| Lunch Box 639: Shades of orange |
[Mar. 26th, 2009|10:49 pm] |
 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 613: Thanksgiving's over |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|09:02 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, box, fruit salad, light-fried plantain chips, meatloaf, orange, persimmon, pink orange, plantain, pomegranate, steamed broccoli | ] |
 Enough with the turkey! Being a single person with a half a leftover turkey is not a bad situation at all if you like turkey - which I do - but by the time I've gnawed it to the bone I'm quite happy to move on to something else - in this case, good old-fashioned meatloaf slathered with ketchup. It may look weird and gray in this picture, but, trust me, the deficiency is in my photography skills rather than my cooking.
With it I have some very crisp steamed broccoli, light-fried plantains; and a fruit salad made with apple, pink orange, pomegranate, and persimmon. It's like a mini-Thanksgiving feast, but without turkey!
(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 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 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 508: Dry soup |
[Feb. 4th, 2008|07:22 pm] |
 I finally finished up that rotisserie chicken. And what do I do with the bones and stuff? Boil them for stock, of course. And that leads to me throwing in whatever I have on hand - the leftover scraps of chicken meat, red potatoes, carrot, celery, scallions, mushrooms, and rice fettuccini - and making chicken soup. If I packed that straight up it'd slosh everywhere, so I packed some of the stuff minus the broth for this "soupless soup." No, I suppose that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. So, when I eat it, I don't think about it. On the side I have steamed broccoli and a fruit salad made with orange, longan, and pomegranate seeds.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 496: Nurse, hand me that pizza cutter, stat! |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|07:36 pm] |
 Presentation counts. All of this stuff - smoked salmon sushi, steamed broccoli, baked Japanese sweet potato, pizza, and a fruit salad made with apple, persimmon, and pink orange - is delicious. However, isn't it a bit weird to see pizza in among all that other healthy and/or Asian-type stuff? (The pizza is homemade, and is a whole lot healthier than regular pizza because it's non-greasy.) But what I really shouldn't have done was slice the pizza into little squares. Sure, it's easier to eat with chopsticks that way, but pizza cut into squares reminds me uncomfortably of school cafeteria pizza. Ugh!
Thankfully, I was able to subdivide it into triangles, which de-ughified it.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 495: Canned lunch |
[Jan. 10th, 2008|11:21 am] |
 It's been a while since I used one of my tiffins - East Indian metal lunch boxes - and, since they are cool, I went about remedying that oversight at once. I filled it with maki sushi, including shiitake, cucumber, avocado, and masago (salmon roe) with grape tomatoes as spacers, steamed green beans, and a fruit salad made with apple, persimmon, pink orange, and longans.
Once again, I nearly made a vegan lunch without realizing it, then screwed up with one little item, in this case the masago. At this rate I'll never get to date any hot vegan girls.
(Website post, with links to recipes.)
And a little off-topic note: Project Freetown has a new video for Move Your Feet. It's in the same happy, pixelated format as the original, and in fact it's even more happy and groovy-cute. Plus, it has come cute imagery that ought to please foodies. |
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| Lunch Box 492: All sorts of things |
[Jan. 7th, 2008|10:31 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, baked purple sweet potato, box, carrots, fried potato skins, fruit salad, persimmon, pink orange, raisins, steamed snow peas, takoyaki, tempura, tsukune | ] |
 I started out filling this lunch box with whatever came to hand: tsukune, tempura, takoyaki, and fried potato skins. ("This lunch has been sponsored by the letter T.") That made for a lot of golden browns. On the other side, I'll admit I was going for color, with steamed snow peas, baked purple sweet potato, carrot, and a fruit salad made with apple, persimmon, raisins, and pink orange.
I have no idea why the carrot is shaped like sakura flowers. We all know that that kind of frou-frou business is not my style. I suspect sinister forces are at work.
And for something completely different, ( a disturbing sweet potato. )
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 491: Chicken meatloaf onna stick |
[Jan. 3rd, 2008|09:21 pm] |
 Here's part 2 of my recent kitchen-ninja binge" tsukune, which is balls of ground chicken and stuff, grilled and sauced and skewered. There's some steamed snow peas, baked Japanese sweet potato, and baked purple sweet potato. And finally, a fruit salad made with apple, persimmon, and pink orange.
I've heard of pink grapefruit, but pink orange is new to me. I found these in 99 Ranch Market. They were regular-looking navel oranges, but with "red flesh." Huh? Out of curiosity I got some. They are just a little sourer than a regular orange, and the rind is so tough they are impossible to peel. Googling around, I see that this is probably a Cara Cara orange.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 472: Turkey > chicken? |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|07:49 pm] |
 You wouldn't think that something as big and obtrusive as turkey could hide, but here's the evidence that it can: turkey omurice. It's omurice, but it's made with turkey (dark meat) instead of chicken! If that's not revolutionary, what is?
Um.
I also have baked sweet potato, mainly put in there to act as a buffer between the omurice and the zucchini & onion stir-fry. On the other side I have fruit salad made with persimmon, satsuma, and dragon fruit, and some brown sugar & raisin stuffed naan. The latter was just a whim - hey, I'm making naan, why not try putting stuff inside it like I've seen in the restaurant? - that worked out quite tastily. And I just now realized that I could have stuffed it with turkey. D'OH!
(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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