Bunny in the Grass

Trying out my borrowed egg shaper.  (You can also shape with cookie cutters - see here) The lettuce around my bunny egg is from my winter lettuce project, which has been a lot slower than I envisioned.

The yogurt is Cabot plain nonfat yogurt with Wyman's frozen rasberries, and sugar added to taste.  This is much less expensive than buying flavored yogurt, and I can vary the fruit every day.

That's a slice of very dark red apple at the bottom - an empire, which gave such a nice red color to my apple jelly.

This bento:  onion and yukon gold potatoes, cooked in a little of the fat from the Dakin Farm Bacon, toast, egg, lettuce, yogurt with raspberries, empire apple

Local foods: onion from my garden, lettuce from my back room, Dakin Farm Bacon, La Panciata bread, Cabot Yogurt, empire apple

PIZZA #7

I often make pizza from a flour tortilla.  A great vehicle for toppings without a lot of crust, and the crust gets nice and crisp.  For my pizza bento I cut circles from a tortilla with a 2 inch biscuit cutter - practically no waste.  It's really important not to put too much sauce on them.   Topped with Newman's marinara, green pepper, onion, pepperoni and bacon from Dakin Farms, Cabot monterey jack and sharp cheddar cheeses.  Baked at 405 for 10 minutes, so it's also a very fast pizza, great for preparing a bento box in the morning.

I made popcorn and gave it a pizza flavor with butter, black pepper, Cabot dry cheese powder, oregano, and a little bit of garlic powder.  Black pepper and the cheese powder are my standard popcorn topping, so this was just a little punched up.  The pea salad is thawed petite peas with the leftover onion and green pepper from the pizzas, a little red bell pepper and celery, and a garlic dill herb mix.  Ranch dressing would have been good too, but not necessary.  The grapefruit should be a nice foil to the cheese.

This bento:  Tortilla pizza with Newman's marinara, onion, green pepper, pepperoni, bacon, monterey jack and cheddar; flavored popcorn, pea salad, grapefruit sections.

Local foods: pepperoni and bacon from Dakin Farms, Cabot monterey jack, cheddar, and dry cheddar cheeses, Haliday's garlic dill herb mix, onion from my garden.

BRUNCH BENTO #5

Oh dear.  Two months since my last bento. No excuses.  I'm back in the saddle and ready to step up to the plate (how would you do that).  Growing up we often had breakfast food for supper, especially Sunday night.  Cold cereal, occasionally raised (yeast) waffles which sometimes had cooked strips of bacon laid on the waffle iron before the batter was poured.  I really like breakfast food but don't like to eat much of a breakfast, so a brunch bento is just the ticket.

My new bento box is hard plastic from Good Grips, 900ml (3plus cups) so I don't want to fill it full.  It's a number five and marked no BPA, but I'll still avoid heating anything in it beyond warm.  This article from the NY Times talks about which plastics are currently regarded as safe (1,2,4,5) but that's just for now.  It seems prudent to avoid plastic as much as possible.

The small white container has half peanut butter (Hannaford's natural creamy) and half maple cream (the front shiny half the flash caught), which is just maple heated and then cooled and beaten like fudge -  from my friend Deb Davis in Underhill.  Peanut butter and maple have a great affinity for each other, and peanut butter spread on french toast and then drizzled with maple syrup has always been a favorite.

The bread is raisin bread with a hint of cinnamon, from La Panciata in Northfield, available at most local groceries - Hannaford, Price Chopper, and Mac's.  (I discovered this bread makes incredible toasted cheese sandwiches, too).  The bacon is Dakin Farms ends and pieces. I rubbed the cut banana with one of the open sides of a grapefruit section.  Recognize the little green spoon?  It used to come with French's mustard. antique!

What makes a product local?  I don't know where the pigs came from, and the wheat from the bread almost certainly wasn't grown in Vermont, although there are now about 15 Vermont wheat growers, and you can get local organic ale made from local wheat - Wolaver's

This bento:   scrambled eggs with bacon, cinnamon raisin toast with peanut butter and maple syrup, grapefruit sections, banana and grapes.

Local foods:  bacon, bread, maple syrup

BLT BENTO (#2)

BLT for lunch! But since it's in a bento box it's only a half sandwich, and I've cut the toast and bacon in pieces. To keep the toast and bacon from getting soggy I've put the tomatoes and mayo in silicone mini-muffin cups, and separated the toast from the cukes with parchment paper.

The bacon is cob smoked from Dakin Farms, my favorite bacon. I bought ends and pieces at the store, and as you can see some of it is nearly solid meat. There is also a maple crunch chocolate from Green Mountain chocolates. Cooked cortland apples. The little green mustard spoon is ancient; I think French's mustard used to come with these, but at any rate they've been in the silverware drawer for decades

This morning's bento is in a smaller box (739ml vs 925ml). Maki at Justbento.com says that a full bento box has about the number of calories as it has ml (a cup is about 240ml). (That would be true with something like rice or pasta, certainly true with meats and cheese, but then veggies and fruits would be much less.) I will seldom fill my bento box to the gills, at least until/unless I get a real bento box, which usually is shallower than these ziploc containers. This box still has more than enough space for what I want for lunch, and the good thing about that is that it will encourage me to fill it up with veggies.

This bento: BLT with toast, bacon, tomato and mayo. cucumber sticks, broccoli, rutabaga, apples, and a maple crunch chocolate.

local foods: tomato from my garden. cucmber, apples, bacon, bread, chocolate