Pasta Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Here's a lunch that I made with various things that were in my nearly-empty refrigerator.

Starting from the left, this bento contains leftover egg noodles, cucumber slices, herbed goat cheese, apple chunks, grapes, onions, and homemade honey mustard dressing. When I ate this bento, I mixed everything together and squirted honey mustard dressing on everything. My honey mustard dressing is a little darker than the average honey mustard dressing because I used local organic wildflower honey in my dressing.

Honey Mustard Dressing
1 part mayonnaise
1 part mustard
1 part honey
Mix well. Adjust to taste.

Middle Eastern Inspired Bento with Lamb Meatballs

Long time no blog! I'm back with a great bento from the archives.

The main piece of this bento contains several (3, if I remember correctly) chopped up lamb meatballs, recipe courtesy of Sunset magazine. They made a great dinner, and an equally great lunch. I had to chop them up so they would fit in the box.

The rest of the box contains a checkered apple slice, green bell pepper, some sort of mixed whole grain rice blend, random basil leaves as a space filler, and homemade hummus.

Never heard of hummus? It's a Middle Eastern dip of sorts made from chickpeas/garbanzo beans and olive oil. My version of hummus is very easy, and can be made in your food processor.

Quick and Easy Hummus
1 can garbanzo beans, drained
Extra virgin olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced (fresh is preferred, but I've used garlic salt or garlic powder in a pinch)
1 tsp or so lemon juice
Sumac (Bitter dark red spice. It may be found in the ethnic isle of some larger supermarkets. I buy mine from the local Persian market.)
Cumin (Another spice. This one is a lot easier to find. Trader Joe's has this for a decent price)
Salt, to taste

This is very much a recipe that needs to be tasted quite a lot.
Put drained garbanzo beans in food processor with 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Combine, adding olive oil and tasting every so often until you get a consistency that is relatively smooth, no chunks of garbanzo beans. You can add more olive oil as you wish, but I usually make my hummus pretty thick, so it can hold up well in the bento.
Add the garlic, lemon juice, sumac, and cumin, and combine them. You could leave out any of these, the most important ingredients are the garbanzo beans and olive oil. Taste, and add more of these as needed.
Add a sprinkle of salt or two as needed.
To serve the hummus (not in a bento), scoop out some hummus and place in the desired container. Use a spoon to make a small well in the hummus. Drizzle olive oil on top. Add a pinch or two of the sumac, cumin, or salt if desired.

To pack the hummus in a bento, I use some of that Press N Seal stuff to cover the top, or at the very least, some wax paper on top. If you have any of that clear plastic baran, that would work just as well as the wax paper.

Tulip Bento

This is a little bento that I made the other day. I'd started experimenting with making little pictures in Jello.

The top tier of my bento box has a checkered apple slice, green bell pepper, roasted cauliflower, dried cranberries, some random mixed nuts, and a little container of Jello with a tulip decoration made out of apple and cucumber skin.

The bottom tier of my bento box isn't quite as cute, but it still tasted amazing. I have some homemade meatloaf. Underneath the meatloaf, there is some pasta. I put one of the noodles on top for the picture so you could see what I used.

Another view of my cute bento.

Pretty spaghetti and meatballs

Most of the time, I don't add very much decoration to my bentos. Sure, they're organized in a way that makes them pleasing to look at, but I don't put cute faces on every rice ball or make cartoon characters out of seaweed. The simple approach also is a lot faster. But sometimes I want a little bit more decoration in my bento.

This bento has leftover spaghetti and meatballs for the main dish. I also included some jalapeño monterey jack cheese, a checkered apple slice, some cucumber slices, some baby carrots, some basil-infused olive oil for the spaghetti, and a little container of peach jello.
The jello is decorated with a grape flower with cucumber-peel decorations.
I felt like making jello for my bento, so I made up a quick batch, pouring it into various tiny containers. I used the regular directions, which worked OK, but I would recommend using the "jigglers" recipe. Not only would it be more sturdy and hold up better in transit (although this batch was sturdy enough most of the time), but the jiggler recipe makes less jello! For several weeks I've had jello, jello, and more jello! Because I'm the only one eating the jello, I wish I had made less!

Pancake bento with Sausage

I had some leftover blueberry pancakes in the fridge that needed to be used up. So I put them in a bento, sort of a "breakfast for lunch" type bento.

Contents of the bento:

• Homemade blueberry pancakes. The recipe is from the Bisquick box.
• Creamy cheese triangle
• Basil-garlic sausage
• Bell pepper strips
• A tiny bottle of maple syrup
• Baby carrots
• A checkered apple slice

This was my first time making the checkered apple. I'd seen it on other bento blogs before, but never attempted it. Making the checkered apple was the hardest part of the bento, and took up most of my time. I'm pleased with how it turned out, though. 

The box is a new bento box I got from a local Japanese supermarket. It came with three dividers: two 1/4 dividers and one 1/2 divider. It's a lot sturdier than my old orange box featured in other posts.