| Lunch Box 616: Beans and more beans |
[Dec. 18th, 2008|01:59 pm] |
 Believe it or not, today's bento is actually not assembled from the leftovers of a school picnic. The pigs in blankets are made with my own hands from Hebrew National hot dogs and cafeteria roll dough, the steamed pole beans and carrot & raisin salad and an pan are all homemade, inasmuch as you can really call steamed beans homemaking. The dry-roasted edamame are new to me. I saw a huge cubelike jar of these in Costco and was curious enough to buy one. Guess what - they're good! I can't eat 'em all day like pistachios, but they make a very nice snack or side munchy.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 610: Backlog |
[Dec. 2nd, 2008|08:25 pm] |
 It should be obvious that I've got a backlog of photos. If they were current they'd prominently feature turkey. But with this lunch I've caught up to this week, so we should be seeing poultry very soon.
But for now, I have broiled steak, edamame, yaki onigiri, stir-fried red cabbage, and carrot & raisin salad. That's a pretty good mix of colors, isn't it? I wasn't sure the cabbage qualified as a green vegetable, it being red and all, so I packed a mess o' soybeans just to be sure. Like I need an excuse to put edamame in my lunches?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 605: Meatcupcakes |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|08:18 pm] |
 Why have I never made mealoaf cupcakes with silicone cupcake cups before? Besides not having any silicone cups, that is? They are the perfect way to make little bento-able protein packages. These ones have ketchup "frosting," of course. For trivia's sake, the recipe I used, which is on my site, makes an even dozen meatcakes.
I also have the usual: steamed broccoli, baked Japanese sweet potato, and rice, plus carrot & raisin salad made with golden raisins. While making these I accidentally opened a cup of plain yogurt instead of vanilla, which meant that I have some leftover plain yogurt to use up, and the only recipe I know that uses plain yogurt is naan, so I guess I'm obligated to make some flatbread in the very near future.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 577: No discretion |
[Jul. 14th, 2008|07:33 pm] |
 Today's lunch includes a pair of hot dog octopi that appear to be in the middle of an intense discussion, and some smoked salmon sushi with cucumber, which is to say I just strapped a thin slice of cucumber onto the top of the rice block with the fish. Then there's edamame, baked Japanese sweet potato, carrot & raisin salad, and banana bread.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 564: To-may-to, to-mah-to |
[Jun. 6th, 2008|07:45 pm] |
 Today I have some fried calamari. Or some squid tempura; six of one and half a dozen of the other. Some were single-breaded and some were double-breaded, hence the two different colors. Then I have an onigiri, some steamed sugar snap peas, a clump of carrot & raisin salad, and a taro mochi.
That onigiri looks like a ReBoot icon, doesn't it? I assure you that that is purely coincidence* and has nothing whatsoever to do with the ReBoot revival and webcomic.**
* No, it isn't.
** Yes, it does.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 557: I'm a spice girl |
[May. 21st, 2008|07:19 pm] |
 Our of the blue I got the urge to make my Mom's Greek chicken. The problem is, I don't know how, and the recipes I find on the 'net don't match hers. So I did what I always do in said circumstances: hybridize a few recipes and muddle through. I was surprised at how well it turned out. I can't call the result Greek chicken because I used Italian seasoning, but what the heck, it looks like the stuff Mom uses.
So, anyway, here I have sliced up baked chicken breast over rice, zucchini & onion stir-fry, and carrot & raisin salad. When I find out how to make Greek chicken for real I'll post that recipe. Wish me luck, though, as Mom doesn't use recipes or measurements, making it kind of hard to get the info I need.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 554: Secondary colors |
[May. 13th, 2008|07:35 pm] |
 I've hardly made any sushi in, what, a year? Now all of a sudden I decide I want lots of it. So, here's some smoked salmon sushi and hantako sushi, the latter of which is my fancy way of saying I strapped half a baby octopus to a rice block. I mainly do that because the tentacles curl up so pretty and spirally, I want to find a way to display them. Then there's some baked purple sweet potato arranged in a way that I thought was artistic, but now looks kind of corny to me. Finally, some zucchini & onion stir-fry and carrot & raisin salad.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 536: Purple meat? |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|07:16 pm] |
 No, I didn't color my meatloaf purple, or whatever color you see in that photo. For some reason my kitchen lighting takes good-looking meatloaf and makes it look zombie-ish. Complete with ketchup "blood," but I am responsible for that part.
