My Lunch Can Beat Up Your Lunch!

Lunch Box 648: Let Me Eat Cake

2009-05-28T14:08:59Z

It's been a while since I made salmon saka-mushi. It still is, as I didn't have salmon, but the tilapia I substituted tastes just fine. Basically, this is fish and mushrooms and spring onions and carrots and snow peas, all steamed together in a tinfoil package until they're nice and juicy. Up above it I have avocado maki and, joy of joys, baked purple sweet potato. However, the market only had these skinny little things. "They're taking the babies!" I thought when I saw them. But I still got a few because I've been suffering from purple potato withdrawal.

On the other side I have a mandarin orange, strawberries, a few cherries, and a dried persimmon, which is more or less a persimmon that's been raisined, but instead of wrinkling up it is squashed into a flat ring. And I have a slice of pound cake made from a recipe my sister gave me. It's awesome, and easy to make if you have an electric mixer. If, like me, you don't, your arm will get a workout.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 647: Polyglot lunch

2009-05-21T14:56:21Z

Some months ago my coworker Maria brought a bunch of mantecados - Spanish cookies - back from her visit to her hometown. They were delicious and shortbready and almondy and lemony and created an amazing amount of crumbs. I vowed to try to make them myself. I wasn't happy with the recipes I found on the web; most left out the lemon and almonds, and the one I tried was messed up, the proportions wrong, so I ended up with a swamp on a cookie sheet. After that I backward-engineered it based on Scotch shortbread, and Maria gave it a thumbs-up, so I packed it in my bento and posted the recipe to my site so everyone can make some. It's really easy - if you can chop nuts and zest a lemon you're good to go.

So! Here we have free-form maki - which is sushi with whatever I have handy, in this case shiitake, cucumber, crab stick, and smoked salmon - stir-fried vegetables, light-fried plantains, and mantecados.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

646: The Naked Lunch

2009-05-20T17:58:38Z

Sometimes I have leftovers before I even finish cooking. That is the source of my "inspiration" for today's naked gyoza. I ran out of wrappers before I ran out of filling, so I meatballed the rest and fried them up. Since gyoza wrappers are noodly I served these over udon noodles. On the other side I have miscellaneous stir-fried vegetables with some tonkatsu sauce (which also seasoned the noodles), simmered shiitake mushrooms, and light-fried plantains.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 645: Patchwork Lunch

2009-05-14T18:33:21Z

Since the beginning I've avoided making character lunches. Not because I disdain them in principle, but because I simply have no inclination to cut Pikachus out of cheese. However, a book I just finished gave me an idea... and now you see another reason I don't make character lunches: I'm not very good at it!

So, anyway, here's some chirashi-zushi, strawberries, mango, and lychees. For those interested, the image on the right (and you get 5 points if you recognize her) is made out of egg, smoked salmon, cucumber, simmered shiitake mushrooms, crab sticks, and ume koume, with soba noodles for hair. On the right, above the fruit, I have more of the aforementioned toppings to add to the sushi.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 644: I'm not dead yet.

2009-05-08T19:00:05Z

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. This is due to 1) my vacation, which was my birthday present to myself, and 2) being overloaded in real life and not having much energy for cooking. I've been packing bento lunches, but they haven't been interesting enough to blog about. I'm working on some new stuff that ought to be worth posting, though.

Anyway! Here I have a boiled egg - wow, I'm starting right back in with the fancy cookin', ain't I? - simmered shiitake mushrooms, baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed broccoli, and a banana bread muffin. By the way, I made a dozen of these things and brought the other 10 in to the office. (Had to test one beforehand to make sure it wasn't poisonous. You know how it is.) It's gratifying when goodies disappear as fast as these did.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 643: You can get anything you want at Dot's Diner

2009-04-14T17:40:19Z

Sometimes I have a theme to my lunches. It may be an image, it may be a color or a type of food. Today it's a shape. Seems everything I have today is round, so it looks like Little Dot packed my lunch. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers that character.)

