Sausage Fried Rice (258)

This morning I pulled out my ridiculously large Costco package of that really great pineapple sausage I’ve mentioned before. I ate one for breakfast and then chopped up a leftover half for some fried rice. I had no veggies besides the bell peppers in the fridge and I really didn’t want to use those for fried rice, so I busted out some of my frozen edamame. This package is getting on the old side so the pods look too freezer burned to go into a bento now. All popped out though, they are fine.

Buddy woke me up at the ungodly hour of 4:51 AM by coming into my bedroom and saying repeatedly in slowly increasing volume, “Mommy, I want Cheerios!” Being up this early meant I had an assload of time on my hand, so I decided to bake one of my sweet potatoes for lunch. I poke holes, wrap the thing in foil, then bake it in my toaster oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes. I sliced it thin then used my flower veggie cutter to make me some cute little violets. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to make little centers. Next time maybe I’ll use yellow sprinkles or something, which is something Susan Yuen does in her Hawaii’s Bento Box Cookbook.

This fruit layer is really drab. I wish I had some kind of red or orange fruit to make it more colorful. I’m not even sure why I took a picture of it. I guess I just have a soft spot for photographing kiwi! Next to the kiwi is some honeydew melon.

I’m sure the economy must be scaring the ever living crap out of people, myself included. Now is a good time to stop buying those $8 plate lunches and $7 sub sandwiches and $6 value meals and start taking a home lunch. If you’re going to start doing that, why not make lunch more enjoyable by arranging everything nice and neat into a bento box?

I’ve got a bunch of bento items sitting around playing cards and doodling on scratch paper. I need to get them out of the house. From now on I’m going to be featuring an item a day on a first come, first serve basis for people who want to get started on bentoing. Today’s item:

This is a brand new 2-tier bento box. I’m giving it up for 2 bucks. If you want it, e-mail me or comment on this blog post. I’ll ship it as cheap or as expensive as you want, your choice!