So this week’s Bento Challenge theme was Chinese New Year.

I gotta say, this one was tough. I had to work in the evening, so I didn’t have much time to cook. I thought about getting takeout at a Chinese restaurant, but decided I really didn’t want to be that obnoxious white person who marched in demanding authentic delicacies on New Year, making it even less likely that the staff would get the day off next year. Then I thought about going down to Chinatown for supplies, but it was deathly cold out and the clock was ticking, so I had to settle for M2M in the East Village, which is more or less on my way home. Unfortunately it mostly carries Japanese and Korean food; not much Chinese food at all.

I could have fudged and said I was making a Lunar New Year bento rather than a specifically Chinese New Year bento, going for a Korean-style lunch instead, but some googling told me that the most quintessential Korean New Year food is Tteokguk, a delicious-looking rice cake soup that unfortunately they didn’t sell at M2M. So I kind of ended up with a bizarre mishmosh of traditional Chinese New Year foods cooked in a Korean style. Gah. Please forgive me, everyone whose traditions I’m mangling. I did my half-assed best.

I finally wound up incorporating:

* Lotus root

* Leafy greens

* Long noodles (and also long pea tendrils, since it seems like long stuff in general is good luck)

* Tangerine

* Dumplings (though apparently these don’t have enough pleats to be properly lucky?)

* Savory balls of congee instead of sweet sesame rice balls, and then some definitely non-traditional chocolate truffles, since sweets in general are supposed to bring good luck.

The pistachios and stir-fried sesame-ginger snow peas with kohlrabi were just left over from last night’s dinner, but I threw them in to round out the box.

I didn’t include any fish, since the traditions around preparing and serving it were too complex for me to wrap my brain around, and my wife explicitly forbade me from including any of the foods that are supposed to be propitious for the birth of many sons, since we’re gonna start trying for a kid this spring and she really wants a daughter.

So, in summary, I’d probably score this lunchbox 6/10 Ugly Americans. Ah, well. At least it’ll be tasty.

Happy year of the goat, everyone!