#27 Gnocchi Bento

Bottom Tier: Gnocchi with pesto and pine nuts
Top Tier: Orange slices, chocolate raspberry sticks, black tea bag

Gnocchi is a pasta made with potato flour. It's really delicious, and quick to cook. You can buy it dried, but I prefer the frozen kind. The pesto sauce was simple olive oil and basil.

#26 Wrap Bento

Top Tier: Spinach tortilla with mayo, salami, and colby jack, cut in half; goldfish crackers, dark chocolate-covered almonds
Bottom Tier: Salad of Romaine lettuce and carrots, with peppercorn ranch dressing underneath.

#25 Veggie Pasta Bento

Top Tier: Cucumber (from the garden!) and carrot slices
Bottom Tier: Capellini with a triple tomato and asparagus sauce
Hidden: Chocolate square in the lid

This sauce is made with 3 kinds of tomatoes- raw cherry tomatoes (from the garden!), bottled stewed plum tomatoes, and sun dried tomatoes.
Recipe:
Saute some asparagus in a little olive oil and salt (I prefer using fresh asparagus as opposed to frozen, because it doesn't fall apart as easily). When the asparagus is cooked through (about 5 minutes on medium heat), add thinly-sliced garlic, and saute for another couple of minutes. Add sun dried tomato pieces, and whole cherry tomatoes. Cover pan so that the tomatoes will burst from the heat. Then, add a couple of the stewed tomatoes, and crush/mix them with the rest of the sauce. Add any spices to taste (I used ground black pepper and an Italian seasoning mix), pour sauce over pasta , mix, and top off with some Parmesan cheese.

#24 Orange Bento

Bottom Tier: leftover takeout- enchilada and 1/2 of a quesadilla
Top Tier: 2 apricot halves, cut-up carrot, trail mix as filler.

#23 Pita Pizza Bento

It's been months since I posted! I've been packing bento lunches pretty much daily, but have been too lazy to photograph/post them. Here's one I found in my camera from June or so (I think):

Bottom tier: Whole wheat pita with tomato sauce, sundried tomatoes, roasted garlic, and Buffalo mozarella slices

Top tier: cucumber (from the garden!), strawberries, grapes, tiny homemade lemon poppyseed muffin with orange glaze.

I will try to get back in the game starting.... NOW!

#22 Adult Quesadillas Bento

Bottom Tier: 2 Spinach-Feta Quesadillas
Top Tier: Strawberries, chocolate square

The spinach in our garden is getting a little out of control, so we had to harvest a bunch. These quesadillas were a natural choice, because they're so delicious:
Make roasted garlic as in my very first bento blog post. While it cools, boil some veggie or chicken broth with some chopped jalapeno peppers (the number of peppers depends on how spicy you want your quesadillas). Boil for about 10 minutes, so that it reduces a little, and the pepper flavor gets infused into the broth. Then, pour it into a shallow bowl or pan through a sieve (to remove the pepper chunks). While the broth cools, chop up some spinach into small strips, and put it into a large bowl. Add crumbled feta cheese, the roasted garlic, and a little olive oil. When you are ready to cook your quesadillas, choose a frying pan that is the same size or larger than the tortillas that you will be using. Heat the pan up to about the medium setting, and add some oil. Dip each tortilla in the spicy broth mixture, and fry it for about 1 minute on each side, just to make it sticky.
After all of your tortillas have been pre-cooked, you can start adding the spinach-feta mixture and rolling up your quesadillas. Then, fry them again until golden-brown.

#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