Anyway, here I have a mini-hamburger, or perhaps a very large nanoburger. Then there's a big helping of steamed carrots & squash - zucchini and crookneck - with butter. A single broccoli stem star snuck in, so I guess that clears Dot. Lastly, there's dry-roasted edamame and sakura mochi (onigiri type).

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 642: Spring?

2009-04-09T15:07:54Z

The weather in Atlanta has been insane. Warm Spring weather, then down to the 30s with snow flurries for a few days, then overnight the temperature jumps up by another 20 degrees. Oh, and tornadoes, but those are typical of Spring in the south.

Anyway, I've got a Spring lunch here. I don't care if it refuses to act like Spring, the calendar says it is. There's some beef & broccoli stir-fry, light-fried plantains, edamame, and sakura mochi (onigiri type).

The sakura mochi is the spring-specific part of the meal. In Japan, people have hanami - cherry blossom viewing parties - when the cherry trees bloom in Spring. I couldn't find a cherry tree to sit under, but from my 9th floor office window I can see some dogwoods.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 641: Sasquatch, the other jerky meat

2009-04-01T13:45:48Z

Today I have a meatloaf cupcake (with a little container of ketchup on the side), steamed snow peas and steamed purple sweet potato. I normally bake - well, microwave - sweet potatoes, but the purple ones I've gotten lately were small and rather dry, so I tried slicing them into half-inch-thick "coins" and throwing them into the steamer. The result: the color is not as bright, but they came out moist and very sweet! I'll remember this trick. Anyway, I also have blood orange segments, some mango, and several pieces of sasquatch jerky.

I like beef jerky, but I haven't packed it in my lunches because, well, something you gnaw on isn't very bento-istic, is it? But when the folks at jerky.com asked me if I'd try a sample of their new sasquatch jerky, I couldn't resist. (Don't worry, Sasquatch are no longer on the Threatened Species list, and they use only free range sasquatches.) It's surprisingly tender - somehow I had expected it to be tough - and it tastes nothing like chicken.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 640: Lunch for the Weird

2009-03-27T18:44:07Z

Most of this lunch is pretty typical bento fare for me. chicken fried rice, steamed broccoli, edamame - all typical stuff. But there, imprisoned within its plastic wrapper, lurks a Ding Dong. Why a Ding Dong, when I have neat stuff like mochi and homemade banana bread and fresh strawberries? Well... I perform in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Normally I play Frank N. Furter, but we had an '80s Pop theme night and I played The Criminologist as Weird Al Yankovic. "Yo, Ding Dong, man. Ding Dong. Ding Dong, yo." I threw Ding Dongs to the audience at one point, but one somehow ended up in my lunch box.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 639: Shades of orange

2009-03-26T18:39:59Z

I've been doing a lot of stir-frying lately. I see a bunch of vegetables and immediately drag out a big pan. Well, here's beef & broccoli stir-fry, which is held in check by some baked Japanese sweet potato. On the other side, a fruit salad made with strawberries, kiwi, blood orange, and yellow raspberries.

Is it my imagination, or are the blood oranges darker this year? Last time Kroger had blood oranges they were light orange shading to red inside. This time there's only a touch of orange, with a lot of red shading into a dark wine, almost purple color.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 638: Revenge of the Purple Taters

2009-03-20T20:17:40Z

This lunch starts out with a perfectly ordinary hot dog on a cafeteria roll bun and steamed broccoli. Hey, for me broccoli is normal, okay? But then I have some purple microwave potato chips. Potato chips made in the microwave from a purple creamer potato. There's no way you can claim that that's not awesome.

Oh, and then I have a piece of mochi, which is both ordinary and awesome. I wouldn't have them all the time if I didn't like 'em.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 637: Say cheesecake!

2009-03-17T18:00:23Z

Today I have some more Greek chicken, rice, and steamed broccoli. The last time I bought chicken I made a big batch of the Greek stuff. I also have some blood orange segments - Kroger has them again this week for 50 cents each, yay! - and a slice of low-calorie cheesecake. Now, that last item may not sound so good, I know. Low-calorie foods tend to be hit or miss. But I got this recipe from my sister, who is not a foodie but was taken by how easy and good-tasting it is. I tried it myself and deemed it worthy to pass on to those discerning souls who visit my website.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 636: Lame and Lamer

2009-03-12T17:32:54Z

I was going for the paintbox look with this lunch. It includes a pair of meatloaf cupcakes, which is simply meatloaf cooked in silicon cups instead of a loaf pan; baked purple potato, which is a purple potato that tastes like a white creamer tater; steamed broccoli, pink orange, and taiyaki.