Then there's a veritable forest of steamed broccoli, some carrot & raisin salad, some icky-looking tamarinds, and a fruit salad made with orange, pineapple, and coconut gel.
One thing I like about this bento box is that I can separate my lunch into hot and cold halves. Put what I want to heat in one half and the cold stuff in the other. Handy, that.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 532: Line up for inspection, snow peas! |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|06:59 pm] |
 Today's box is a festival of secondary colors, ne? Green steamed snow peas and steamed broccoli, baked purple sweet potato, and orange carrot & raisin salad. I'd have an unbroken streak if it weren't for the tan-colored yakiudon-style shrimp noodles and the blue container for its sauce. Oh well, I pack food to eat, not to enter into art 101 classes. By the way, aren't those sweet potatoes weird-looking? Okinawa sweet potatoes often have color variations, but this is the first time I've seen anything this dramatic.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 528: That Fearful Symmetry |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|10:02 pm] |
 Maybe it's just me, but I tend to see faces in the lunches I pack if I make any effort at symmetry, which I often do because I'm just fussy that way. Today's lunch looks like a crab or bug of some kind glaring out at me from under something.
Anyway, here's a meal of inari-zushi, baked Japanese sweet potato, green beans right out of a can, a boiled egg (the eyes of the bug), and carrot & raisin salad. And... that's it' cause I'm hungry. Can't post; eating.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 526: Potatoes and veggies |
[Mar. 12th, 2008|08:01 pm] |
 Veggies and more veggies Iridori is neat stuff. Basically it's Japanese chicken & vegetable stew, with things like bamboo and potatoes and carrots, all cut in thick chunks. Normally I make it with taro root, but I'm not hardcore enough to pay what Kroger charges for those, and they're often in poor shape from sitting there forever because nobody else is either. Anyway, new potatoes work fine. Those twisty things on top are slices of konnyaku gel, which funky stuff and pretty much calorie-free. I suppose the darker version would be more photogenic, as the light version is pretty much the same color as the chicken, potatoes, and bamboo, but the dark stuff looks kinda yucky to me.
Then there's steamed broccoli and carrot & raisin salad. Three cheers for veggies! OK, cheering is a bit much, but I do give them my quiet appreciation.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 498: Actually nontoxic |
[Jan. 15th, 2008|07:09 pm] |
 When people have suggested in the past that I cook curry, I've firmly refused on the grounds that 1) I hate hot spices, as they render food inedible to me, 2) all of my memories of curry were of meals that my parents loved and I could not eat, so 3) why in the world should I bother with that crud?
I eventually decided that, what the heck, I've cooked jellyfish before, so I could take a chance on curry. I bought a package of the mild stuff. Then, a few months later, when I had a fridge full of leftovers to fall back on should it turn out as bad as I remembered, I made it. And... amazingly, it was good.
So, here's some of that batch of chicken & vegetable curry over rice. It is flanked by my everpresent baked purple sweet potato and steamed broccoli, and I have some carrot & raisin salad for dessert.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 464: Puppy/food |
[Nov. 7th, 2007|07:27 pm] |
 Today's lunch begins with - shock and surprise! - pseuki yaki. Oh, honey, if you saw the amount in my fridge and freezer... but having that ready to dish out frees me to try some new things, like the carrot & raisin salad I made with some more of those red, orange, and yellow carrots. I remember having this stuff when I was a little kid, and since I like carrots so much, why not? It turned out great, although I remembered why I don't often use recipes that require the use of a grater. I somehow managed to grate my thumb knuckle, and if you've ever done that you know the gruesomeness that follows. Still, the salad was worth it. (And it'll be worth it in the future to be a little more flippin' careful with the grater.)
And then I have steamed purple cauliflower. Now, normally I don't care for cauliflower. There are better-tasting brassicas out there for me. But I spied, half-hidden at the bottom of the display, a single purple head of cauliflower. As you might have figured out, to me any purple vegetable is the produce equivalent of a big-eyed puppy in a pet ship window. You know, the one who, when you make eye contact and approach it gets up and, gazing at you as if you were its savior, steps forward, wagging its tail hopefully, and before you know it you're putting newspapers down in your spare room. Anyone got any good puppy cauliflower recipes?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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