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What’s for lunch – Bento!

Avocado Egg Salad, berries, cherry tomatoes, carrot, celery, and crusty baguette.

You can create a nutrient rich, balanced and portion-controlled meal in these specially divided containers. Long a Japanese tradition, a bento box traditionally contains rice or noodles, fish or meat, with pickled and cooked vegetables.

The boxes are easy to make ahead and can be eaten on the go. When packing your box, focus on the flavors you enjoy.

4 tips to packing bento

Vary textures

Think hard, soft, crispy, crunchy

Eat seasonally

Fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables retain more nutrients. Naturally ripened and harvested at the right time, they pack more flavor and nutrition.

A feast for your eyes

Vary the colors of ingredients. Diversity of colors leads the eye around, adding to anticipation of your meal.

Keep it simple

Slicing, dicing, julienning, or any of other cutting techniques affect flavor. Surface area can affect the flavor of vegetables and fruit. Avocado Egg Salad recipe can be found here.

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The search for desert blooms

Spring is overtaking Central Oregon. Two events mark its start, the opening of the Oregon fishing season and arrival of desert blooms. Fishing opens the next month. So this week we take to the roads in search of native fauna. Some research pointed out two really good locations to find desert blooms. We’re regular walkers at the closest location, Bad Land’s Wilderness just east of Bend, but with such a gorgeous spring day we opted for a trip much farther north.

Spring Basin Wilderness along the John Day River is highlighted as an excellent place to find wildflowers. East along Hwy 218, through Antelope at Clarno Road, you head south for three miles on a hard packed dirt road.

The BLM’s wilderness is nearly 7,000 acres with a network of rustic trails on hills covered in sage, native bunchgrasses and juniper.

 

The thing about desert flowers is they’re not all that easy to spot, it’s not like those showy blue stocks of Lupin. These tiny blossoms are tucked away among the sage and rock. making it more of a treasure hunt.

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Water Management & First Foods

On those rare occasions when faced with a rainy day the High Desert Museum is a great destination. Critters to check on and the quarterly installation to take in. We’re becoming big fans of this Central Oregon cultural center.

The museum’s curated projects go beyond the boundaries of their exhibit space set on 135 acres south of Bend. One of these events is a lecture series held at McMenamins Old St. Francis School.

The Natural History Pub Series presents lectures on a wide range of topics including: animal behavior, natural resource restoration, and geological activity…all set in a very unclassroom–like setting.

This past week we learned about “First Foods Management with a River Vision.” Eric Quaempts, Director of Natural Resources for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, spoke about a unique approach to water management and natural resource development. His department makes decisions based on the concept of water being a First Food; water, fish, game, roots and berries.

As frequent stream visitors, his detailed presentation on Umatilla River restoration projects was particularly interesting. The basic idea that a riparian is the river resonated with us.

Quaempts management plan doesn’t exclude or attempt to minimize man from the natural resource equation. Rather it places us right in the middle of managing our environment, which now that he says it makes perfect sense.

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Avocado Egg Salad

If you think that avocados are just something to mash-up and dip corn chips into, here’s some news for you, and we’re not talking that ‘millennial ‘ toast fad either.

Not to say either of those uses are bad, but maybe it is time to rethink this super food’s role in your pantry. Yes, super food.

In that dark green shell the “alligator pear” holds 20 different vitamins and minerals, a 100 gram serving has; 150 calories, 15 grams of healthy fats and only 2 ‘net’ grams of carbohydrates … no sodium or cholesterol. See… super food!

We came across a really great way to fix this fruit. Make an egg salad. You can skip the mayo and get a rich creamy egg salad that is perfect for a sandwich or scooping. Though we’d recommend that you use celery sticks, or carrot disks, rather than corn chips.

We have also started to slice it thin, layer it on a piece of toast, add some fresh ground pepper, and then put an over easy egg on top for a great breakfast treat.

Sure you can keep mashing up that dip because you are still getting superfood advantage, but maybe that jar of processed cheese stuff isn’t the best pairing.

Print Recipe

Avocado-egg salad

Servings: 2 people
Calories: 150kcal

Ingredients

  • 1/2 medium avocado diced
  • 2 hard cooked eggs diced
  • ¼ cup celery chopped
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon fresh chives minced
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 3 turns fresh ground pepper

Instructions

  • Dice avocado, egg and celery to about the same ⅛ inch size pieces and place in small bowl
  • Add lemon juice, chives, salt and pepper, then mix to combine 
  • This can be spread on bread, toast or scooped up with slices of fresh veggies like carrot, celery, zucchini or cucumber.
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A Spring thaw

Winter has retreated and spring’s thaw turns pasture land around the Sunriver Nature Center into ponds to contain the snow melt. Our walking trails are about the only thing still above the water level right now.

There are an abundance of birds and water fowl taking advantage of the expanded flood plain. Ducks, mostly mallard pairs, and of course flocks of Canada geese. To the year round residents there is a  marked increase in song birds, particularly robins and red-winged black birds. The black birds are aggressively staking claim to territory with red flashes from their shoulders and loud calls. There are also small birds that flit too fast for easy identification, but are adding their voices to the choir.

 

The willow groves offering cover for all this increased bird activity are starting to bud. Marsh grasses and cattail that poked brown stalks out of the snow banks show tinges of green and seem to be standing more upright in response to the April sun.

Each day’s visit presents new treasures to observe and we’ve taken to adding binoculars to the camera gear packed for our walks these blustery spring days.