When I saw that Kroger had some new food like lotus root and purple potatoes, I thought "Cool!" When I saw that they had no prices, I thought "Lame." When the produce clerk had no idea how much the purple potatoes were, I thought "Quite lame." When I went to the self-checkout and they were not in the system I thought "totally lame." When she shrugged and gave me two pounds for 79 cents I thought, "Cool!'

When I went back the next time and found out those potatoes are actually $2.99 a pound... LAME.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 635: Taterlings

2009-03-10T14:59:09Z

Today I have Greek chicken, roasted potatoes, steamed snow peas, marinated & stir-fried tofu, and mochi. Like the potatoes? I got a big bag of fingerlings at Costco - some of them were so small I was tempted to call them "grape potatoes" - and roasted up a whole bunch of them. As you can see, some of them are purple potatoes! Not that that influenced my decision to buy them, oh no.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 634: Chicken & Cactus Curry

2009-03-06T18:21:43Z

Last time I went to the farmer's market I picked up some cactus. That was actually the second time I'd tried to buy it, but the first time I found out the hard way that the pads hadn't been thoroughly de-needled. Them things have all sorts of hair-fine needles, and when I got home I had to get out some scotch tape to pull the last of them out of my poor fingers. But this time the pads were very well "shaved" - it looked like they'd used a vegetable peeler the size of a paint roller - so, judging them safe, I bought a few, determined to find out what cactus tastes like.

My answer: it's kinda like bell pepper. Not hot but - well it just has that flavor. But it's a succulent, so it has a different texture. And, as I found out when I steamed some of it, it generates slime like okra does. Blah, I am not a fan of slimy food. But I remember a coworker telling me about how his mother used to thicken soup with okra, so I thought that maybe it would do well in curry. You know, use the slime to thicken the sauce and use the sauce to mitigate the taste a bit. The result is the above chicken & cactus curry, which was quite good. Not good enough to make me want to buy cactus again, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

Then I have steamed broccoli and a blood orange. If I could find some blood orange seeds I'd try to plant a tree.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 633: A-Positive Orange

2009-03-02T20:17:51Z

Here's some good cold-weather food: beef & broccoli stir-fry and baked Japanese sweet potato. On the other side I have some tamarinds, almond cake, and a fruit salad made with persimmon, kiwi, baby bananas, and blood orange.

Blood oranges, in case you don't know, are oranges that look normal on the outside - or may look like someone dropped them in some red dye - and when you peel them the segments are orange, red, purple, or all of the above, as is the case in the photo on the right. They taste slightly berrylike. As some of you may have guessed, I am fond of weird-colored food, so when I saw that Kroger had a sale on these I hustled on down to the store and grabbed a big sack of 'em.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

My chips can beat up Lay's chips

2009-02-27T20:23:53Z

Today's lunch, which looks terrible because of my lack of photography skillz, starts with obimake enoki, AKA mushrooms wrapped in bacon. Ah, bacon - even when not dipped in chocolate it's still awesome. I have steamed broccoli, which is not awesome but I consider to be quite good. Baked purple sweet potato, and it's an undeniable fact that purple food is its own justification. Mochi, which is quietly excellent, and finally microwave lotus chips. That's like potato chips, but made with lotus root in the microwave. I made them with a microwave potato chip maker, seen at left, and I double-dog dare you to tell me that that's not awesomeness defined.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 631: More fun with chocolate

2009-02-24T18:57:39Z

I have another glorious hodgepodge for lunch. Here you see the evidence of a walk through my fridge, or perhaps I should describe it as a drunkard's walk: okonomiyaki, yakisoba, steamed broccoli, baked purple sweet potato, grape tomatoes, mochi, and chocolate soybean clusters.

