The kids must just love getting such cool lunches. I'd be jealous of I was a classmate!

Lunch t'day was tamagoyaki, rice, kimchi and a tofu burger. I've had so much energy today for some reason. Just bouncing off the walls. Literally! Dancing in the house. I suppose I outta put that to good use and actually clean some! HUOH!

Kristel's bento, snack cucumber, babybel, egg, laughing cow cheese, mini sushis, nuts, mini chocobar and shaped onigiri.

Judy's bento, the same as Kristel's.



My bento consists of snack cucumber, 2 eggs, mini sushi, onigiri with umeboshi, babybel and a laughing cow cheese and last but not least, ingredients for a bowl of miso soup, wakame seaweed, tofu, and spring onions. I found this awesome package of premade miso soup stuff so i'm gonna buy more, it makes it easy for me to enjoy one of my favourite soups.


Kees' bento has mostly the same as mine, minus the soup. He has no way to make soup, so I gave him nuts and cranberries and sweet red peppers instead.

Three months? have we really been doing this that long?
My bentos started repeating long ago, and now that my work schedule will be slowing down a bit i can get back to the real important things in life.

I made sushi tuesday evening for dinner, and it turned out good, even if it was just the cucumber avocado version.

Oh and the fake crab stuff can be frozen, i wish i had seen that on the package BEFORE it went bad.

Off to make Kees his lunch for tomorrow.
I even made TINY bento sized sushi, using only half a sheet of nori. they were CUTE, almost like the ones from the sushi place.

No more pictures from me unless the bento is exceptional. I've made enough different meals that they are beginning to repeat now and that's just boring. I have done VERY well sticking to my working out and more responsible eating. Since the promise was made to work out at least 5x a week for 15mins+ in March, I have not missed a single week and my workouts are always 30+ minutes. I have been wearing my extreme low-rise 'goal pants' comfortably outside the house for a month now and my pants size is a steady 36 (USA size 6) so long as it isn't a 36 skinny-fit pants. I hold the bulk of my fat in my thighs and lower legs, so I'd still like to trim up quite a lot there. I have cankles, it's so very sad.

All in all, bentos and exercise have been quite a success for me. I'm far more fit and much more happy in general.

Here's to the next 3 months on plan!

Potato salad and vegetarian sausage with a bowl of special K.

There was no bento Sunday because we went to Metropolis, and nothing photogenic Saturday because I had just packed up leftover BBQ hamburgers for our 60km bikeride. We got soaked to the bone on that ride, but it was still fun. Good practice for getting drenched camping soon.

South Central above and below is one of the typical festival fellas, wearing a wizard hat and holding Kermit.

Mashed potatos and 3x ikea kottbullar with lingonberry sauce. Some roggebrood and tahina. Cheese and dried sweet potato.

Yesterday was mini pizza and spinich wraps.

And it wouldn't be 4th of July without a BBQ and boom sticks :)

Somen & tamagoyaki plus spinach wraps! Simple is nice. I'm all bloat right now and wish mother nature would just go ahead and visit! My butt is still sore as heck too!

We have Chinese tokos, Indian tokos, Turkish tokos... I suppose IKEA is the Swedish toko! The only really special thing in the pic is the cloudberry vinegar seen in the middle. Wonder how it tastes!

Hubby's bento consists of a ontbijtspek sandwich, a babybel, fruit salad left over from last night, and tomato, cucumber, olive and feta cheese salad left over from last night, and two little pieces of watermelon.


Judy's bento consists of a snack cucumber, piece of watermelon, fruit salad, a piet pirate hagelslag sandwich, a babybel and a muesli bar.



Kristel's bento consists of K3 hagelslag sandwich, babybel, snack cucumber, fruit salade, tomato, cucumber, olive and feta cheese salad, and i had to slice her piece of watermelon in half to get it to fit in the bento and she has a muesli bar as well.



My bento for today consists of fruit salad, greek salad, 2 pumpkin seed wasa crackers, 2 laughing cow cheese wedges and a babybel.

Rice & Kimchi, Carrots & Hummus to dip. This one's goin on the road with me, because I'm going to bike with Mark to work this morning. I'll hit IKEA then eat my faboo little bento outdoors!

But gah, my ass is so sore today. I decided to actually get a workout dvd because most of the things I attempt aren't cardio based, and I wanted to try and get my heart rate up and have some idea of doing it correctly. Well, I did the level 1 workout on the dvd and thought I was already going to die. My posterier hates me now.

