Contest: Via Col Bento!


On Sarah's blog I found this nice Bento Contest. It's organised by two Italian Ladys, Carolina and Elisa. That's why I'm writing in English (as I don't speak Italian ^^), because I think this contest is a lovely idea and I want to be a part of it :)
This morning I've prepared my usual Wednesday-Bento, and it's the one I will show you for this contest. When I was thinking about it, I definitely wanted to make something with noodles and red peppers and apples for dessert, of course (because apples are my favourite :). That's when an idea hit me: I was able to include a little tribute to our Italian organizers and developed my colour theme, but take a look by yourself!
On the right hand side, you can see some fried noodles with red pepper, in the middle is the dessert, a fruit salad with apples and bananas and in the bunny are some oats which will go with the fruit salad later on. On the left you can see some cucmber pieces. It's a rather simple Bento, but I really liked it, especially since I was able to include the Italian flag :)
Now some further explanations:
The noodles are left-overs from yesterday's dinner. I used Chow Mein noodles. They come in big, solid pieces and you have to break them apart unless you want really long noodles which I find rather problematic, especially in a Bento. Just add boiling water to the noodles and leave them for four minutes. Put the noodles in a strainer and leave them for some minutes so that the water is almost completely gone. Then I just fried them in hot oil and added the chopped peppers after three minutes. For the colour and the taste, I added tomato paste (just use as much as you like) and a little bit of water, so that it's not really a sauce (because I don't like cold sauce ;). If you prefer more liquid, you might want to add a chopped tomato. In the end, I just added salt, pepper, chili and red pepper powder. So this makes the red part :)
The green part is fairly easy. I just used pieces of fresh cucumber. For the decoration I cut small lines in the cucumber and added one of my fruit picks, the Edamame Pick so that the colour fits :)
For the fruit salad I needed 1/2 apples and 1/2 banana. I cut them and put them in a little bit of water with lemon juice for some seconds. The lemon juice prevents that the banana and the apple get brown (and a brown middle wouldn't fit to my colour theme ^^). I took some oats with me for the fruit salad, but separately in my little bunny otherwise they would have been soggy when I had reached university ;) In the fruit salad you can see another food pick, namely a little lemon which fits to the ingredients of the salad.
I also managed to take a picture at university where this Bento's life ended :)
In the background you can see my pencil case because I had to eat the Bento in one of our classrooms as I don't have much time for lunch. And on this picture I've also added the oats which made the fruit salad even better.
I hope this will be a little inspiration and wish everyone else lots of fun when doing Bentos!
See ya, the Wicked Witch of the West

Kommentare

kitty's kitchen hat gesagt…
Hi, nice to read you!
I love your bento, perfect for university, very tasty the noodle and a complete meal for everyday. Thank you for partecipate! And don't worry if you don't speak italian, I can't speak German! See you. Elisa
Thank you, thank you :)
Cooking Gallery hat gesagt…
Happy to find another bento blog :)!! I love using 'long/slim' bento boxes too. Such boxes make the bento meals look somehow elegant :)!
I agree! And they fit much better into my bag :)
Sarah hat gesagt…
I like the colours! ;-)