| Lunch Box 648: Let Me Eat Cake |
[May. 28th, 2009|07:21 pm] |
 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.) |
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[Oct. 2nd, 2008|12:58 pm] |
 Have I mentioned that I like chirashi-zushi? It's so easy to make. This time around I was a little lazy and just used shrimp, simmered shiitake mushrooms, and pickled plums as toppings. These plums aren't umeboshi, though - they're crunchy, and the name is different, and I forgot to write it down. I'll get it later. Anyway, they still taste pretty much like umeboshi.
And there's also edamame, almond jelly, cherries, and mango.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 575: Pride in my lunch |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|07:15 pm] |
 I will eat the rainbow today! Red cherries, orange & yellow steamed carrots & yellow squash, green edamame, blue country cornbread, and baked purple sweet potato. And lest anyone forget the earth tones - representing the end of the rainbow or something - some mushroom turnovers.
How about that, I packed a vegetarian meal. Not vegan, however, as there are dairy products in the cornbread and turnovers. I'm not quite that hardcore.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 574: Pseudo-escargot |
[Jun. 26th, 2008|09:30 pm] |
 When I go to an Asian market I try to find at least one thing each trip that I've never tried before. This time around I came home with a bag of frozen periwinkles. Winkles, a kind of snail, are commonly eaten in Britain and Ireland, but I've never seen them here. So, I guessed that they'd go well with garlic butter, and simmered them at a low temperature in just that. The result: escargot-like garlic butter periwinkles. Then there's edamame, zucchini & onion stir-fry, mushroom turnovers, and cherries. Can you tell I bought a BIG bag of cherries?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 573: Poutine on the ritz |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|08:37 pm] |
 A friend of mine has been lusting after poutine. His blog has chronicled his ever-thwarted attempts to consume this substance. He got me curious, and when I discovered it was close to the gravy fries I used to love years ago, I decided I wanted some too. So I found out how to make it. In fact, that recipe is a two-fer, because to make poutine I had to learn how to make farmer cheese.
So - here we have meatloaf, poutine, edamame, cherries, and persimmon. I feel Canadian all over!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 572: In memory of George Carlin |
[Jun. 24th, 2008|10:37 pm] |
 By now everyone in the continental US knows that George Carlin passed on this past weekend. What can I say, he was a funny man and the news made me sad. So, here I am, making a bento lunch that is a salute to him, sorta-kinda. It includes meatcake, AKA meatloaf, and blue country cornbread, which is classic blue food. Blue food, man.
There's also steamed sugar snap peas, some mushroom turnovers I bought at Trader Joe's, and cherries, but I can't tie those in to Carlin because they weren't going bad in the back of my fridge.
Tomorrow: The seven foods you can never use in a bento!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 571: Scrounge |
[Jun. 23rd, 2008|09:27 pm] |
 I wanted to do some cooking this weekend, but Saturday was taken up with helping some friends move into their new apartment, and on Sunday we went out to eat, so today's lunch is whatever I could scrounge up.
For dinner on Sunday I had a basket of fried food. Onion rings, mozzarella sticks, and fried chicken fingers. Shame on me, but once in a great while I want a sampler basket! I brought home some of the chicken, so here are cut-up chicken fingers with baked Japanese sweet potato and steamed sugar snap peas. On the other side I have cherries and a fruit salad made with persimmon, grapes, and jackfruit.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 570: Shout out to my workies* |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|07:56 pm] |
 Maria, one of my coworkers, has a garden. Recently she brought me some zucchini, yellow squash, and green beans she picked. One pass through the kitchen later, here they are! I have vegetable & seafood stuff, which is basically whatever veggies and stuff I have on hand (shiitake, carrots, squash, broccoli, and scallions) plus some crab sticks. Above it is a pile of satoimo noodles, which are naturally purple, which makes them cool. Then there's some steamed green beans. On the other side I have a container of yakisoba sauce to mix into the stir-fry and noodles, a bit of melon pan, and a fruit salad made with cherries, persimmon, and jackfruit.
* A workie is like a homie, except we see each other in the office.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 569: Bedtime bento |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|08:02 pm] |
 I've seen bentos in which a wet item is covered with a "blanket" of rice to keep any excess liquid from slopping onto the rest of the food. This lunch was as good a time as any to try out that principle, so here I have pseuki yaki with a rice blanket. I took the photo when the pseuki yaki was only half covered; I put the rest on before sealing it up. On the other side I have some edamame, and a fruit salad made with mango, cherries, kiwi fruit, and blueberries.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 478: Doesn't need no steenking title |
[Dec. 7th, 2007|11:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | & shiitake sushi, beet rice, blueberries, box, brown sugar & raisin stuffed naan, cherries, crab cucumber, half moon rice cake, naan, persimmon, steamed broccoli, sushi | ] |
 I haven't made much sushi lately, so here I go with some crab, cucumber, & shiitake sushi. I recommend the combo, especially if you have some leftover simmered shiitake mushrooms to cut up. The sushi are divided by a hedge of steamed broccoli. On the other side I have some persimmon, cherries, and blueberries, the latter two of which were frozen and all of which are too organized to really call a fruit salad. Finally, up above I have a cut-up brown sugar & raisin stuffed naan and a half moon rice cake.