That last item is an aftershock from last week's chocolate covered bacon. When I ran out of bacon I had some melted chocolate left over, and the heck I'm going to wash that down the sink! So I poured in some of the dry roasted soybeans that I keep around as munchies, and lo and behold, a new treat was born.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 630: Yes, that's bacon.

2009-02-20T21:03:19Z

Check this out, yo. Iridori, rice with ume koume, mochi, and... chocolate covered bacon.

Yep. Bacon covered in chocolate. And you thought battered, deep-fried bacon and chocolate chip bacon cookies were over the edge? They had to make a new edge for me. Did I say yo already?

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 629: Potato pie

2009-02-12T16:11:17Z

Spam musubi is tasty stuff, which is why I have two whole bricks of it here. (I don't know if "brick" is the proper unit of measurement, but they look like miniature bricks to me.) Then there's edamame and some light-fried plantains that look like they were organized by a librarian. (I am a bibliophile, but not a librarian.) Then there's some grape tomatoes and white sweet potato pie. The latter is the result of my playing with the purple sweet potato pie recipe. Japanese white sweet potatoes taste pretty similar to purple ones, why not make a pie out of 'em? It works, and it's kind of cool because it looks like you tried to make a sweet potato pie out of baking potatoes. Can't wait to try this out on a friend.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 628: Watchful Rice

2009-02-10T20:43:01Z

Today's lunch starts with iridori, which is kind of like chicken stew, but it contains bamboo and konnyaku and other neat stuff. For this bento I packed just the munchable stuff; I'll use the broth left behind for couscous. Then I have rice with ume koume, which is something like umeboshi but hard instead of mushy, and edamame.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 627: "It's cool in Hawaii!"

2009-02-09T16:14:52Z

Today's lunch is all about the tropics, where I wish I could be, especially when I'm standing around in a windchill below zero Fahrenheit waiting for a bus. Here's some Spam musubi, which is to Hawaii what hot dogs are to the US, or so my Hawaiian friends would have me believe. Then I have steamed snow peas and marinated, stir-fried tofu, which are not all that tropical, I suppose, but they bring to mind distant places which are likely to be less bloody cold than Georgia was this morning. Then there's some tropic-ish kumquats, strawberries, pink grapefruit, coconut, and a yates apple.

It's not a luau in my box, but I'll take what I can get. Or pack.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 626: Saved by the Chicken

2009-02-04T19:07:40Z

It's been nasty down here in the southeastern US. One day the low will be zero degrees Fahrenheit after you figure in the wind chill, and a few days later the high will be in the sixties. I just can't get used to this yoyoing around. It saps my energy, so when I drag myself in my front door I'm rarely in the mood to get creative in the kitchen, which is why I haven't been posting as frequently as usual lately. I've been packing bentos, but who needs to see my sandwiches day after day?

Last time I went by Kroger after work they had some rotisserie chickens on sale. It was cold and drizzly outside, I was tired and cranky, and tender hot herbed chickens for less than a fiver each appeared before me. I didn't even try to resist. So - here I have some roast chicken, light-fried plantain; a cafeteria roll, strawberries, pink grapefruit, and mochi. The plantain was from a batch I cooked over the weekend, and the roll was intended to be a hot dog bun, but it ended up kinda runty.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 625: Snow meatballs

2009-01-28T21:11:41Z

A while ago I posted about the rice I'd bought, which is uber-short-grained, practically rice beads, and uber-sticky. It sticks to everything! Well, I found the exception: it doesn't stick as much to pearl meatballs. The ones here actually show some bald spots. Despite the blemish of exposed meat, they were still delicious.

I also have baked sweet potato - not purple? I don't know what got into me either - spinach with mayonnaise and strawberries.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)

Lunch Box 624: Spheres Themselves

2009-01-26T20:50:38Z

Happy Chinese New Year! I didn't realize it until it was too late, so I don't have a single thing appropriate for the occasion in my lunch. Oh well. I do have homemade takoyaki, baked purple sweet potato balls, steamed snow peas, strawberries, and kumquats. Even if it's not very seasonal, it's still pretty hardcore, I'd say.

(Website post, with links to recipes.)