Panda bento

Yeah, there haven't been many bentos here… And right now I have four weeks at "my" school to learn from reality instead of just books. I love it, but since my school gives me lunch for free I don't have any bentos this month. But I found a picture in my phone of one that I have forgotten to blog, so here it is:

I used my Mickey Mouse box and I packed two vegetable cakes, rolled up ham on panda picks, cherry tomatoes and tiny mushrooms and the heart shaped yellow container has raspberry and rhubarb quark in it. I put in some panda baran to bring a bit more pandas and on top of the tomatoes i put a raw food berry bar (but I removed it from the photo, it's yummy but not very pretty).

Bento for the week

I promised you more bentos, but I haven't really delivered any. This semester started out really badly, I went to the introduction the first day and then I spent the rest of that week at home with a fever and a really bad headache. So no more lunches from that week.

And this week I've packed the same thing all three days of school, so I didn't bother to take photos of them all. It's the same food in the same box. This:

The yellow round Tupperware container has stracciatella quark that I had for a snack. My lunch was packed in my Happy Parade box and I had two vegetable cakes from Ikea's food section and some shredded taco chicken, both from the freezer. I also had cherry tomatoes and some tiny mushrooms.

My store sells mushrooms by weight and I always try to pick the smallest ones I can find in the bin, they taste more and they are adorable!

The first bento of 2015

So, my first semester at university is over and my second one has just begun. This course has a lot of scheduled time and a lot of days with lectures and classes both in the morning and the afternoon, so I will need plenty of lunches.

This is what I packed for lunch for monday:

I used my favorite red bento box and packed a surprisingly orange lunch. I have a home made pizza bun, carrot, some granola, a clementine and some dried blueberries in the little panda container. I also have some caesar dressing for the carrots. As a try to make the lunch not look so extremely orange I used a green silicon cup and some panda picks and a panda baran. Not sure if it helped very much, but I tried.

Dumpling bento

I have another bento to show!

I packed my Laptop Lunches box with chicken dumplings, home made cinnamon apple sauce, Inner Peas, a clementine, a gingerbread flavored "vacuum cleaner" and some soy sauce in the small container  to dip my dumplings in. It was a very nice lunch. 

A "vacuum cleaner" is a swedish pastry thing, usually they are covered with green marzipan with chocolate dipped ends and taste like chocolate with a little rum in. This one has brown marzipan that tastes like gingerbread and white chocolate at the ends. Not as good as the original, but still nice. 

A bento!

They are few and far between, but here is another bento lunch from the other day:

This winter has brought a lot of colds to my home, so this is what a lunch looks like when no one has had the energy to do any real grocery shopping. I packed some Belvita breakfast crackers with cranberries that turned out to be both really good and really filling, so I only ate one of the packs. I also had some mini meatballs, a nakd berry bar for a snack, two tiny organic clementines, a small tin of chicken paté (too salty so I only ate half of it) and some Inner Peas that I got in my package from The Student-turned-Doctor.

In Sweden we have nothing like these crispy pea snacks, but I've seen them on other bento blogs and I was very curious. I liked them a lot! Nice and crispy, savory and just a little bit salty. Really, really good!

Winter bento

It's been a long time with no bentos, but I have very few classes in this part of the semester, so I rarely need to bring lunch. But today we had two lectures so lunch was needed.

I packed my blue polka dot box and in the top layer I put four tiny cheese and leek quiches from IKEA.  They come frozen and I had time to bake them in the oven and have them cool down before I had to leave for school. In the bottom I put four silicon cups and filled one with frozen edamame, one with frozen mango and the other two with some chocolate/hazelnut/cinnamon granola for a snack. I tried making the lunch a bit wintery by putting two snowflake picks in. The red and green cups makes it a bit christmas-y too.

This was a panicked lunch. I realized I need a lunch as I went to bed yesterday, and we had NO fruit or veggies at home, and nothing in the fridge that was fitting to put in my lunch. But the freezer saved me! And I'm going grocery shopping in a little while, so I will have some fresh fruit and veggies for the rest of the week.

Fastest lunch ever

I'm studying to be a teacher for the after school program, and as part of the education we have internships for four weeks every semester. We are assigned to the same school during the whole education, and we are allowed to fill in when they need help. My school have called or texted me a bunch of times already and I love it! It's a great extra job to fill in one or two afternoons a week, plus it means I won't forget the kids, the teachers or the schools routines.

Last week they texted me in the morning to ask if I could fill in that afternoon. I was getting ready to go to class in the morning, but working that afternoon would mean I'd need to pack a lunch. And it needed to be packed in less than ten minutes and I'd need to eat it on the bus to make it from class to work in time.

So this is what I came up with:

I threw a kaviar (smoked and salted fish roe mix, very swedish and very yummy) sandwich and some meatballs in my Mickey Mouse box. Might be the most uninspired lunch box ever, and no fruit or veggies. But it was food and I made it in time to both class and work.