| Lunch Box 565: Much Miscellania |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | box, coconut gel, cucumber maki, fruit salad, grass jelly, greek chicken, mandarin, simmered shiitake mushrooms, spam musubi, steamed snow peas, sweet potato tempura | ] |
 I rarely pack lunches like this, with lots of different little things, because that would involve cooking a bunch of various things and after a hard day at work I'm just not up to that. But when I end up with a whole bunch of small plastic containers in my fridge, well, then I get lunches like this. They aren't pretty and organized, but they sure taste good.
So, here's what jumped out of the plastic: cucumber maki, Spam musubi, sweet potato tempura, Greek chicken, simmered shiitake mushrooms, and steamed snow peas. The fruit salad made with mandarin orange, grass jelly, and coconut gel came out of a peel, plastic, and glass, respectively. I'm sure you wanted to know that last part.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 562: Beach chicken |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|06:58 pm] |
 Mmm, I do like me some Greek chicken! So, here's some more over couscous, which I made with some pseuki yaki broth from my freezer. That's an odd combination, but it tasted fine. Then there's blue country cornbread, which one of these days I will photograph decently so you can see the actual color, and a fruit salad made with kiwi fruit, grass jelly, and coconut gel. Hmm, only one of the three is actually a fruit, but what else am I going to call that?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 556: Grass for desert? |
[May. 19th, 2008|10:30 pm] |
 Today's lunch starts with a baked tilapia fillet, steamed broccoli, and baked Japanese sweet potato. I didn't mean for those to form a doleful face, but that's what I saw after I took the photo. Oh well. On the other side I have fresh longans, and a fruit salad made with mandarin oranges, kiwi fruit, grass jelly, and coconut gel.
Grass jelly is a black Jell-o like substance consumed in parts of Asia either in a dessert or a drink. By itself it has little flavor, as I found out when I opened the can and sampled some. I'd been planning to use it in a fruit salad anyway, so I opened up a can of coconut gel and drizzled some of the syrup on the grass jelly. As it turns out, that's not far from the way it's often served: mix with fruit or serve in sweetened icewater.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 548: Dueling octopi |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|09:08 pm] |
 Today I have a colorful melange of... colorful stuff. In no particular order: hot dog octopi, baked purple sweet potato, baked sweet potato, zucchini & onion stir-fry, simmered shiitake mushrooms, some Kool-Aid pickles, and grapefruit and coconut gel. The Kool-Aid pickles were made with grape Kool-Aid, which tastes good but makes for dark, icky-looking pickles. Next time I'll use cherry.
Today's my 40th birthday. Yay me. I suppose I should have packed a cupcake or something. Ah well, I'll probably get a cupcake on my way home for dinner tonight.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 545: Insert title here |
[Apr. 22nd, 2008|08:21 pm] |
 I have nothing clever to say about this lunch box. It's futomaki (with tamago, cucumber, shiitake, and masago), baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed broccoli, oranges, and coconut gel. Sorry about the potato border thing - it didn't look anywhere near that tacky in my mind. I just had to do something to keep the sushi from rattling around in there.
One day I'll learn the secret of photographing lunches without having to choose between nearly everything being dark and dingy, and one part being eye-hurtingly bright.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 540: Nuclear rice |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|08:08 pm] |
 Today I have some yakitori over rice, steamed broccoli, a fruit salad made with pineapple, grapes, and coconut gel. And none of the food was bizarrely colored, and the rice did not shine with a light of its own. I think that my camera has been having freak-outs because of my kitchen lighting. If you think this is bad, you should have seen it before I massaged it with Photoshop.
This time I grilled the yakitori up properly, with the wire rack from my wok on top of a large skillet. The result was great, but I don't know if I'll cook it that way again, as the sauce I repeatedly brushed onto the chicken contained sugar, which dripped into the skillet and stayed there... you can see where this is going, right? Thankfully, I was able to save the skillet.
(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 461: Bright Idea |
[Nov. 2nd, 2007|09:51 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baked japanese sweet potato, blueberries, box, coconut gel, fruit salad, inari-zushi, okonomiyaki, persimmon, purple okonomiyaki, steamed broccoli, sushi | ] |
 This lunch started out with seafood medley okonomiyaki made with red cabbage and some inari-zushi I made with rice tinted with beet juice. I just tipped a few drops of juice from a can of beets into sushi rice, and whoa. Hot pink! After that, the quest for color was on! I added baked Japanese sweet potato, which was much lighter than usual, adding a nice pastel contrast, and a fruit salad made with coconut gel, blueberries, and big bright slices of persimmon. Of course, I have steamed broccoli to provide contrast - bright things look brighter when you put them near something dark.
