A bento bent

The other day I stopped by Marshall's because my friend Samantha at work did this column about how everything is on sale. I bought shoes and smoked paprika and a bento box.

A bento box! I could not stop talking about it. At work I talked about it so much that my friend Susan Martin wrote a column about me, in today's paper. The column is about packing lunches. I am the friend with the bento box!

A bento box is a fancy kind of lunch box so you can partition your foods prettily. Mine is nothing really fancy but it is pretty and it was $5. When I peeled off the sticker I saw that before that it had been marked down to $7.50. I would not have paid $7.50 for it. But $5, I could do.

Yesterday I packed it for lunch. I made this salad out of Food and Wine that involved roasting this asparagus and carrots in the early morning while I was working on my Pennario project. I put them in two partitions and in another I put a couple of hard-boiled eggs, as Food and Wine prescribed. And in the fourth section I put a slice of bread I had made. In the middle where there is this dip container I put this yogurt dip I whipped up.

It looked pretty but when I got to work I looked at it askance.

This was a lot of food!

Bento boxes are supposed to be good for portion control. But what if they are bigger portions than you usually eat? What if you actually wind up eating more?

Well, I added up the calories and it really only about 450. You have to eat something, you know? Plus if you eat too little that is a mistake, because when someone comes around passing out cupcakes you are powerless.

Anyway. Today was easier because I began planning last night, roasting more asparagus, which was on sale at Price Rite, and making baba ganoush (eggplant was also cheap at Price Rite). I made pita breads too. That was an adventure! And fun. And this morning I threw together a chickpea and cauliflower curry.

So voila, the work of art you see up above. You call it leftovers, I call it a Mediterranean bento! Let us open the lid and take a closer look.

Ahhhhh.

Bon appetit!