Bento Prep

JC needs to bring Bento lunch a couple of times a week.
Although he doesn't leave house so early, I'm not a morning person and tend to make mistakes when I'm in a hurry, so I like to prepare the day before.

There are vegetable dishes called Joubi-sai, which is a kind of preserved food, can be made in advance and kept for some days.
Here's one of them:

Spinach with Peanut butter Sauce
First, make peanuts sauce. 
Mix 1 TS.(Table Spoon) crunchy peanut butter,
1 ts.(tea spoon) soy-sauce, 
1 ts. Mirin (sweet cooking sake) and a pinch of sugar.

Adjust the saltiness and sweetness to your preference but don't make it too light because you mix this with spinach later. 

Steam spinach, wash and squeeze water out really well, then cut.

Mix spinach and peanut sauce.
Done!

All the measurement is approximate since I don't measure condiments when I cook.

Another one is Burdock marinated in Sweet Vinegar.

First, mix half a cup of vinegar, half a cup of Dashi (Japanese stock), 1 TS. sugar, 1 TS. soy-sauce and a pinch of salt.

When I need to use only little bit of Dashi, I use instant.

Clean burdock and roughly julienne them.

Boil water. Drop 1 TS. of vinegar in it and cook burdock for a couple of minutes.

Drain water and throw burdock while they are still hot into the vinegar mixture.

Marinate over night. Done.

Most of Japanese supermarkets carry burdock, I think.

In the morning, I just cook fried rice (with Takana pickles and egg), saute sausage and cherry tomatoes in salt, pepper and dried herbs.

Fill the empty space with pumpkins from last night and blackberry from backyard.

It seems like that Japanese are known for cute Bento making. 

Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.  

However, I believe that the most important thing is if there is enough nutrition, and I think I did OK with this one. 

By the way, Joubi-sai is not just for Bento.

I like to have one or two of them in the fridge always so I can eat vegetable whenever I want.