Shopping centre picnic

With a baby it can be difficult to get out to restaurants as many people know.  As my husband had taken some time off, we decided to go shopping, and to combine it with some nice food.  My daughter is lovely, but not really known for her patience, so we decided we would make a picnic and take it with us to eat in the food hall.

We decided to make bento boxes, so that it could be filling, and was suitable to be eaten cold.

The red box is mine, and the blue box is Barts'.

In my boxes, I had -

• Sushi rice with wasabi sesame seeds and pickled ginger
• Tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette)
• Stir-fried beansprouts with some spring onion

Barts box had -

• Sushi rice with wasabi sesame seeds and a pickled plum
• Broccoli in oyster sauce
• Instant pickled cucumber
• Tamagoyaki

The tamagoyaki and instant pickled cucumber are recipes from a book called the Just Bento cookbook.  The sushi rice was cooked according to the instructions, with the sushi vinegar made according to the instructions I found on a packet of nori.

For UK based bento fans - the cookbook mentioned above is currently available in Waterstones to buy.