Just Bento

This is a guest post by Diana, who blogs about her healthy eating ideas at Soap and Chocolate.

Not everyone eats breakfast as well as lunch at the office, but for those of us who begin work at 9am after a whirlwhind of exercise, showering and primping, it’s convenient to be able to pack a bento-style breakfast the night before in order to cut down on the morning rush time. We all want to preserve those precious minutes of sleep before the alarm goes off!   One of my favorite homemade to-go breakfasts is an omelette sandwich and fruit. This can be done with a myriad of mix-ins and spreads, but for the purposes of this post, I’ve gone with a Mexican theme, just to step out of the bento box a bit.   For my omelette sandwiches, I like to use this box from Fit & Fresh (see the same box used for a salad bento -ed). I also have an adorably tiny flower-shaped egg skillet, which I picked up on a visit to my expat parents in Tokyo last year. The egg flower comes out in a perfectly sized ‘patty’ for my bread. However, you can make a conventional one-egg omelette and just fold as necessary to fit into the container and/or bread that you’re using.

Recipe: Breakfast Fritatta or Omelette

  To make the omelette, you will need the following ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp chunky salsa (I like Newman’s Own)
• 1/2 oz (15g) shredded cheese (I used Cabot’s 50% reduced fat cheddar)

Method:

1. In a small bowl, beat together all three ingredients.
2. Spray your skillet with non-stick cooking spray and heat on low if covering and making your egg like a frittata, as I did. Otherwise, heat to medium or medium-high if making a conventional omelette.
3. Pour in the egg mixture and cook into your desired shape/format. You can even scramble, if you prefer, it’s just harder to keep inside a sandwich! My flower skillet has a matching lid, so I simply cover and let cook on low until set through.

Once cooked, remove the omelette from the heat and allow to cool. Now you can assemble your bento. For mine, I lay two slices of low calorie whole wheat bread in the bottom, along with a packet of E-Z Squeeze Guacamole. I found this in the freezer section of my grocery store, and it’s very convenient at 35 calories for a 1-oz packet. It’s also a great source of healthy fat. If this product is unavailable to you, other options are bringing an ounce of any pre-made guacamole or a quarter of a whole avocado, sliced. If you’re really ambitious, you could even make your own guacamole!  

The ice pack rests on top of the bread and guacamole and the two smaller containers fit in the molded grooves on the top side to keep them still. Put your omelette in one and 100g of fruit in the other. For this bento, I chose fresh strawberries. Snap on the top lids and refrigerate. Ready to go whenever you are!

When you’re ready to eat this, just spread the guacamole on your bread and stick your omelette between the slices to make a sandwich. It’s a bonus if there is a microwave available to you in your office/destination so you can reheat the egg for a minute first. I like to warm up the bread for a couple seconds as well.

This bento takes me about 15 minutes to put together and contains 10 grams of fat, 17 grams of protein and 37 grams of carbohydrates, broken down as follows:

• 1 egg, about 74 cal.
• 1 tbsp salsa, 5 cal.
• 1/2 oz light cheese, 35 cal.
• 2 slices light wheat bread, 80 cal.
• 1 oz guacamole, 35 cal.
• 100g strawberries, about 32 cal.

Total calories: 261  

If you enjoy this kind of breakfast, get creative with other mix-ins for the omelette. I love the spinach and feta cheese combination; or pair a touch of marinara with parmesan. For the spinach-feta omelette, I would bring a tablespoon of hummus to spread on my bread, and for the marinara-parmesan omelette I would bring a teaspoon or two of pesto or other olive oil-based spread.   I hope you have a chance to try the breakfast bento! It’s a real time-saver for me, and one less thing to think about in the morning, as I prepare both my breakfast and lunch bentos the night prior. At any rate, it beats the heck out of an Egg McMuffin nutrition-wise. Happy bento-ing!

  Diana, Soap and Chocolate