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.

Exambento

Last friday I had a big midterm exam from 8 am to 1 pm. Since I know that I'm a stress eater I packed a big bento with lot's of snacky food. Turned out I didn't need all that food, so about half of it ended up being an afternoon snack instead.

Three boxes! My lovely retro Mickey Mouse box, one of the inner containers from my Laptop Lunch box and a beautiful metal box with a tree etched in the lid (bad picture, so the tree isn't too visible, but if you look closely you can see it).

And here's what's inside: In the Mickey Mouse box I packed a whole grain rye sandwich with hummus and smoked ham, mini meatballs with hamburger dressing in the little box and carrot sticks. I had apple slices and almond butter in the Laptop Lunches container. I the metal tree box I packed cauliflower with hummus in the panda, a heart shaped egg with salt in the little panda and a few more mini meatballs. I threw a sweet protein bar in the bag as well. I found tiny cocktails forks at my grocery store and I love them!

Food swap tasting

So, it's been a while since I got the package from The Student turned doctor and I've eaten a lot of the things - mostly the sweets! (To see what I got just go to the next entry on the blog!)

So I thought I would write a bit about what I thought about it.

Salt water taffy - a little disappointed about them not being salty at all, but I liked them. I got chocolate and grape (I think the purple were grape, it's not a common flavor here so I'm not sure) and even though they were very sweet they tasted nice and was not as sticky as I thought.

Charleston chew - I didn't really know what to expect from these, but I really liked them! Also really sweet, but in a good way. Very yummy!

The jellies - Sweeter than I expected, and very different from each other. Some had a lot of flavor and were really good, but some just tasted overly sweet and those I didn't really like. My favorite was the orange one, very nice citrus flavor!

Minnie Mouse Jelly beans - Green, orange and two different purple kinds of jelly beans. Well, the purple and orange ones were nice even if they had a little strange flavors. But the green ones, that were supposed to taste like kiwi, were really, really disgusting! They had the worst artificial flavoring ever, and didn't taste at all like kiwi. Luckily there was only four of the green ones.

Rice krispies treat - This I liked a lot! Sweet, but with a tiny hint of savory from the rice krispies. Not as sticky as I had expected, so that was really nice.

Candy corn - Oh my god, those were SWEET! Very nice honey flavor, but the sweetness was a bit overwhelming. The small bag lasted over a week here, and both me and my boyfriend are sweet tooths, but the candy corn was a bit too much for both of us. But one every now and then was nice. And I was surprised at the texture, I expected them to be chewy, but they were crumbly.

Pumpkin peeps - Also extremely sweet. We do have marshmallow candy in sweden, but not as sweet as these! It was like it was sweeter than sugar! But very cute!

Fig Newtons - Nice. Sweet, but fruity. Very soft. Was a nice snack with a cup of tea, but didn't make any big impression on me.

Good Earth Sweet & spicy original tea - This smelled sooo good! I like cinnamon and it both smelled and tasted a lot of cinnamon. The tea was very sweet in it self, and the taste was very good, but it was a little too much. I could only drink about half my cup. Maybe I let it steep a little too long, and maybe it might be a little less intense if I put a little milk in it.

Moon pie - They surprised my by NOT being as sweet as I expected! The cookie part reminded me slightly of a swedish bread called Vörtbröd that we eat at christmas. It's a sweet bread made with spices and "vört", which I think is a kind of byproduct from the malt when making beer. I liked the Moon pies a lot, and if I come to the USA any time I might buy them as a snack.

I have also tried the Cream wheat for breafast. I decided to start with the original and it was kind of blah… but I poured some maple syrup on it and that made it yummy! I think the flavored kinds are better than the non flavored. I have Cinnabun and Maple brown sugar left to try.

So far I've had a lot of fun trying all the american sweets. I mostly have seasoning things left and the crispy peas. I'm looking forward to be able to put some of those things in future lunches!

Food swap!

There won't be any lunches here for this week and the next. We are at midterm and have exams coming up, so it's all studying at home these weeks. So instead I'll show you a lot of exotic stuff! At least it's exotic to me… :)

A few weeks ago I had a comment on my blog from The Student (now turned Doctor - congratulations!) at Food for dissertation. She had seen my lunches featuring strawberry cream and was intrigued by this.

This kind of cream has nothing to do with dairy, it's fruit or berries boiled with water and sugar and thickened with potato starch so it gets a creamy consistency, almost like yoghurt, but it's clear. We serve it in a bowl with some milk or cream on top, or just plain. We eat it for dessert or as a snack meal in the afternoon. In the summer when it's hot I like to eat it for lunch with a sandwich or some snacky food and veggies for sides.

Anyway, The Student was curious and I offered to send her some so she could try it. This offer of mine then turned into a food swap with both of us sending stuff. I sent typical Swedish stuff, as well as the strawberry cream (it comes in a powdered version!) and I received a package full of American stuff. I told her I was curious about the crispy snack peas I've seen in a lot of bentos and that some friends and I had discussed salt water taffy.

This is the box when I opened it. There was a card on top as well, but I forgot to put it back to take the picture. Opening and unpacking all this felt like christmas!

Here are all the things I got! The taffy was cleverly used as packing peanuts, so I gathered them in a bowl when I unpacked. I had to try it right away! I was surprised when I didn't taste any salt, I expected them to be a tiny bit salty, but no. Just sweet and a bit sticky. The purple ones scared me a little, it looked like polymer clay and not like something you should put in your mouth. But it tasted good.

So, I got a few kinds of tea, Fig Newtons, Candy corn, Charleston chew, Rice Krispies treat, some very pretty jellies, Minnie Mouse jelly beans, three different kinds of Almond butter and two lollipops. Candy corn and Fig Newtons are things I've seen in movies and on TV, but never tried so I'm extra excited about them!

Some more of the stuff I got: Dark chocolate peanut butter, Moon pies, the taffy, three different kinds of Cream Wheat, Ranch dressing mix, Sloppy joe mix, Chili mix and Taco seasoning mix. We do have peanut butter and other kinds of nut butters in Sweden, but they are relatively new here and are found on the health food section in the stores and they DON'T come in chocolate flavor! The Moon pies made me giggle, me and my boyfriend are big fans of The Big Bang Theory and Sheldon's grandmother calls him Moon pie, but I had no idea what it really was! But now I do, and I get to taste it too!

I'm also excited to see if there is a difference in taste in the spice mixes, if American taco mix taste like Swedish taco mix, and the same with the chili.

I also got Onion dip mix, Corn muffin mix, mini taco boats and some very, very orange pumpkin marshmallow candy (at least I think it's marshmallow, it felt soft when I poked it through the plastic cover).

Inner peas, I love the pun in the name! I'm really curious about these crispy pea snacks, they seem so good! Also a closer picture of the taffy and the moon pies (there is a vanilla one underneath the chocolate one). You can also see the pretty card I got in the package.

Thank you so much to The Student at Food for dissertation for sending me all this American food, snacks and candies!