Picnic Bento

This one is based on foods you might eat at a picnic.

Contents

Deviled Egg Halves

Insulated Container Baked Beans

Potato Salad

Cole Slaw

Pimiento Cheese Stuffed Celery Sticks

Watermelon Wedges

Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers

Grilled Cheese Sandwich & Tomato Soup Bento

This one is based on everyone's favorite kid lunch, but with adult flavors.

Contents

Grilled Cheese Sandwich on a Whole Wheat Sandwich Flat: Wrapped in foil to keep it warm.

Insulated Container Homemade Tomato-Basil Soup: Follow the link for the recipe.

Cucumbers in Sour Cream: Follow the link for the recipe.

Clementine

Brownie: Follow the link for the recipe.

Japanese Sushi Bento

This bento is a tribute to all things Japanese, the inventors of the bento box.

Contents

6 Pieces of Cream Cheese Roll Sushi: This is my favorite kind of sushi.

Potstickers: I get them frozen and heat them in the microwave. They go in my insulated container.

Mini Container Soy Sauce

Medium Container Sesame Steamed Green Beans: These are steamed green beans with a little sesame oil, a little rice vinegar, some sesame seeds, and a little salt.

Seaweed Snacks

Wasabi Peanuts

Clementine

Pocky

Fall Holiday Meal Bento

This bento is based upon my favorite foods from Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. And, like those dinners, it has way too much food in it; I usually have to save some of it for later.

Contents

Turkey Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread: I use Oscar Mayer Carving Board Turkey, which tastes very close to leftover turkey from a holiday meal.

Small Container Roasted Baby Potatoes: Cut 4 baby read potatoes into quarters and put them in a baking dish. Drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle them with salt. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Mini Container Turkey Gravy: I just use canned or jarred gravy; this is to dip the potatoes in.

Insulated Container Green Bean Casserole: I just make this on top of the stove. Mix together a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup and half a cup of milk in a saucepan. Add 2 drained regular-sized cans of cut green beans and half a big can of French-fried onions. Heat and stir until it's hot and bubbly. Remove from heat and stir in the other half of the can of onions. Now it's ready to go into the insulated container.

Small Container Corn Bites: Mix up a small corn muffin mix (like Jiffy) with the ingredients listed on the package according to package directions. Stir in a 12 oz. package of frozen corn. Bake in a mini muffin pan according to package directions.

Small Container Honey-Glazed Baby Carrots: Follow the link for the recipe.

Celery Sticks Stuffed with Pimiento Cheese Spread: I've discovered Italian Rose Pimiento Cheese Spread, available at Walmart, tastes very close to the pimiento cheese my aunt Barbara used to make.

Fuji Apple

Mini Pumpkin Pie from Walmart

Sparkling Apple Cider

Chicken Nuggets Bento

This bento is based upon a great recipe for almond crusted chicken nuggets I got from Pinterest. It has a variety of dipping sauces, as well as a variety of dippers.

Contents

Large Container Almond Crusted Chicken Nuggets: Follow the link for the recipe. These are baked and coated with seasoned almond flour, so they're reasonably healthy.

Mini Container BBQ Sauce

Mini Container Honey Mustard

Mini Container Ranch Dressing

Medium Container Roasted Baby Potatoes: Cut 4 baby potatoes into quarters. Put them in a baking dish, drizzle them with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Small Container Baby Carrots

Small Container Mini Sweet Peppers

Fuji Apple

Dark Chocolate Covered Graham Cracker

Pizza Bento

This bento allows you to make your own mini pizza. It is good cold, but if you take it to a place where there's a microwave, it's even better after zapping it briefly to melt the cheese!

Contents

Whole Wheat Sandwich Flat: Half of this makes the "crust" for your pizza. If you take a whole one, you have crusts for two pizzas.

Mini Container Pizza or Marinara Sauce: Spread a spoonful of this on a sandwich flat half with a spoon.

Mini Container Pepperoni Slices

Mini Container Diced Red Bell Peppers

Mini Container Sliced Mushrooms

Mini Container Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Spread the sauce on a sandwich flat half with a spoon, and top your pizza with the other toppings, ending with cheese. If you have a microwave, zap it for 30 seconds to a minute, just until the cheese melts. If you don't, it's still good cold.

Medium Container Casear Salad: This is just romaine lettuce, garlic croutons and shaved parmesan.

