#34 Rice and Stuff Bento

Bottom Tier: Jasmine Rice with a soy sauce swirl

Top Tier: Celery and carrot pieces, furikake for my rice in plastic wrap, fried soysage slices, dark chocolate almonds.

#29 Stir-fry Bento

Bottom Tier: 2 langostino wontons, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, slices of peppered salami, 1 piece of Muenster cheese.

Top Tier: wild rice blend with a stir-fry with curry tofu, carrots, baby bok choy, garlic, fresh ginger (from the garden!), and cilantro.

I also had a nectarine with this lunch.

Our homegrown ginger was an incredibly happy accident. Last spring, we had some store-bought ginger that had been around for a while, and started to grow a crown, so I decided to plant it. The greens of the plant are really beautiful, although I didn't have mine in the ground long enough for it to flower. Anyway, the point is that the ginger root that you get from growing your own plants is absolutely nothing like the kind you buy from the store. Store-bought ginger has a tough skin, and is almost grainy and hard to cut through. This ginger had a thin, papery skin that you could remove just by rubbing it, and it slices as easily as a clove of garlic. I'm probably going to try and grown some in a pot over the winter.

#21 Greek Bento

Top Tier: Jasmine rice with gyro meat, hummus in the plastic container
Bottom Tier: Falafel, strawberries, carrot chunks
In the Lid: chocolate square

#14 Stir-Fry Bento

Top Tier: Stir-fry with jasmine rice, tofu, garlic, carrots (from the garden!), spinach (from the garden!), and fresh dill on top
Bottom Tier: Celery, roasted almonds, blueberries, chocolate covered raspberry sticks.

We've been prepping the garden for Spring planting, so the carrots had to come out. They were a little small, but sweet and delicious! The spinach came from our cold frame.

#11 Stir-fry Bento

Bottom Tier: Vegetarian stir-fry
Top Tier: Three quarters of a blood orange, cherry tomatoes, roasted almonds, chocolate square

This stir-fry recipe starts with the pan-fried tofu recipe from Bento #9, and then...
Cook whatever rice you like. When the tofu is almost done (about 5-10 minutes left), toss in some veggies, in the order that you want them from most to least cooked. For example, this time I first put in some carrot slices, waited a couple of minutes, then added some finely diced garlic and fresh ginger for a few minutes, and finally put in some purple cabbage and haricots verts for a few minutes. When all that stuff is done, put the cooked rice into the pan, add some cooking oil and soy sauce, and mix everything up. Then, turn down the heat to medium-low, cover, and leave it for about 5-10 minutes. Then eat it!
If I start out with a pound of tofu, and a cup or 2 of rice, I'll end up with enough stir-fry for about 3-4 meals, and I never get sick of it. This is one of those dishes that inexplicably gets better when you reheat it.