Monbento Square #39 (Double Tier)

 

Here's a classic post on Food for Dissertating: A bento that reimagines my leftovers! And also gets inventive with what happens to be in the fridge, because I am refusing to go to the grocery store until the end of the week.

So here we have a salad made of romaine, chopped apple, clementine segments, and slivered almonds with a homemade creamy poppyseed dressing, a slice of buttered (margarined?) Ezekiel toast, and some of my leftover Italian wedding soup that had soaked up the broth so that it was more of a casserole, which I topped with Violife Parmesan.

If you haven't had a salad that focuses on the sweet stuff but still has lettuce in it, I highly recommend you try it! Romaine is neutral enough not to compete with the apples and clementine segments but adds a nice textural contrast. The salad dressing was homemade, based loosely on a non-vegan version (and scaled way down). I followed the general outlines of the Barefeet in the Kitchen recipe, and saved time in the morning by making it the night before. It's a nice complement to a sweet salad like this one.

Although I didn't really get my full lunch break that day because of having too many meetings, I did manage to eat this in scattered snacks when I could steal away outdoors, and I finished it off by evening. I've been really overextended and I'm trying to find a way to solve that problem, but until then, I am still doing my best to take care of me. Sometimes it works!