Bento with Hungry

You know what real friendship is?  I’m learning every day how much some people mean to me, and how little other people mean.  In any case, with regard to today’s post, this means that a friend of mine recently invited me to attend a press tour with her.  Since it was scheduled for pre-lunchtime, we figured that we would be hungry afterwards… but she knew I would be in the middle of my Restaurant Hiatus at that time. 

So she suggested we bring a lunch with us and eat it in the nearby park after the tour.  Not just a genius suggestion, but really, I was touched by her accommodation of my ‘strange’ current situation- no complaint, not even a grumble about this… and we both had to cook for the poolside BBQ (post to come, of course!) scheduled for the next day, too.  Nope. 

And that’s how Hungry and I bento’d (sort of) for each other. 

Even funnier is that we just both said we were going to make stuff to bring and share, but we both wound up having the same or similar idea in that we both brought a container of lunch (aka BENTO!) for the other.  Ahhh, great minds think alike, yes? 

On the left, Hungry’s offering, and on the right, mine. (Both boxes looked about the same; I chose pink for myself, obviously.)

Yum! Soba noodles topped with Shiitake mushroom, a pork-stuffed fish ball, a fish ball, beef ball, a soft boiled egg (my fave; well, I like any egg with runny yolk), and sauteed romaine lettuce with a bit of hoisin sauce.

Look at that egg. Perfectly cooked; my soft boiled eggs, though I’ve literally been making them for myself since I was 10 or so (in fact, that might be the first thing I ever “learned” to cook – in quotes because I clearly didn’t do a good job learning), are very hit or miss. Sometimes they’re fantastic, but they generally go one way or the other – too hard or way too soft (uncooked white is not the tastiest thing to eat). So good! I had to resist the urge to slurp it up the way I was taught to do… only at home. Hehe.

As for what I brought, I stupidly didn’t take pictures of the cross sections, but the long roll on the left is the savory component: flour tortilla, briefly warmed in a dry skillet, then spread with a mixture of cream cheese, capers, canned salmon, minced onion, and maybe something else…. I forgot the dill, whoops, but that’s also a nice addition to that. The tortillas on the bottom are dessert – I warmed a flour tortilla in a dry skillet and spread it first with Nutella, then homemade strawberry preserves/jam. The Nutella tasted super nutty in this fashion… I really liked these, and not too sweet.

Then just a few grape tomatoes to fill the gaps and a small container of hummus for the grape tomatoes (I thought I’d be able to fit more tomatoes, thus the rather ‘large’ helping of hummus.)

And the homemade strawberry preserves/jam? Super easy to make, and a total accident. I am not really sure what I was trying to do, but I basically had a bag of frozen strawberries from Trader Joe’s, dumped it into a pot and added a splash of lemon seltzer water (probably also from Trader Joe’s), grated some nutmeg into it and I may have added a touch of white sugar. Bring to a slow simmer, and let some of the water boil away, until it’s reduced to a sort of jam consistency. It took about 15 minutes or so at that slow simmer, so it’s not a super fast process, but you can definitely walk away for a little bit while it does this. Really quite tasty… but don’t ask me how long it will last, tightly sealed, in your fridge… because I don’t know. 🙂

What would you have packed for a nice summer picnic style lunch with a friend?  I need more ideas for next time 😀