Bento 58: Emmental on Rye; and new Lego Lunchbox!

If you’ve been following me on twitter, you would know that I got a new box (omg, again!?) last week. Yeps!! There is nothing more exciting than awaiting a new box through the post – well, other than bento books. Hehe. I have yet to purchase any bento accessories online (I know, what restraint I show!) but that would probably rank the same level of excited-ness.

I had a bento all planned out for this fabulously retro box. I wanted to build a house made of legos from rectangles of brilliantly colored egg sheet! Alas, after spending too much time trying to get a thick enough egg sheet (and accidentally throwing away one green batch) I gave up. Maybe another day. Oh well. I made something simple instead out of Emmental cheese – a bird (looks like the twitter bird!) and a couple of flowers, some smeared with red food coloring. This was laid on a rye bread sandwich which contained more emmental cheese & sliced mushrooms. I stuffed the lettuce in the sandwich before devouring them.

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For sides, I popped in a few strawberries & 1/2 a plum. I added some gyozas that I cooked for dinner, and a tamagoyaki. I usually make my tamagoyaki with nori as I love the yellow and black contrast, but today I used some shredded shiso instead. Ahh…I found fresh shiso at long last! The only time I saw them being sold was in Mitsuwa in NJ, where I was unable to transport them back with me anyway. So when I saw the world ‘Perilla’ on a packet of leaves at the local asian grocery, I did a double take. It is purple shiso, which is usually used to dye umes, but it’ll do.

It comes in a large pack, so I’m freezing some of them individually. I do love the flavour of this purple shiso. It’s a very frangant herby flavour, very unlike any other herb plants in my garden. It tastes very good cooked as well – I made them into kimchi-shiso pancake as well, which was supposed to go in the bento, but was too quickly devoured.

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The pink lego lunch box! If you’re utterly in love with this box like I am, keep in mind that it is not leak-proof, so dry foodstuff would be the way to go. You can buy it right here, I got mine (with free shipping) within 4 working days. There is a plethora of colours as well, so if the pink is sold-out, you could maybe go for red or black for that all-goth or all-macho look 🙂 .