I'm kinda diggin' on the color combo, which was an accident. Orange masago in the sushi, orange persimmon, pink beet rice, green broccoli. Distinctive, but not as "out there" as some of my lunches have been.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 410: Oden is still good. |
[Aug. 1st, 2007|06:49 pm] |
 Hmm, it's been a while since I've used my little blue "moon usagi" bento. Well, here it is, bearing its load of lunch. Left to right and counterclockwise, because I feel like being confusing, I have selected highlights of my recent batch of oden over broth-cooked bean thread noodles. Since I ended up with so much broth in this batch of oden, I simply heated some of that up and cooked the bean thread in it to give it extra flavor. It worked nicely! Then I have Spam musubi with steamed green and wax beans, cherries, and honey & milk Pocky.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 409: Oden is good. |
[Jul. 31st, 2007|08:32 pm] |
 Today's lunch features oden, AKA fishcake and vegetable stew. I didn't have quite all the fixings I've used before - I'm low on stuff like konnyaku and lotus root - but no problem, stew recipes are flexible. I added in some crab sticks, and they went well with this. Oh, and it's a good way to use canned quail eggs.
On the side I have some steamed green and wax beans. Yep, still with those beans - my coworker gave me a lot! And finally, I have cherries and bulla. And when I run out of this package of bulla I bought, I'm gonna try out some recipes, 'cause bulla - Jamaican ginger cake - is good.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 408: Yeah. |
[Jul. 30th, 2007|07:10 pm] |
 It's like the Cinco de Mayo in July! Except the Cinco de Mayo isn't usually humid and stinking hot. Anyway, here I've got a batch of taco salad, which looks very strange packed into a bento box. Then there are steamed wax beans, which honestly look much better in person - the lighting in my kitchen is never kind. Finally, I gots cherries and almond cake.
When my family cooked this, we called it "fiesta." Don't know why; we never partied as we ate it. But we had some odd titles for our dinners. One of these days I'll get around to backwards engineering a dish that was called "Stuff."
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 407: ReBoot! |
[Jul. 26th, 2007|08:30 pm] |
 Click-click! Today I have a trio of onigiri made to look like ReBoot icons. I'm a longtime, hardcore booter, and I felt particularly motivated by recent news, see below. The Guardian (yellow) icon has a bit of thin omelet on top, and the viral (green) one has some.. er, green egg on top. Then there are some off-the-skewer tsukune, steamed green beans (from my coworker Maria's garden!) fresh lychees, bulla, and chocolate dipped cherries.
Totally off-topic: if you're a ReBoot fan too, guess what - Rainmaker Entertainment, the company that bought Mainframe, wants to bring it back! Zeros2heroes has much more info.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 405: Meatballs-onna-stick |
[Jul. 24th, 2007|07:28 pm] |
 Today I have more tsukune! No surprise there, as 3/4 of a pound of meat makes a lot of meatballs. They're serves over rice with a side order of steamed broccoli. And for dessert, chocolate dipped cherries, and Sesame Crisp Flakes. Would you like fries with that?
Why have I not dipped cherries in chocolate before? Well, OK, I hardly ever have cherries on hand. But when I do...! If only there was a way to non-messily extract the pits first.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 404: Food not Found |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|07:47 pm] |
 Last weekend I flipped through one of my Japanese recipe books and found something that I'd dismissed before as too complicated and messy, but which now looked quite do-able. So I dood it, with the result you see on the right: tsukune, AKA Japanese meatloaf-style grilled chicken balls. These are served on a bed of steamed broccoli (because I was too lazy to cook rice). On the right are some cherries, and bulla, which is a ginger cake I bought on a whim, and after tasting it I looked up recipes for future reference.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 403: Brown-bagged Spam |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|07:00 pm] |
 Recently I ran out of nori and had to get more. The only sushi-type nori I saw at 99 Ranch Market was brown, not blackish-green. So, I got some of this weird nori, and here it is, covering slabs of Spam musubi like plain brown wrappers on the magazines in the highest rack. Weird, eh? But as far as I can tell it tastes pretty much the same, if it's not as attractive. Then there are chicken flavored lotus slices, a pork & shrimp dumpling, and steamed green beans. On the other side I have a merry mix of grapes, cherries, and lychees.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 402: Some more |
[Jul. 19th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
 I'm in the mood to pack lunches that include lots and lots of different things. This may look like a festival of leftovers, but actually I planned it this way. So, here we have chibi pita pizza (with a single pepperoni and olive), crab-topped sushi, steamed green beans, fried green tomatoes (with tartar sauce sandwiched in between them), flavored lotus slices (simmered in chicken broth, to be precise), jjol myeon (Korean spicy chewy noodles) with chicken & vegetables, cherries, and a microwave s'more.
I wasn't sure the tiny pita pizza thing was going to work. Those little pitas aren't a flat as their larger cousins. But, hey, they came out fine, and they're the perfect size for a bento box. As for the s'more, why have I not made those before? I've had graham crackers, chocolate melts, and mini-marshmallows on hand forever! You'd think I'd be smart enough to realize the possibilities before now, wouldn't you? Sheez, you'd think I'd completely forgotten my childhood.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 401: Green! |
[Jul. 18th, 2007|07:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | bacon and egg sandwich, banano split, box, cherries, french bread, fried green tomatoes, green french bread, mochi, peanut mochi, steamed green beans, storebought pork & shrimp dumplings | ] |
 I got green with today's lunch. See the French bread? It's green, not blue. I think it's a pretty color, even appetizing. Hidden underneath are the additional elements which transform mere bread into a bacon and egg sandwich. Since the egg was actually part of an omelet, it has the additional plus of being full of crab stick meat, which is what I made the omelet with. Bacon, egg, and crab sammitch. Mmm.
There's more green, of course. Most obvious are the steamed green beans, and on the subtler side I also have fried green tomatoes, made with tomatoes from my own garden. (That's the only way I can get thoroughly green tomatoes!) However, the storebought pork & shrimp dumplings, cherries, and peanut mochi are not green at all. Shame on them.
And on a totally non-bento-related topic, I present to you last night's dessert: a Banano Split.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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