| Lunch Box 645: Patchwork Lunch |
[May. 14th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 641: Sasquatch, the other jerky meat |
[Apr. 1st, 2009|06:56 pm] |
 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 619: More sweetfish |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|10:05 pm] |
 Pretty good lunch today, I'd say - beef & vegetable curry, baked purple sweet potato, a Yorkshire pudding, edamame, persimmon, mango, and taiyaki. I like how pretty the taiyaki turned out this time. It takes some practice, getting them to cook right when you're working on an electric stove. Unless someone has invented a glass taiyaki-ki, you can't see what you're doing.
Sorry about the lack of cleverness with today's post, but there's been a sad event in my family and I'm not feeling too chatty at the moment. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine, I just have to take some time and get over it. In the meantime - tell your family members you love them while there's still time.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| (no subject) |
[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 580: Narrow but not skinny |
[Sep. 8th, 2008|08:18 pm] |
 I'm back! Sorry about the month-and-a-half-long absence, but my work situations and personal complications sapped my will to cook and post for a while. I was still making bento lunches, but didn't pack food that I considered worth posting. You can only take so many "this is a sandwich" shots, you know? Anyway, I'm back now.
So, here's a new bento box, or, rather, a set of "men's bento boxes," so-called because they're adult-sized and black, I guess. They're filled with beef & broccoli stir-fry, udon noodles, blue country cornbread, orange segments, and chunks of mango.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 578: The dark side of tofu |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|09:25 pm] |
 This lunch is almost an outtake. I present it here so you can learn from my misfortune.
The stir-fried teriyaki chicken and zucchini & onion stir-fry are both perfectly all right. However, the marinated, stir-fried tofu - which is below the soy sauce bottle - came out weird. My fridge occasionally has localized ice ages, and the block of tofu was frozen solid. I thawed and cooked it, but the freezing had made the texture strange and spongy. That wouldn't be a problem, except the sponginess allowed it to soak up way more of the teriyaki sauce than I had expected, making it a bit stronger-flavored than I like. So - don't let your tofu freeze, and if you do don't marinate it for very long.
On the other side I have mango and jackfruit, the flavors and textures of which differ more than the colors, and banana bread.
(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 529: Meatloaf is an adjective |
[Mar. 21st, 2008|08:37 pm] |
 New food I learn to make! Meatloaf! Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball, but I've never made meatloaf before. Good meatloaf is gooood. What I made on my first try, and of which you see a cupcake-sized serving in this picture, is good, but my Mom gave me some suggestions to make it better, so I'm going to hold off on posting an official recipe until I try her ideas.
(But if you really want a quick recipe, here's what I did: take a pound of lean ground beef, an egg, half a cup of breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of rolled sage, and a couple tablespoons of tomato paste. Dice up half an onion real fine. Chop up a few inches of broccoli stalk equally fine. Mix it all together. Put it in a loaf pan, making it about 2 inches deep. Cover it all with tomato sauce or ketchup. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Serve with more ketchup.)
And then there's more stuff: steamed broccoli and baked Purple Peruvian potato, which I'm not sure is actually Peruvian but it sure is purple; some mango; a giant mutant strawberry that I couldn't bear to cut up; and some tamarinds, which are good for freaking out my coworkers.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 412: Georgia peach |
[Aug. 3rd, 2007|07:05 pm] |
 You know you're lazy when you use the recipes printed on food packaging. Well, I got lazy and used the tomato baked whiting recipe I found on the back of a bag of frozen-slabs-o-fish, and it cooked up quickly and tasted quite good, so here it is, served over a bed of zucchini & onion stir-fry. This was actually a good combination to cook, because the zucchini & onion takes just as long to cook as the fish takes to bake. Bung the fish in the oven, stir up the fry, then 20 minutes later serve both up hot.