Sarah, it's great to see you posting again :)

Well I had to work again this morning, RUSH home to get the kids for lunch.
I made myself one sandwich.
Thats two pieces of dark volkoren meergranen bread with lowfat cream cheese and my bad bit, fruithagelslag. I've had one glass of alpro soya choco.

I need to take my bike to the bike shop, and I can't miss my bike. I have to work this evening. I called the bike shop and she told me the earliest i could get it back was wednesday.
since i can't miss my bike for 2 days... that's not gonna work for me.

I have to change my post. I made myself a second sandwich with the same stuff on it. I was hungrier than I thought, after only eating my banana and nectarine this morning. This evening is barbecue again. I'm making a nice fruit salad, regular lettuce salad and we have huzarensalads in little serving size containers. Chicken sate, and a few other mixed meats, and meergranen stokbrood.

Whee! I'm exhausted now... just took my bike to the bike guy, he's being an angel and fixing it for me by 5:30 this evening. WHEE! I need a pin that says I heart Elvano!

Well, it'd be bento sized if I put it in the box. Two tuna wraps! I like the smaller sized durum wraps I found at the toko, they're extra mjam! There's no mayo or anything bad in this aside from the wrap itself as being just plain "white bread". I'll work it off later today ;P

Yesterday at the beach was wonderful. Broke my old record by 1km, to make a total of 80!

Bento for biking for real! Saturday we only managed 20km to a camping shop and back where we proceeded to spend way too much on two sets of new bike bags for the cross-country trip next month. Gah, why is camping crap so expensive? They're awesome bags though!

But on to the bento, which will be taken on the 79km trip tomorrow to Rockanje beach. Adzuki beans, soba noodles and dipping sauce, tamagoyaki, edamame, inarizushi, properly fermented cabbage kimchi, and koala cookies!

I so adore icanhascheezburger.com.

Bentos made for biking, but damnit it's raining.

Lots of Greek/Turkish treats. Couscous with garlic sausage. A pickled aubergine wrapped in wine leaves. Hummus and yoghurt with walnuts and honey. And two little odd foreign cookies, I have no idea how they taste yet :P

...and here are our parrots! Pictures taken by yours truly of the Ring-necked Parakeets gobbling up the pears in our own tiny back yard.

I had itchy feet today, and walked all the way to Spaland and back. A round trip of about 6km. Not bad for these little piggies. Yay for my new tevas for being so uber comfy.

Along the way, lo and behold I found a turkish megatoko. OoOoOo goodies!

A proper japanese food stuffed bento again. Inarizushi boats with edamame and gyoza on a bed of lettuce. I know the sauce is for soba noodles, but I like it on gyoza, oki!?

And a picture of my sugar snap peas and broad beans.

And my tomatoes, both large and cherry!

Sarah, I miss you from the blog. I miss your posts and your determination. I know you'll get the drive back soon when life calms down and you find your zen. Losing weight long-term is hard. No matter what anyone says, it's one of the hardest things a person ever does. You can and will do this! Find peace, begin anew. I'll be here waiting of your return! *miss you! hugs*

Ahh, back to bento! A ring of cherries, cheese and crackers, with a main course of linzen, chickpeas, onions, tomatoes and an egg. Snack later will probably be a tomato and a banana.

And a strange visitor for the past week orso we've had these guys in our pear tree gobbling up the fruit. They're very quick so I haven't managed to get my own pic of them yet, but here's a good example. They're rose-ringed parakeets and they like our tree! Very noisy little buggers but they make the cutest happy parrot sounds. Normally we hear them well before spotting one in the tree because they camouflage so well.

I actually did make a bento for today, but I've woken up with fugly-tummy and a pressure headache. Due to that, I passed on breakfast and even coffee was extreme meh and I had half a cup instead of the normal two. The bento is in the fridge for tomorrow and I did have some oatmeal in the hopes of settling my bad body juju. I'm also working on my 2nd liter of water already because I feel so so so thirsty. I think I'll do my workout early because normally I do feel better after it.

Fingers crossed to feel better enough for bentos tomorrow :)

Weird that your eel tasted rubbery, Sarah. Mebbe it's just a LOT better from a sushi place fresh :)

I prodded the blog a little adding a few of my fav health/bento links. Please add more!

UPDATE: Had a 2nd cup of oatmeal after mowing the lawn. I feel much better now aside from the pressure headache. You know when the weather is on the border of a storm front, but not in it? Aagh! Head Asplode.

I ate one of each piece of the sushi plate. I surprisingly preferred the shrimp one the most of the four different ones, and the fake crab and the cucumber rolls were good as expected.
My homemade tomagoyaki is better that the one from the plate, and I know I really don't care for smoke salmon now. And eel is a bit rubbery. I'm sure Kees will love it tomorrow in his lunch.

