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HOW TO BUILD A BENTO BOX
•Plan your bento like an art activity.
•Choose foods for color.
•Use cookie cutters and other tools to cut foods such as bread, cheese, fruits and vegetables into interesting shapes.
•Use plastic skewers for foods such as fruit or roll-up sandwiches.
•Use cute plastic bottles or small sauce containers for liquids
•Don't forget muffin cups (large and small), to separate items.
•Egg molds press hard-cooked eggs into whimsical shapes. Go to www.24hourkitchen.word press.com for a look at egg molds and how to use them.
•Rice molds also allow you to shape rice into whimsical shapes. Besides Ekitron, find rice molds, including Hello Kitty, on eBay.
•Here are color ideas for fruits and veggies:
For reds, select from strawberries, red grapes, halved cherry tomatoes or sliced red peppers.
For orange, consider carrots, dried apricots, sweet potato, cantaloupe or mandarin orange segments.
Green is easy: peas, cucumber, green grapes, broccoli, spinach, green peppers and asparagus.
For white, try rice, Asian dumplings, pasta, bread or popcorn.
BENTO BOX FOOD IDEAS
Faux sushi: Cut the crust from a piece of bread, spread cream cheese on the bread, top with thinly sliced deli meat and roll tightly. Cut into ½ -inch slices to resemble a sushi roll. (From Shannon Carino.)
Fruit sushi: Cut the crust from a piece of bread, spread with pineapple cream cheese, add a banana, roll and slice.
Salad roll: Remove the thick rib from a romaine lettuce leaf. Top with favorite salad dressing, a thin slice of Muenster cheese, a thin slice of roast beef. Roll tightly and secure with a pick.
Sandwich on a stick: Alternate chunks of ham and cheese, separated by squares of bread. Finish with a strawberry.
Also Online
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Tortilla roll: Spread a tortilla with refried beans. Top with cooked chicken, shredded lettuce and grated cheese. Roll and slice. Use plastic skewers to secure.
Muffin cup: Layer the cup with shaved turkey, shredded lettuce and carrots.
Polenta pizza: Slice store-bought polenta, brown both sides in a skillet and top with tomato sauce, freshly chopped herbs and cheese; warm until cheese melts.
Alphabet pasta: Cook pasta according to package directions. Toss with freshly chopped vegetables and butter.
Mini stromboli: Slightly flatten canned biscuit dough. Spread with small amount of tomato sauce on half, top with chopped pepperoni, fold over and crimp edges with fork. Bake in a 350 F oven until golden.
Hard-cooked eggs: Cook egg, peel it and then press it into an egg mold. Top with favorite meat shapes.
These are ideas I got from the article in the Dallas Morning News I was telling you about yesterday. Not all of the food suggestions follow the traditional Japanese way of eating, but some of them do. There are some cute ideas, that's for sure!
5 comments:
I think it sounds great!
I think I would personally become tired of all the work making my food pretty...and all the extra dishes, too.
I read Annie's comment on your last post and agree that it can be really difficult to change in one swoop. We did it, though. For us, it was easier just to change overnight. We kept trying to weed things out slowly, but we kept reverting back to our old habits out of convenience. So, we finally decided to take one Sunday and look at every, single label in our house. We packed up more than $200 worth of groceries and took them to someone who needed them. Then, we made a promise to each other and to God that we would only purchase things that would help our bodies...His temple.
We're being realistic about it. We are still eating out every once in awhile, but we don't bring ANYTHING into our house that is not good. If God made it, it can be here (fruits, vegetables, meats). If we eat something that man made, we check the label VERY carefully. No additives, including sodium...nothing with corn syrup...nothing hydrolyzed, enriched, bleached, etc. So, only TRUE whole grains are here.
We're not eating anywhere near how the Japanese do, because it's a bit hard to get a MAN and a five-year old to eat that different after all this time...we still have treats like cookies and ice cream...and biscuits and rolls...but, I now make them. I use only whole-grain flour and because I'm making them, I can use pure ingredients.
Wow...this is becoming a novel. I have just become really passionate about what we put into our bodies. Did you know that it takes 100 oz of water to bring your body's pH level back to normal after drinking only 8 oz of soda? Did you know that the MSG in a serving of Campbell's soup or a serving of Ranch dressing can cause ill effects (diarrhea, headache, fatigue, heart irregularities, etc.) on your body for up to five days? It's seriously insane what we do to ourselves out of convenience.
THEN, we spend money, time, and side-effects taking medications to help the problems we could prevent by just eating differently. And, as you said, we live the last years or decades of our life in pain and, many times now, in confusion.
Okay, I'll quit writing now. My point is, I think you're doing an AWESOME thing!!!!
Write back and tell us what you are eating. B/c I am planning my menus for the next week and I am having a hard time staying away from processed foods. I had spaghetti on my menu and then remembered that the recipe I love that is my mom's recipe calls for 3 cans of condensed soup! I am going to have my in-laws here for about 5 days and my dad here for that long, too. At the same time.
I am planning grilled salmon, steamed rice, steamed veggies one night. But that's about as Japanese are we're gonna get with my guests here. : )
So, anyway, I am curious what you are eating since you made a drastic change to your eating habits.
I am also curious to know if you have seen results in the way your clothes fit or what the scale says. (none of my business, just curious)
Oh YEAH! We can tell a MAJOR difference in EVERYTHING. We feel SO much better. Addyson's energy and attitude has been much better (and we didn't even realize it was poor until after it got so much better.) I actually do not own scales, but I weighed at my mom's...weighed and then weighed again exactly a week later. I had lost seven pounds. I haven't weighed recently, but I can wear jeans that I haven't worn in 2 or 3 years. I'm still wearing my same size clothes, but I COULD go down a size if I had them...
Basically, we're still eating a lot of the things we used to...I'm just making more of it. Making biscuits, rolls, cookies, ice cream, etc...so, I can be sure to only use pure things...sugar, eggs, whole-grain (non-enriched, non-bleached) flour...
We're eating more tuna...
Some things I COULD make from scratch, but I've found them packaged without additives...we found organic mac 'n' cheese, we buy our sandwich bread, but we read the label to make sure it's actually whole wheat...when I first heard about MSG in so many foods, I was under the impression that all salad dressings have it, so I figured I would have to make our ranch, too...but, Paul Newman doesn't use MSG in his, so we still buy that...I don't juice (although I will probably start within the next year), so we still buy fruit and vegetable juice...again, I just read the labels and find the ones without additives...
I don't even know. We haven't found ANY soups that are good...NONE. We've only found one kind of cereal, it's Naturals brand (found at Crest). We could probably find a lot more at Dodson's or somewhere organic, but we don't want to spend a ton of money. Also, we LOVE food, so we're still eating good-tasting stuff.
Julie, I've seen easy recipes for the condensed soups that you could use for the spaghetti sauce. Just do a google search for mushroom condensed soup recipe and you can find loads, I'm sure.
Look here for more bento box ideas - called lap top lunches.
http://www.laptoplunches.com/
Remember, each little step will lead to bigger changes down the road. You don't have to change it all in one day. I know you tend to jump in with both feet and get overwhelmed (something I'm prone to do, as well).
Love you,
Nat
Your comment about the soup helped me, too, Natalie. Several of our favorite recipes use Cream of Mushroom soup and I can't find any without MSG. For some reason I never even thought to look for a recipe to make it. Hmmm.
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