Blue Rice Balls

I made these squid, octopus, elephant rice balls today to add to my bento freezer stash. I started off coloring them with pureed blueberries but I did not like the color so I added some blue food coloring. I really like the cute shape and size of these onigiri. They are twice the size of the bear, heart, and star balls and they still fit in my bento boxes! The mold makes an indent for the eyes, mouth, or ears depending on the shape, so instead of nori I used vegan caviar to fill in the gaps for the detailing.

Broccoli Bento

Thank Goodness it's the weekend! Even if I will be working on my thesis all weekend. On the top tier of the bento I packed broccoli stir fry, with a pea and a carrot bear rice ball. The middle tier has blueberries, chocolate chips, and two blueberry bear rice balls.

Saffron Cherry Rice Balls

I was running low on cute rice balls for my lunches so I whipped up a couple of batches that turned out very nicely. On top I have yellow hears, stars, and bears. I didn't dye or pureeing anything I simply threw in saffron with the rice. Super easy and very yellow. The pinkish rice below was made with pureed cherries. I did not use very many and I strained out the pulp to make sure the rice would not have any detectable flavor. I can't wait to eat them :P

Under the Sea Bento

I had a lot of fun with this lunch. The squid section is made of okra, soy cheese, and rice. The goldfish is soy cheese with nori detaining, and is resting on a mung bean ocean with asparagus seaweed and carrot starfish.

Vegan Chicken Nugget Bento

I keep waking up thinking Wednesdays are Saturdays, and then am crushed to realize there are 3 days until the weekend. So to get through the day I made a super tasty bento. The left tier has mung bean noodles, celery, and carrot in a spicy teriyaki sauce. The right tier has faux chicken nuggets, carrot sticks, cucumber and locally made larrupin (a sweetish style sweet mustard) dill sauce for dipping.

Tortilla Bento

Todays bento is heavily tortilla based. The top tier has 2 strawberries, and a flower tortilla wrap with hummus, purple cabbage, and chili oil. The bottom tier has soy tereso bean dip with corn chips.

Bagel Dog Bento

In the left dish I packed ants on a log, baby carrots, and edamame. The middle dish has carrot slices, a homemade veggie bagel dog, macadamia nuts, craisins with a carrot face, catchup and mustard with nori faces. The lid has a mix of nuts.