Main: Seven-cheese tortellini with a roasted red pepper sauce.

Sides: Cauliflower with mustard-lemon butter and insalata caprese made with heirloom cherry tomatoes.

Fruits/Vegetables: Pineapple chunks, sliced strawberries, and blackberries.

Snacks: Roasted almonds.

Making bentos requires constantly balancing the things that I would like to serve with the things that really need to be eaten up now before they go bad. Speaking of which, I think I’ve been overdoing it with the pineapple. This is one of those problems that you only really get when you do your produce shopping at Costco. Let that be a lesson to me.

I’m also dealing with a surplus of heirloom cherry tomatoes at the moment. I doubt that I can really use them up in bentos before they go bad, so I’m thinking about trying my hand at sun-dried tomatoes. I mean, really, how hard could it be? (Cue laughter and hijinks.)