I may need to wear sunglasses when I eat this.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 455: Secondary colors |
[Oct. 24th, 2007|07:22 pm] |
 I was feeling very organized when I packed this lunch. Sure, the octopus fritters, container of okonomiyaki sauce, and baked purple sweet potato are fairly chaotic, but on the right side order takes over. Baked buttercup squash hems in shelled edamame, and I don't know if I can call that fruit thing a fruit salad, it's so orderly. Persimmons & kiwi fruit alternate, blueberries lined up atop a row of coconut gel. However, I bet that after my two-hour bus-train-bus commute it'll be a little less fussy-looking.
Normally I'm a primary-colors person. This lunch, with its blue-orange-purple scheme, is quite a fluke for me.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 454: Neverending beans |
[Oct. 23rd, 2007|07:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, box, buford highway farmer's market, chicken tikka masala, coconut gel, fruit salad, hoddeuk, kiwi fruit, korean rice cakes, persimmon, pineapple, rice, stir-fried long beans | ] |
 Yesterday I had a day off from work, so I got to go to the Buford Highway Farmer's Market and grab neat stuff, much of which will turn up in the next few entries.
Today's lunch starts with chicken tikka masala over rice... sorta. I had plenty of sauce left over from the original dish, so I grilled some chicken breast, sliced it thin, and mixed it up with the sauce to absorb some flavor. Hey, the sauce was tasty enough that I didn't want to throw out the extra, OK? The chicken & rice is surrounded by stir-fried long beans, which is one of the new-to-me things I bought. They can be cooked like regular green beans, but they're a foot and a half long, which makes them cool! (I cut them in half to stir-fry them, and even then they kept trying to escape from the skillet.)
On the other side I have Korean rice cakes, which are not terribly sweet until you get to the sesame filling, hoddeuk, and a fruit salad made with persimmon, apple, kiwi fruit, pineapple, and coconut gel.
By the way, if you live in Atlanta and are looking for bento boxes, the Buford Highway Farmer's Market has lots of them in different sizes and shapes. I got 650 and 800 ML "leaflet tight" boxes for $7 - $8, a great big ol' picnic-sized bento for about the same price, and I saw several different brands of lunch jars, Zojirushi among them. They also have taiyaki makers for $17. Sweet!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 451: The Temperature At Which Lunch Burns |
[Oct. 17th, 2007|08:21 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, baked eggplant slices, banana bread, blueberries, box, coconut gel, fruit salad, kiwi fruit, pineapple, rice, salmon saka-mushi, tamarinds, zucchini & onion stir-fry | ] |
 I got home yesterday so not in the mood to do real cooking. Leftovers to the rescue! Here's some salmon saka-mushi over rice, zucchini & onion stir-fry, baked eggplant slices, banana bread, some tamarinds, and a fruit salad made with apple, kiwi fruit, pineapple, blueberries, and coconut gel. The only thing I had to cook was the rice, and I had that going while I cut up fruit and shelled tamarinds.
It seems that this two-tier box is the one I always use when I pack fruit salad. I guess the two parts are most efficient at keeping the fruit and its juices from mixing with the rest of the lunch, and vice versa.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 443: Laziness alert |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|08:10 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | blueberries, box, coconut gel, edamame, fruit salad, kiwi fruit, mini-carrots, orange, pineapple, purple imo-yokan, steamed pork bun, tamarinds | ] |
 When I got home I was not in the mood to cook dinner. I was in the mood for a BLT, some carrots, a bit of couscous - simple stuff I could have ready in 5 minutes. That doesn't leave anything for the next day's bento, but if you keep the fridge & freezer stocked with lunch-friendly items - often extras from previous batches - you can still eat well. So here I have a steamed pork bun and some edamame straight from the freezer; mini-carrots, purple imo-yokan, and some tamarinds, and a fruit salad made with orange, kiwi fruit, pineapple, blueberries, and coconut gel.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 440: Out Of The Freezer It Came |
[Sep. 28th, 2007|07:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, blueberries, box, broccoli stem stars, coconut gel, crab rangoon gyoza, crab rangoons, fruit salad, pineapple, satoimo noodles, shrimp, takoyaki | ] |
 It's Friday, which for a lot of us means a leftovers lunch and a slightly-less-cluttered fridge. That's the case here, although the leftoveriness is less because of a leftovers purge and more because I just got DDR Supernova 2. No time to cook fancy meals, busy arrow-stomping!
Fortunately, on days like this my freezer comes to the rescue. I have crab rangoon gyoza and takoyaki that I cooked quite some time ago and froze against future need. I have shrimp over satoimo noodles - OK, I did cook the shrimp, but I couldn't resist putting the orange & white on top of those lavender noodles. Then there's steamed broccoli stem stars and a fruit salad made with apple, pineapple, blueberries, and coconut gel. The coconut gel was an impulse buy the last time I was at 99 Ranch. My policy is that every time I shop there I buy something I've never tried before, and when I spied the coconut gel & pineapple in a small jar I had to give it a try.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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