Hello everyone and welcome to my new blog! This is a bit of a grand idea of mine as I’m a girl who’s more prone to lose interest in my projects than see them through to completion. Here I am nonetheless, trying my very best to bring to the [as of yet...uninterested population of the Internet] my trials and tribulations of learning how to Bento among other things. I’m a huge hobbiest and no doubt my side projects will work their ways through here.

My reasons for attempting to create bentos are simple enough. First of all, I work a job where all of my shifts are 10 or 24 hours and buying out every day is starting to hurt my wallet. I need to find cheaper ways of eating (and avoiding fast food won’t hurt me either!!). Secondly, I spend most of my days at work (about 8 to 10 hours minimum) being completely sedentary and in all my active college years I’ve never seen my body start to balloon up like it has over the last few months.

Ah yes, I hear you asking already…”But what is a Bento Nicki?” Well I’ll tell you. Click here.

Gladware Bento

Here it is, in all of its boring, monotone, glory. My first bento….Ahh. So it’s not much to look at but it is healthy. I wasn’t feeling very hungry that day and ended up eating about half for lunch and the rest for dinner with still a little rice left over.

In the square glassware, I put 1 1/2 cup of rice (rice cooker cups measured while dry) with furikake (rice seasoning), two hardboiled eggs and a decent serving of salted edamame (soy beans Mmmm). In the round plastic container, I put half a package of firm tofu (drained in the microwave) and marinated with mustard, minced garlic and soy sauce with powdered chicken bouillon. I baked the tofu for 35 minutes or so at about 375 degrees in our oven. That’s one of my favorite quick, easy recipes for tofu I’ve made yet. The tofu is fairly salty but great with rice. ^_^

This actually isn’t the first bento I’ve attempted but it is the first successful one. One of the cardinal rules of making bentos is to keep things from getting moist (condensation is the enemy of fresh food) and I’ve struggled with it pretty bad.

The lessons I learned from this one are: hardboil and cool your eggs the night before. Cook the everliving soul out of your tofu (those things are little water sponges) AND once you drain the water from the edamame, let them cool in the pot a while (the heat will keep the steam rising out of them) and then deposit them on a paper towel for extra drainage. I also wiped the condensation off of the lids after I took them out of the fridge in the morning and it was perfect. It stayed fresh all day.

Calorie count
2 large, hard-boiled eggs = 156 calories
2.25 cups rice = 545 calories
1/4 cup (approx. when shelled) edamame = 64 calories
1 block tofu = 468 calories

For lunch and dinner: about 1233 calories

That’s probably a bit higher for most people but since I’m 5’11″ I think I’m doing alright.