Bento-ing can be contrary to my current frugal goal of tightening up my food budget.\u00c2\u00a0 It could be very wasteful.\u00c2\u00a0 I cut away a lot of bread to fit sandwiches to the box,\u00c2\u00a0 Fruit and veggie shapes leave a lot behind, cheese buses and sonics leave tons of scraps, and so on.\u00c2\u00a0 What do you do with all the leftovers from decorating bentos?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Unless I know I can dice them and use them in another meal that day, stock-suitable vegetables (carrots, zucchini, celery, etc), go into a gallon bag in the freezer along with other cooking scraps (parts of onions, celery tops, etc) to make stock.\u00c2\u00a0 Since I’m planning on roasting a chicken a week for the next month, I’ll have plenty of carcass for making stock.<\/p>\n
2. Cheese bits are saved in a baggie.\u00c2\u00a0 I sprinkle them on my taco soup lunches or use them to make grilled cheese sandwiches.\u00c2\u00a0 They can be tossed into scrambled eggs or omelets. \u00c2\u00a0I also use them in savory meat and cheese corn muffins.<\/p>\n
3. Meat bits go in those same corn muffins and egg dishes, or tucked into a sandwich if he has one that day.<\/p>\n
4. I’ve been bad about bread, but I’ve started\u00c2\u00a0to save the crusts and extra bits.\u00c2\u00a0 If I collect bread scraps a few days, then whiz ’em\u00c2\u00a0in the food pro, I can use those homemade breadcrumbs for meatballs (one of the few non lunchmeat proteins I can count on the kidlet to eat) or breading cutlets for dinner.<\/p>\n
5. Usually the fruit scraps\u00c2\u00a0get eaten right away by me or the kidlet.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose you could save them and make a fruit salad, but I’m happy to let the kiddo gobble them up with breakfast for a little more nutrtion.<\/p>\n
6. I don’t save nori bits.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t use much of it; he doesn’t actually LIKE it, and peels it off anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Just sometimes you just have to have a little black!\u00c2\u00a0 No one here (including me) likes seaweed in any form.\u00c2\u00a0 Truthfully, opening the bag I have the nori stored in to pull out a little bit to use makes me want to gag with that sudden fishy sea aroma that assaults my senses.\u00c2\u00a0 So, bits left after punching out eyes or whatnot just plain get trashed, with no apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bento-ing can be contrary to my current frugal goal of tightening up my food budget.\u00c2\u00a0 It could be very wasteful.\u00c2\u00a0 I cut away a lot of bread to fit sandwiches to the box,\u00c2\u00a0 Fruit and veggie shapes leave a lot behind, cheese buses and sonics leave tons of scraps, and so on.\u00c2\u00a0 What do you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcgirl.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}