Valentine's American-Style Bento Box

The main thing I wanted to give Duck for Valentine's Day was a good, filling lunch.  We didn't want to get too much sugary, fattening stuff, so we agreed to try and be healthy.  So I tossed around a couple ideas in my head of a good, portable lunch.  At first, I was gung-ho on making mini-pizzas.  I could make them heart shaped, and cut out all of the toppings in hearts shapes.  I went to bed on the Tuesday before Valentine's all set to hit the grocery store on Wednesday morning and grab all the ingredients.  When I woke up the next morning, all thoughts of pizza had fled, and I realized that I was going to make Duck a meatloaf!  We both enjoy meatloaf, and all I could think of was how cute Japanese bento boxes are, and that I wanted to do that. Easy, portable, and cute.

I know it's not quite as pretty as a real bento box, but I really liked it.  Simple, not too cutesy for a guy to take to work and yummy AND healthy!  As per usual, I started looking up recipes on Pinterest and found this one by the Gracious Pantry. It's called "Clean Eating Slow Cooker Meatloaf."  How could I pass that up? Not only healthy, but in the slow cooker?  I loved the fact that I could mix up the ingredients and not worry about it for eight or so hours.

Ingredients:

- 3 lb. lean ground turkey

- 1 cup whole wheat panko bread crumbs (I used regular because that's all I could find)

- 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese

- 1 tsp poultry seasoning

- 1 tbsp onion powder

- 1 tbsp garlic powder (I thought I had these powders, but I didn't, so I ended up using a heaping tbsp of minced garlic)

- 2 medium carrots, grated

- Salt to taste

I started out dumping in everything but the carrots into a mixing bowl, since I needed to smoosh them all together. 

I grated the carrots directly into the bowl and mixed everything together with my hands (I washed them before and after so that I could take the picture for you).

Next, the recipe said to lightly mist the inside of the crockpot with olive oil, which was pretty easy, because my lovely friend Amy gave me a Misto.

Then I molded the blob into a loaf shape (remembering after the picture was taken to leave a half inch gap between the loaf and the side walls to prevent burning).  Then I put on the lid, and set on low for eight hours.

While the meatloaf was cooking, I used our handy-dandy rice cooker and made up a batch of brown rice to accompany the meatloaf.  Both Duck and I enjoy rice, and bento boxes always seem to include rice in some way, so it was nice to add some to the meal, so it wasn't just meatloaf.

So the first thing to go into the bowl was a heart shaped mound of rice. Then I stuck it in the fridge to wait for the meatloaf to complete.

Once the meatloaf was done, I cut it into eighteen slices (because the original recipe calls for it, and it makes it easy to know how many calories are in it).  I grabbed my heart shaped cookie cutters and the biggest slices, and cut out heart pieces to go in with the rice.  

I was excited by how it turned out.  I packaged it all up inside Duck's lunch box, with his two other treats, so all he had to do was grab his lunch box from the fridge and go.  I may have also slipped in two little cars for him to play with at his desk.  The end result was:

I think it turned out pretty good, and Duck said he loved it.  Now I am going to have to top it next year :)

p.s.

This was the card I included with his lunch:

Inspired by the Sweet Perversion Etsy Shop.