Vegan Valentine Bento Box

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  We are celebrating with  a heart-healthy vegan bento box.

This is my second Valentine bento for Saba Man, who is at work as I’m posting this article.  But it’s all good because we have our $aving’s Challenge  which prohibits us from spending dollars for a romantic “dinner and a movie”.    Instead, we’ll settle for watching the Winter Olympics on television with a  bowl of decadent chocolate ice cream! 

Speaking of the Olympics… Saba Man and I are on the hunt for reasonably priced tickets for ANY event.  We must get there somehow, someway…BUT I realize that we are smack-dab-in-the-middle of our pact to not spend money on eating out, etc.   I expressed  my concern and Saba Man looked at me with his smile.  It’s THE smile.   I felt a pang of guilt… after all I made a promise…and we’ve already stowed away over $300.00!!!  (2 day’s addition of  $ 45.00 put us over that benchmark)  Saba Man’s grin lingered, “if we make it up to Vancouver” we’ll keep a tally and continue our challenge until we make up for our indiscretion”.  I quickly confirmed with a quick  ”okay” and only with slight compunction.    Hey, it’s the Olympics and I’ve never been to one of those.     A  Saba Man factlet:  He  attended the 1988  Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea and was shown on  NBC TV chanting, “USA-USA-USA”.  Long lost  friends, to this day,  ask him  “was that you?”. 

So a word to the wise… the next time I plan a similar agreement to not spend $$$, I’ll double check to be sure there’s no event or holiday within the boundaries!

But back to the bento box packed with an odd combination which seems to work.  Can you spot the weirdness?  It’s the musubis.  They were formed with white rice cooked with sweetened dried cranberries!  I grossed out when I contemplated this mixture, but you know it worked out? especially when I added salt and topped with lemon zest.   It’s not something that I would do often, but for a treat, it’s good.   The picture  shows it with a heart shaped squirt of umeboshi paste, but don’t do it.  Do not.  It was too sour and I scraped it off after the photo shoot.  Also notice that the box is one of my re-purposed Christmas cookie tins! 

The other foods are sliced “Field Roast”, cucumbers with toasted black sesame seeds, steamed broccoli, edamame shumai and heart shaped tomatoes!  The XOXO is cut from raw red bell peppers.  These are the  cutters that I had misplaced last week along with my other Valentine props.  My dining room is currently in “bento-disarray.”  (Might be a good project  while  hubby is at work today.)

The mini mailbox is filled with more of the cranberry musubi for Saba Man’s snack.

If you’re interested in the white rice- cranberry musubi, the ratio is 1 cup uncooked Japanese white  rice to 1/2 cup of dried sweetened cranberries.  Wash the rice first, then add the recommended amount of water. Stir in the dried cranberries.  Make sure it’s mixed well so the cranberries don’t float to the top when cooking.   I bet this rice would taste heavenly topped with curry, yes?

Oh…I guess that’s what we’ll have for dinner.  A Valentine feast of curry and cranberry rice.  Spicy and sweet!