Oh, hello there. I'm still here. All of my relationships are going much better. So, let's get back to my relationship with food. Above is a winter squash and buckwheat flour gnocchi. I am now in charge of cooking for lunchtime and dinnertime most days. I have to get creative as I love some picky picky eaters. The recipe was an amalgam of recipes I found using Pinterest (which has so many recipes yay). They came out o.k. but not as light due to I suspect the buckwheat flour which likes to drink up moisture and be dense. Gnocchi are usually a fancy special on restaurant menus; but guess what you're being fooled. My grandmother made these for Sunday brunch as a sweet cottage cheese version and called them "Lazy Dumplings" because they are so easy and quick to throw together.

Year Two Bento

Year Two Bento

There is no evidence but I have been packing more bento than ever! I'm not just eating lunch on the go once a week anymore. I now have to have lunch ready 5 times a week for my externship. There is plenty of inspiration, working with kidlets, just not enough time in the day to realize my bento aspirations. In fact pictured is one of the more colorful and put together lunches. Perhaps as I settle in to the enormous amount of work year two of grad school entails I will find time to pack more attractive bento..

Summer Term Bento

Summer Term Bento 00.31.41
Originally uploaded by rbsb1999

Year one of grad school is ova! Here comes summer one and with it a whole new batch of bento. This bento is mostly freezer items, what with the gyoza and edamame. The rice was hanging around my pantry.
The standouts are the berries. Cherry prices have finally dipped below 6/lb and the strawberries come c/o our postage stamp sized garden patch. If all goes swimmingly well later summer bento should be graced with our own tomatoes and basil.

Grad School Breakfast+ Lunch

Grad School Breakfast+ Lunch
Originally uploaded by rbsb1999

I was so tired, I didn't think I'd wake up to eat. Solution? Pack breakfast in the bento!

They just came out with these adorable greek yogurt 100 calorie packs in flavors like coffee with dark chocolate chips. Num! Plus a few crepes. When I eventually awoke in the middle of my morning class I was in a peckish mood.

To be honest this wasn't all I had for lunch, I brought along an avocado and apple chips. What? I had a midterm that day and needed a lot of brain food. Yeah!

Wow! Almost done with Year 1!

Pre-fab Grad School Bento

     This is a "chicken parm" grad school bento. I put that in quotation marks because those are chicken nugget things that come pre-cooked and frozen. I put them over whole wheat rotini with a packet of marinara left over from mozzarella sticks. The two little containers are mozzarella and parm. There's a snack sized granola bar on the side. In the background you can see my lovely insulated lunch bag, bought on a whim at Marshall's. I pack lunch every Sunday but only find a few photo worthy and out of that I rarely take time to update.

A very orange December Grad School Bento.

A very orange December Grad School Bento.
Originally uploaded by rbsb1999

The problem with having a blog about the food you eat in grad school is how busy you are with school! I've sat down to a few bento lunches since my last post....but have been so frazzled with classes that I always forget to take a picture. Except this one from back in December. It came out beautifully orange without planning on my part. The pasta and squash were left overs and the tangerines were in the house. Ok, I did pick out the chewy bar with the orange wrapper to match the rest of the food.

Bento for grad school

Grad school bento one
Originally uploaded by rbsb1999

This may not look like much but its the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I'm in school all day Sunday and there isn't much for food either in the cafeteria or surrounding environs. Besides, who wants to pay premium for sub par food?
So now every Saturday night or early Sunday morning I will be packing a bento meal. I even purchased a little wide mouth thermos for when the path to the microwaves gets snowy! But for now it's been cold lunches like the one shown or some ravioli that I trekked to heat up in the student lounge.
I do diligently snap a picture of every bento they just have a tendency of not leaving my phone...