On the other side I have bulla and a fruit salad made with peach, mango, and blueberries. And some mini-carrots, which I don't normally include because I eat them all day at home - they're my typical munchie - but I needed something for that last little slot in my bento box.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 390: Brown-bagged sushi |
[Jun. 29th, 2007|07:44 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baked japanese sweet potato, baked purple sweet potato, blueberries, box, free-form sushi, fruit salad, futomaki, lychees, mango, marinated stir-fried tofu, sushi | ] |
 Here's a typical end-of-the-week "festival of leftovers" bento. The main items are futomaki and smoked salmon & egg sushi. The futomaki contain masago, egg, shiitake, crab leg, and broccoli stems, and if you look closely at the larger pic you can see that the nori is brown rather than greeny-black. I've seen this cardboard-colored nori many times at the market, and as it was the only nori-suitable-for-sushi that I saw, I finally got some. It's unlovely, but as far as I can tell it tastes the same. Steamed broccoli takes up the extra space at the top.
And now, the leftovers! Baked Japanese sweet potato, baked purple sweet potato, and marinated, stir-fried tofu. I collect good leftovers. One weird thing - the tofu has gotten lighter in color, but the flavor of the marinade is just as strong. I suspect that it's just soaking in deeper... or something. Finally, there's a fruit salad made with mango, lychees, and blueberries.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 387: Inauthentic noodles |
[Jun. 25th, 2007|09:05 pm] |
 Normally I do experimental cooking on the weekends. I had plans for things to try on Sunday, but then a chronic condition acted up and left me without the energy or desire to cook food. Saturday's leftovers to the rescue!
Here's some jjol myeon (Korean spicy chewy noodles) with vegetables. I don't know the proper way to cook jjol myeon - the packaging is no help to this non-Korean-reading person, and I haven't found any website that could tell me much more than "noodles with vegetables." So, I cooked it pretty much the same way I cook yakiudon: pull veggies and other likely things out of the fridge (in this case lotus rootlets, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli stems, red cabbage, yellow squash, and snow peas), stir-fry them, then dump the cooked noodles in and stir-fry them a little more. Lately I haven't even been stir-frying things properly - I've been simmering them in shiitake-infused water, which adds some nice flavor and leaves out the oil calories. Oh, I also put some of the spicy sauce on the noodles, but only as much as I could tolerate. The noodles came with two sauce packages. I've used up over half of the noodles and less than a third of one of the sauce packages. Me and my wimpy taste buds.
In front of that I have a rather freaky rainbow rolled omelet. This time I had two cups of egg - one red and one blue - and I alternated between the two to get that stripy look. On the other side there be a peanut mochi, some fresh lychees, and a fruit salad made with mango, grapes, and more grapes.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 368: Barnacles for lunch again? |
[May. 23rd, 2007|08:42 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baked steak fries, blackberries, blueberries, blueberry mochi, box, dried cherries, fruit salad, lotus nuts, mango, mochi, octopus barnacle sushi, red cabbage rice, rice crackers, steamed broccoli, sushi | ] |
 Today's new item is octopus barnacle sushi, There's no barnacles in it; it's a baby octopus set in some rice so that the tentacles sticking out make it look a little like an open barnacle. (Why, yes, I do subscribe to National Geographic. Why do you ask?) By the way, notice the light purple color of the rice? That's not food coloring. On a whim I boiled a leaf of red cabbage to leach out the color, then made rice with the purple water. The rice ended up a pleasing lavender tint, playing well off the color of the octopus's skin. I didn't taste any difference in the rice. I don't know if it gave the rice a cabbagey smell, because I'm anosmic. If you try this, let me know how it turned out.
Then there are some steamed broccoli and baked steak fries in an odd crop circle-ish pattern that I really can't explain. On the other side I have blueberry mochi, rice cracker mix, and a fruit salad made with mango, lotus nuts, blueberries, blackberries, and dried cherries.
