hapa bento

The paperwhites that I was trying to force… didn’t take.  The bulb did it’s best with a tiny green shoot that grew a bit  each day but never arrived at it’s full potential.   Only a couple of stubby stalks with sad little white petals at the tips.   Poor little  narcissus…done and gone before Christmas.   I’m going to try again with another bulb, maybe a different species will better for our dark and gloomy climate.   In the meantime here’s a small tribute to that brave little plant that sat on my kitchen counter for a brief couple weeks.

Today’s featured bento box is filled with chicken pancit and char siu fried rice - two items from today’s  holiday party at Saba Man’s office.  I added an egg omelette  to even out the carbs to protein ratio and decorated the top of the omelette  with a bouquet of paperwhites!  Okay… if you stand back a bit and squint your eyes AND use some imagination…it kinda sorta looks like flowers.   The stems are chives and blossoms are rice grains highlighted with black sesame seeds.   Yes-yes, I know that paperwhites usually don’t have black spots but the interpretation needed some contrast.  It’s a stretch.   I also should of used fresh white rice for the petals instead of pinching from the leftovers.  Egg whites would of  worked too.   The chives and rice were added to the eggs before flipping.  When inverted back onto the fried rice I added more rice and the sesame seeds for a kind of 3-D effect.  Again, you’ll have do more squinting. 

Anyhow,  the omelette core is  very plain with just mirin and sesame oil.  Meant just as a blanket for the mound of leftover fried rice.  The small piece of char siu was assigned as garnish for the pancit.  Pancit is a Filipino noodle dish that usually contains chicken or pork, however by the end of the party, the chunkier bits of meat had been picked away leaving a pan of plain, but savory noodles.  What was Saba Man to do but bring some home for  me to refresh! And with  a bit of this, a little of that and  off it goes… back to work, only this time in a bento box!