreneurs.  Fighting poverty has never been so easy : by using Kiva I know exactly who my money is loaned to and what they're using it for. And most of all, I know that I'm helping them build a sustainable business that will provide income to feed, clothe, house and educate their family long after my loan is paid back.  I encourage everybody to participate in this project, changing the world, one step at a time.

Now for the nominations, most (if not all) bento blogs I am following, have already been nominated, so I'm not sure which one to nominate.  I'll think this over this weekend and edit this post afterwards.

 

My bento box of the day is a bit of a mix of all things I had in the fridge, which makes it a bit eclectic flavourwise. Luckily this bento has different compartments which keep the different items well separated.

Clockwise my box has :

I missed my ordinary nice lunch though, so even if I was tired last night, I decided to go and make myself something nice. So here I am, back with a new bento.

How-to zucchini cake:

For 6 minicakes, I used :

- 120 g self-rising flour (or you can use all purpose flour with yeast, which you add at the very end, just before putting it in the oven)
- 70 g grated gruyere cheese
- 70 g grated parmesan cheese
- a medium-sized zucchini
- 7 cl milk (I used semi-skimmed)
- 7 cl olive oil
- 2 eggs
- salt & pepper

Preheat the oven at 180°C.

Shred the zucchini. I kept a 5 cm long end unshredded for decorating purposes but that's not really necessary.

Mix the eggs with the milk and oil.

Add the flour and cheese to the egg batter. Before adding the zucchini to the batter, you have to remove excess liquid. This can be done either by squeezing the shreds with your hand or by pressing them in a sieve like I did.

Add the zucchini to the batter and mix all the ingredients together.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.
(If you used all purpose flour, this is the moment when you should add your leavening agent. )

At this stage I decorated the cakes with half slices of zucchini, but this is optional.

Spoon the batter into the individual mini cake forms and put them in the oven at 180°C for 30 minutes.

As with ordinary cakes, check if they're done by sticking a knife or pin into the cake. If it comes out clean, it's done :o)


And my owan tsukimi accompanied me to the office today with in the bottom bowl a linguini salad with zucchini, asperagus, tomato, bell pepper and tomato, mixed with legumaise and with a few large shrimps.


Bon appetit !