My first homemade bento box lunch!

A while back, I was cruising the internet and I ended up looking at Makiko Itoh's Just Bento blog.  My sweetie and I had been talking about trying to make some healthier meals, and I was very inspired by the recipes and meals that she presented.  Yesterday I went to Uwajimaya Bellevue again, and I found some really cute bento boxes on sale--this one was only $9.00!  I ended getting us two boxes each for less than $50.  Last night I made some Japanese rice (which was the best rice I ever made thanks to Itoh-san's easy to understand recipe) and today I put together our first bento lunches!

I made matching hers-and-hers lunches (her bento box is the same style but green); on the left is a bed of rice with some katsuo furikake, and then a good helping of leftover baked salmon from last night's dinner.  I tried to cut out little hearts from some teriyaki nori strips for decoration, and then I just crumbled the rest of it up for topping.  On the right is some sweet cherry tomatoes, cheese cubes, broccoli, and grapes.

I spent about a half-hour this morning putting everything together, but it was a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to doing more of them soon!