I cheated today...
I wanted sushi, but because i've now worked 9 days straight without a day off...
I bought some from the albert heijn. I'm gonna try at least one piece of each kind and put the rest in kees' box for lunch tomorrow.

It looks sooo odd... specially the eel bit...

its all smoked stuff i know, but i'm still leary of it....

Homemade roti complete with a roti wrap scored at the toko. The wraps are EVIL caloriewise (210 each), but damn tasty. Huoh! The bulk of the roti is made of potato and tomatoes but this is still a high calorie bento, that's for sure. I'll work it off cleaning today, no worries.

Pre-workout snack at 4pm will be some of the Adzuki beans which are boiling on the stove right now.

And here's a shot of a handy IKEA score. magnetic discs which are popped onto the fridge holding the most often used bento doodads.

Hummus, crackers, cherries, cheese, KOALAS, banana, tomato and a bowl of somen noodles with paprika and some kimchi sauce.

Weigh in was a miricle. Gravity must be low today. 59 kg.

Homemade huizaren salad, cherries, a babybel and a pack of japanese crackers.

No bento for Saturday because I went to IBM with mark and ate lunch with his colleagues in their canteen. I ate well, balanced and in bento size though. The diet in general has been going great again until we came home to watch the game and I devoured about 25kg of Carl's homemade chocolate mousse. It happens! Damn that was good mousse. I suppose the two hours biking and 4-5 hours of citywalking in Delft surely made up for a little of that splurge.

On the flip happy side, I bought new pants yesterday and they are a size smaller than I had been wearing normally and two sizes smaller than my pants last bought before the dieting began. The bento boxes and working out daily HAVE made a difference, even when the scale hardly moves at all.

Hummus and crackers, cherries and blueberries, and a banana and a tomato for later in the day. I did well yesterday, here's cheers to doing well today and tomorrow!

Fruit, a wrap stuffed with chicken, lettuce, chickpeas and corn and the last of my Pocky!

In my fruit bowl are three little blueberries from our garden!

Each day at around 3-4pm I've been having a snack outside my bento box for the past two weeks. I haven't been hungry, I just wanted a snack and so I ate it. It's been silly of me. From today on I'm going to get back on plan and rather than have an outside snack I'm going to just not finish my bento, and save a small part each day till 3-4pm, where I'll proceed to scarf it down. Hopefully this will put me back on track to losing a little weight each week! I definitely wasn't over eating before, but if I want to lose those last few kilos, there has to be a slight calorie deficit and snacking outside the box isn't helping that!

Non bento, but very asian still! I bought a single pack of kimchi ramen noodles, because I love kimchi and I loved pot noodles in college. I made sure to only buy one, because this is the kinda dangerous thing I could eat for days... months... but having it just once was so nice! They're SO HOT! Gah! My head was on fire! But they were so good. I know ramen is incredibly unhealthy, but it's a very rare day I eat this stuff (I think the last time was over a year ago), and so it was a really nice treat. I think I might make kimchi based normal noodles (Not deep fried, like ramen is) for bentos later, which will be a fairly healthy alternative.

As a side note, Mister Merel had to be personally evicted yesterday. :P

All three together, this morning's quick toss lunches together. Man i hate feeling sick... my allergies are acting up and I think I've gotten a sinus infection.



My lunch consists of pumpkin seed wasa crackers, laughing cow cheese wedges, babybel cheese, grapes, cherries and cherry tomatoes.


Judy's consists of grapes, cherries, snack cucumber, laughing cow cheese wedge, krentenbol and a babybel cheese.

Kristel's is the same as Judy's but she also has some cherry tomatoes.

Kees' bento for today was: 1 sandwich with breakfast bacon, 1/2 white eggcookie, cherries, grapes, snack cucumber, cherry tomatoes and a babybel cheese.



Judy's was grapes, cherries, cheese, 1/2 eggcookie, 1/2 raisin roll, 1 snack cucumber



Kristel's was 1/2 raisin roll, 1/2 eggcookie, grapes, cherries, babybel cheese, snack cucumber and cherry tomatoes.



Mine: 1/2 witte eirenkoek, cherry tomatoes, snack cucumber, babybel cheese, grapes and cherries.

For today, some tonkatsu, rice, roggebrood, tahina, sausage and a cheese seen above.

And for tomorrow rice, raisins, mandarin and the Tsubu-an I made this morning.
Sorry the pics are so dark, it's cloudy! The bean stuff is red!