Salmon and Tempura Bento

Last week I decided to bust out this Japanese cookbook (Authentic Recipes from Japan) that I had bought a while back at the UH Bookstore because I had bought stuff to make tempura, but forgot to buy a box of tempura mix. I was right in assuming that a tempura recipe would be in it, but for some reason, it turned out terrible. I followed the instructions precisely and it was way too watery, so I ended up dumping in flour until it thickened up enough to what I was used to seeing. The recipe had called only for iced water, cornstarch, and an egg yolk. My first few had almost no batter on them.

As you can see, it eventually worked out after I added the flour. This bento actually took me a whopping 3 minutes to pack, though that wasn’t fast enough for me to get Baby Girl to school at a time her teacher desired. All this time I had thought that as long as I got her there by the late bell, there’d be no tardy and we were all good. Turns out though, Baby Girl moves like a slug at school as well as at home, so she’d been lagging the class behind every morning, which her teacher told me when she called to ask me to get her to school by the first bell.

A scheduled printed out and a reward (1 silly bandz) established seems to have miraculously fixed things. I also bought her a new toothpaste that she likes and now she’s actually looking forward to brushing her teeth as opposed to lying about whether she did or not.

This bento actually has leftovers from two days, as I’d made pan fried salmon for dinner on a different day. So… to pack this in those three minutes, I crammed the rice in, sliced the salmon and placed it on top. Next, I laid in the tempura, cutting the shrimp one and putting the end piece underneath. Then I jammed the cucumber pickles, tomato, and ume in and snapped a quick shot. I took some saved soy sauce packets on the side.