I made this bento around last week. This time the bento box consists of steamed brown rice sprinkled with toasted sesamed seeds, Japanese-style fried shrimps (ebi fry - check out the recipe here), stir-fried green beans seasoned with soy sauce and Japanese seven-spice powder and some fresh sweet pepper sticks.

Don't forget to drizzle the ebi fry with mayonnaise and tonkatsu sauce, these two condiments really bring out the beautiful flavour of the fried shrimps...!



I am in love with my new bento box. I thought that it would be impossible to buy this pretty wooden box in Germany, but I managed to get it from Amazon.de.

This bento is super simple: I had fried rice with petai beans and shrimps (I used brown rice this time though), spicy Korean style bean sprouts, two cherry tomatoes, a piece of radish and store-bought Shibazuke (Japanese red pickled cucumber).

If you want to try the Korean style bean sprouts, you only need to boil the bean sprouts, drain and then sprinkle with sesame oil, soy sauce and Korean red pepper flakes to taste. Easy and delicious!



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Another lunch for my low-carb bento series: creamy caesar salad with chicken schnitzel coated with almond meal. Almond meal is a great alternative to the usual flour and breadcrumbs coating. It even tastes really good! The only drawback is, it can be quite crumbly, so you have to be careful when you pan-fry the schnitzel.

Almond Chicken Schnitzel

2 Servings

  • 2 chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1 egg
  • 1 Tbsp oyster sauce
  • almond meal
  • oil for pan-frying

Mix the chicken with egg and oyster sauce. Coat the chicken pieces with almond meal. Pan-fry until both sides are golden brown. Set aside and keep warm in the oven.

Easy Caesar Salad

2 Servings

  • 2 heads of romaine lettuce
  • 5 cherry tomatoes
  • 1 hard boiled egg, sliced
  • Caesar Salad dressing
  • coarsely ground black pepper, to taste
  • grated parmesan cheese, to taste
  • chopped green onions for garnish
Tear the romaine lettuce into 3 cm lengths and place in a bowl. Add cherry tomatoes and your favourite Caesar salad dressing. Mix well. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese, pepper, green onions and garnish with slices of hard boiled egg. Arrange the almond schnitzel nuggets on top of the salad. Serve.

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Another try to do a low-carb diet...;). I did try it last year but it didn't last very long, I hope this year I can be more disciplined. One reason why I want to try this diet again is because I have noticed that I have been eating too much carb lately. I crave carb and I think I am even addicted to it, which I don't think is very good. This doesn't mean that I am planning to cut out carb completely from my life, since I don't want to go to another extreme. I will still eat it, but in much smaller portions. I will still eat out from time to time and enjoy my carb during these occasions, but I will try to eat low-carb meals at home. This means you will also see more low-carb bentos in my blog, just like this bento here. I will nevertheless try to make one or two cute bentos in a month, because making pretty, cute bentos is my hobby, which I don't intend to abandon in the near future :).

Soy Sauce Duck
  • 1 duck breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 medium red onion, sliced
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • sweetener, to taste (optional)
  • black pepper, to taste
  • 1 Tbsp chopped green onion

Pan-fry the duck for 1 minute with olive oil. Add the onion and stir until it's slightly brown. Add soy sauce, sweetener and black pepper. Cook for another minute. Garnish with green onions.

Creamy Rocket Salad

  • 50 g mixed salad greens
  • 50 g rocket
  • 2 medium tomatoes, sliced
  • 8 - 10 mini mozzarella balls
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp chicken powder
  • 100 ml cream
  • 1 tsp dried marjoram
  • 1 Tbsp chopped red onion
  • 1/2 tsp sweetener (optional)
  • black pepper, to taste

Combine all the salad ingredients. Topped with the soy sauce duck and soy sauce egg for garnish.


SOMEBODY STOLE MY BLOG CONTENTS

Today, by chance I found a blog which copied and pasted my 'Bento - Charaben' section to his/her blog without my permission. I have seen my blogger friends getting furious because other people stole their blog contents. I thought that I was lucky that something like this never happened to me. Apparently this was just wishful thinking. There are so many irresponsible people out who don't even understand one of the most basic ethical codes. I have reported his/her blog to Google and I hope that this blog would be deleted soon. When you check this link out, you will notice that the rest of the blog entries are also stolen from other blogs: http://freecookingposts.blogspot.de/search/label/Bento%20-%20Charaben !!

On a lighter note, let me end this post with a HAPPY EASTER :)!

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Everyone seems to be crazy about Angry Birds... and I never understood it...I always thought, what's so cool about them? They don't even look that great. But hey, some weeks ago I saw my husband playing Angry Birds with his Ipad and I said, "Those are the crazy, stupid birds I have seen everywhere I go...!" ;). From that day on, I have been playing Angry Birds on my Ipad too and now I find them quite cool - and so, the Angry Birds bento...:).

The idea to use Babybel cheese to make the red Angry Birds is stolen from this website :). It was however my own idea to use cucumber to make the green pig, but I think I have to work on making the pig look more presentable...

The black bento box contains pan-fried chicken karaage, tamagoyaki, cherry tomatoes and carrot pickles. The two yellow flowers are made out of cheese.



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Have you watched the beautiful animation My Neighbour Totoro? My blogging friend, Nami from Just One Cookbook adores Totoro and she recommended me to watch the film. I finally did a few months ago and Nami was totally right, Totoro is a great film and the animation is super!

I hope this Totoro bento will put a smile to all Totoro fans out there...:)!

The Totoro sushi is pretty simple to make. The white part is normal sushi rice and the grey part is rice coloured with toasted ground black sesame seeds. The whiskers are soba noodles and the eyes and nose are made out of nori and cheese.

The sides include fried breaded shrimps, cherry tomatoes, tamagoyaki and pan fried mini pork cutlets coated with almond meal.

And no, those are no real cupcakes ;). They're cupcake shaped salt and pepper shakers, aren't they sweet :)?





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