Mini Container Caesar Dressing

Mini Fruit Pizza: This is a soft sugar cookie spread with strawberry cream cheese spread and topped with assorted fruits, cut up small. In one in the picture, I used sliced strawberries, sliced kiwi fruit, and clementine sections.

Ice Cream & Bacon Bento

This bento is themed on two of my favorite foods, ice cream and bacon!

Contents

Bacon & Asparagus Roll-Ups: Just wrap steamed asparagus spears in bacon. Yummy!

Velveeta-Wrapped Bacon: I've been meaning to try this new Kraft product.

Red Jawbreaker with Seaweed Snack Star: This gave me a chance to use my star cookie cutter. Didn't work too well, actually.

Cauliflower Floret with Weevils: A concession to nutrition. I probably won't eat it.

ICE CREAM with Chocolate Sprinkles!!: This gives me a chance to try out my half frozen/half warm bento box! Hope it doesn't melt.

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Hummus & Dippers Bento

As I said on my Omaha Walks blog, hummus definitely makes everything taste better. Here's a bento with hummus and lots of stuff to dip in it.

Contents

Medium Container Hummus

Whole Wheat Pita: Cut it into wedges with a pizza cutter.

Medium Container Veggies: I like to include baby carrots, cucumber slices, broccoli florets, and mini sweet peppers.

Medium Container Roasted Baby Potatoes: Cut 4 baby red potatoes into quarters and put them in a baking dish. Drizzle a little olive oil over them and sprinkle them with salt. Bake them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

Mini Bag Pretzels: You can get an 8-pack of these at Dollar Tree for a buck.

Clementine: Or 2 mini mandarins, as shown in the picture.

Mini Container Dark Chocolate Covered Cashews: Look in your supermarket's bulk section for these.

Garden Veggie Bento

This bento has a fresh veggies from the garden theme.

Contents:

Chicken Salad Sandwich on a Whole Wheat Sandwich Flat: I like to make my chicken salad with a can of chunk white chicken, diced celery, chopped walnuts, mayonnaise, and dijon mustard.

Spinach, Bacon & Egg Salad: This is similar to a salad I remember my mom making in the summertime. I fry 2 strips of bacon and boil one egg. I make the salad from fresh spinach, sliced mushrooms, sliced hardboiled egg, and crumbled bacon. I make the dressing by adding a little cider vinegar, a little sugar, and a little pepper to the leftover bacon grease. This goes on the salad and wilts the spinach.

Sliced Tomato Salad: This is my own take on a salad I like to have at Wheatfields. It's sliced tomatoes topped with shredded Swiss cheese, chopped fresh chives, sweet onion dressing, and sunflower seeds. Unfortunately, the picture here doesn't do it justice. It's really a lot better than it looks, folks.

Small Container Assorted Garden Veggies for Dipping: This includes scallions, radishes, baby carrots, and red bell pepper strips. This brings back memories of my dad's garden, where radishes and scallions were always the first to be harvested.

Mini Container Dill Veggie Dip: Or whatever dip I can get a deal on. In the picture, it's French Onion.

Small Container Strawberry Shortcake: This is a mini confetti cake from Walmart (only 50¢!) topped with glazed strawberries (slice some strawberries in a bowl, add sugar, and let them sit in the fridge for about an hour or so, stirring occasionally--this results in a glaze forming on the strawberries) and aerosol whipped cream. I've discovered that the whipped cream does not travel well, so now I just bring the can with me in my lunch bag.

Kosher Bento

NOTE: This bento makes no claims to be genuinely kosher, as I am not even Jewish. It is just based on the theme of the sort of stuff one might get at a kosher deli.

Contents:

Medium Container Egg Salad: I make my egg salad with 4 hard boiled eggs, some diced roasted red peppers from a jar, some mayonnaise, and some dijon mustard.

4 Wasa Crispbreads: These went in a Ziploc bag, which was placed on top of the other closed containers before the box was closed.

Small Container Lox

Mini Container Spreadable Cream Cheese: You can now get spreadable cream cheese at Dollar Tree!

Mini Container Capers: This had to ride shotgun.

Small Container Cucumber Slices: This time, I just peeled a mini cucumber and included it whole.

Mini Container Ranch Dressing: For dipping the cucumber in.

Kosher Dill Gherkin

Clementine: Or 2 mini mandarins, as in the picture.

Mini Container Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds: I just included a single-serve Brookside packet.