Bento Box Blog

My DH cooked again. He knows I have 2 favourite dishes of all time (apart from Fish and Chips and Cauliflower Cheese!) ; Iraqi Tapsi and Moroccan Lamb with Prunes. Well, today he made something extraordinary! He made the Iraqi Tapsi with Beef, but it had elements of the flavours of the Moroccan Lamb with Prunes, with a sort of sweet, cinnamonny taste to it, with piquant snatches of hot chili… Totally mouth watering, juicy, aubergines, sumptuously served in a thick, delicious sauce, textured with small bites of tasty beef steak and red onions… What a heavenly meal! And although I tried to be good and only took a very small second helping, I did eat more than my fair share, and as John Cage would say, I will not be disparaged! I realise my efforts to eat low fat, little and often are in vain, but you have to realise a dish like this does NOT come along every day! I am still committed to doing all the other reductions of fat and sugar and portion size, (My Scaredy Cat Challenge!) but it’s the weekend so this can count as the “treat”! And I do not feel guilty – I feel happy! 

And of course the leftovers went in the bento box, along with some rice, black olives, cucumber and cherry tomatoes.

The olives made me think of Spain, and you wouldn’t believe the lettuce I got from the supermarket – It was like bringing home a bunch of flowers! A huge, curly, astonishingly beautiful lettuce! I have never, ever in my life been so drawn to a salad vegetable! And I carefully broke off just 1 leaf of it and held it in my hands and saw …

… a flamenco dancer!!

So I made this:

With black olives for the hair, a tomato hair flower, cheese arms and face, a cucumber body and of course the lettuce leaf for the dress.

And if you’re looking for a connection between an Iraqi-Moroccan dish and a Spanish Dancer – it’s the word “Flamenco” which is believed to have come from the Arabic word fellahmengu, meaning “fugitive peasant”,  derived from a root meaning “to flee.” The term came into use in the 14th century, and was first applied to the Andalusian Gypsies themselves, who were called either gitanos or flamencos.

You can see the Wikipedia entry about Flamenco here

Ay, ay, ay!

If you are interested in getting into bento making or want to improve or simply try out some new techniques, try this list of tricks, tips and bento tutorials

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Featured Product: Niko Niko Nori Face Punch (recently re-stocked!) This amazing new nori punch cuts standard sheet seaweed into unbearably cute faces that you can use to make incredible bento and onigiri art, making you the cutest bento maker in town! Koala bear faces, panda, or generic happy faces can be cut from the 3 seaweed cutters and you can even mix and match to make new expressions.