Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Orange bento


I've been dying to make color-themed lunches. Because I'm a hippie (at least a wannabe). Last night I was thinking of what was in the fridge that I could fix up without too much hassle, and I remembered that I had a cantaloupe and some ginormous oranges to use. So the color of the day is orange (which of course includes yellow and red for aesthetics and my sanity).

Today's bento consists of cantaloupe and orange fruit salad alongside rice with barely-cooked carrots, Wisconsin cheese, and eggs drizzled with honey orange sauce and accented with tomato flowers. Oh, and a layer of goldfish sandwiched between the lid and some plastic wrap for a snack.

The fruit salad is really just fresh fruit; I did try mixing it with mint and vanilla, but I don't really care for the cantaloupe that way. The orange however...to die for! Anyway, so I just cut them up nice and small and nestled them into a little bowl made of half an orange rind.

The carrots are barely-cooked because I decided I wanted to glaze them at the last minute, and didn't have time to do much except boil them for five minutes. I think that was just enough though. I made a hasty omelet last night and cut some little hearts out of it and dumped honey orange sauce on everything.

I didn't look up a recipe for that because my 7.30 deadline was fast approaching, and decided that mixing honey and orange juice tasted just fine. About.com tells me I should have used much less honey and simmered it for a while rather than sticking it into the microwave for 15 seconds, and Betty Crocker suggests cooking brown sugar, butter, and a little salt and grated orange peel and then simmering the carrots in that. I'll have to give both of those a try and see what else turns up.

Don't know what to say about the little grape tomatoes except that they were hastily made and I need a better set of knives. I'm going to walk into a kitchen store one of these days and pick someone's brain about them, since I currently know next to nothing. Maybe I should search for some little shape-cutters for carrots and stuff too. I can make shapes by hand, but they're never as good, and I tend to run out of creative ideas after stars and flowers.

Overall this was a fun bento. I'll have to do it again, maybe once for each color. Although that could get tricky for colors like blue and purple. How about black and white? Would that even be appetizing? I could make it checkered, like the bathroom set my mom crocheted when she moved out...LOL.

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