#31 Veggie Soup Bento

Twist-top container: Creamy roasted vegetable soup with fresh basil

Glass container: mini biscuit with turkey bacon and colby-jack cheese, broccoli, celery, carrots, grapes.

Roasted veggie soup:

Peel 2 sweet potatoes, 1 parsnip, 3 carrots, and 3 celery stalks, and cut into 1-inch squares. Toss with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast at 350 degrees for about an hour, or until the veggies are soft and golden brown around the edges. At the same time, make some roasted garlic from the recipe in this post. Let veggies cool, and then blend them (I used my Magic Bullet) with some veggie broth (enough to accomplish blending). Pour it all into a pot, stir in more broth until it's almost as liquidy as you want. Heat on medium, and stir in any spices you want to taste (I used a seasoning salt, some cayenne pepper, and some fresh basil). When soup is hot, add about 1/5 of the volume milk. Stir, and enjoy!

*Celery Tip- If you hate those celery strings that always clump up after cooking, peel them off with a veggie peeler before slicing. I do this every time I use celery, even if I'm just going to eat it straight.

#30 Chickpea-heavy Bento

Bottom Tier: salad of baby Romaine leaves and carrots with ginger miso dressing underneath.
Top Tier: 3 falafel patties, homemade hummus, some colby jack cheese cubes, strawberries

In the bag: pappadum
and: a Clementine

I made the hummus in my Magic Bullet, which is pretty cool, but not as cool as the infomercial says it is (obviously). Recipe:
1 can of chickpeas (also called Garbanzo beans)
1 clove fresh garlic
1/4 Tsp each salt and pepper
1/2 Tsp dried parsley (I will probably use fresh next time)
A couple Tbsp olive oil

Blend it!

#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.

#28 Pescatarian Bento

Baby bok choy leaves on the bottom, a mixture of broccoli and cauliflower florets, baby carrots, and cherry tomatoes (from the garden!), two falafels, three wontons made with cream cheese, langostino tails, and parsley (from the garden), 1 folded-up slice of Muenster cheese. Also, I had a Minneola tangelo.

This lunch was put together in a 1 QT (950 mL) Pyrex container. It was a little much, but I ate the leftovers later in the afternoon before going to the gym.

You can find my wonton recipe in this post.

I have tried many falafel mixes over the years, including making my own, which was kind of a disaster. Falafel is one of my favorite foods, and it's a staple in our household for a quick and easy veggie lunch (my husband is a vegetarian, although I'm not). In any case, I've found my favorite brand: Casbah. The falafel get nice and crispy in the pan without having to deep fry them, and there is plenty of spice in the mix. I've started buying them by the case from on amazon.com.

#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.