Main: Quesadillas made with caramelized onions and serrano peppers, salsa, and sour cream.

Sides: Black beans and lemon-roasted green beans with almonds.

Fruits/Vegetables: Kiwi fruit and apple slices.

Snack: Blueberry yogurt.

Quesadillas are one of my favorite go-to foods for packing quick bentos. They lose some of their crispness after being packed in a bento, but retain 100% of their deliciousness. Besides, the two people for whom I make bentos both have access to toaster ovens, which I am told are excellent devices for acquiring extra crispness to replace that which has been lost. (Okay, I’ll stop. I get loopy when I get too little sleep)

The green beans are the real stars of this bento. I based them off of this recipe, by which I mean that I read the recipe and then completely disregarded everything it had to say on the subject of quantities. I just grabbed a handful of green beans, split a quarter of an onion into three wedges, tossed the lot with a bit of olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, and marjoram, and shoved it into the toaster oven to bake at 450°F for about 20 minutes. When they were done, I added some lemon juice, some lemon zest, some sliced almonds, and called it done. Even with such little care in the preparation, these turned out to be the best green beans I’ve ever tried, and I say that as a passionate life-long hater of green beans. (You read that right. I hate green beans but I liked these ones.)

The blueberry yogurt is made the same way I make all of my fruit yogurts. I mince up the fruit, drop some into the bottom of the container, sprinkle in the sugar, tap firmly to settle the contents,  spoon greek yogurt on top, and add some garnish. By the time the guys get to it at lunchtime, the sugar has done a pretty good job of macerating the fruit, and a quick stir will produce a delicious not-too-sweet yogurt.