(You can still vote for my blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards! You can vote for other cool bento sites like Ss-biggie's blog. You can vote for whatever you want!)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 366: Blackbread |
[May. 21st, 2007|09:45 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | blackberries, blueberry mochi, box, discworld, dried cherries, dwarf bread, fruit salad, lotus nuts, mango, okonomiyaki, pbj, pumpkin cookies, purple cabbage, purple okonomiyaki, steamed broccoli | ] |
 This weekend I tried a variation on okonomiyaki, a fave of mine. Wonder what it'd be like with purple cabbage? The answer: it'd be purple, of course! The cabbage itself tastes a little different, but it went well with the turkey bacon I mixed liberally into the batter and used as a topping. By the way, the batter had turned light blue by the time I made the third cake, but it wasn't noticeable after the cake was cooked.
Sometimes I get too adventurous in the kitchen for my own good. The result is the PBJ on the extreme right. If you don't see it right away, that's because it's on black bread. Dwarf bread, to be exact. If you're a Discworld fan, you already see the problem here! I found a recipe in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, and after translating the British measurements to American 'cause I don't have a kitchen scale (Thank goodness for cooking sites with online calculators!) and tweaking a few things to compensate for the difference in British and American ingredients I gave it a go. And, although it wasn't a completely authentic Dwarfish recipe - they had to change it a little to make it edible for non-Dwarfs - it was really close. I could imagine using it as a weapon in battle. I can't recommend it except as an item of curiosity for Pratchett fans (who already have the cookbook, right?) so I haven't posted a recipe.
The rest of the bento is an exercise in relative normalcy. Steamed broccoli, blueberry mochi, some pumpkin cookies, and a fruit salad made with mango, lotus nuts, blackberries, and dried cherries. By the way, dried cherries are delicious. I could eat them by the double handful.
(And then there's the Blogger's Choice Awards. You can vote for my blog or other cool bento sites like Ss-biggie's blog. I'd like to shoot for 100 votes, but I don't have any ideas for what to do if I meet that goal. Any ideas? Ones that don't involve Dwarf bread?)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 355: Fruitfish |
[May. 4th, 2007|06:34 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | blood orange, box, crab stick meat, fruit salad, kiwi, mango, pineapple cake, raisins, rincewind's potato cakes, steamed broccoli, swedish fish, yaki onigiri | ] |
 It's Friday, which means it's time to get rid of the leftovers! So, here we have many recently-familiar items: steamed broccoli, Rincewind's potato cakes, and yaki onigiri (made with leftover rice). These surround a bit of crab stick meat, which isn't really leftover; I just thought it'd be yummy. On the other side are some raisins which appear to be trying to turn invisible, a piece of storebought pineapple cake, and a fruit salad of mango, kiwi, blood orange segments, and, swimming around like a clownfish in a cluster of anemones, a swedish fish.
The pineapple cake reminds me of Fig Newtons. Take a Fig Newton, use pineapple stuff instead of fig, make the dough sort of shortbready, and make it about twice as thick, and that's what the pineapple cake is like.
((Uh-oh... I'm getting close to 50 votes in the Blogger's Choice awards, which is the threshold at which I will start making blue food. Your vote could make the difference! And while you're at it, why not vote for other bento sites like Ss-biggie's blog? We must bring bento to the masses!)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 354: kiMMMBap |
[May. 3rd, 2007|06:52 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baked purple sweet potato, blood orange, box, edamame, fruit salad, kimbap, kiwi, lotus nuts, maki, mango, pumpkin cookie, steamed broccoli, steamed bun with anko filling, sushi, tuna steak & broccoli maki | ] |
 Okay, the maki here aren't really kimbap - Korean sushi - because the rice isn't seasoned with sesame oil. However, I often make sushi with unvinegared rice, so I suppose this is as authentically kimbap as it is sushi. Whatever! These tuna steak & broccoli maki are made with tuna steak left over from yesterday's meal and some steamed-soft broccoli stems. I aspired to be the first person to put broccoli into sushi, but Google quickly dashed my hopes. I'll have to settle for simply eating something that tastes good.
Keeping the [sushi|kimbap] company is some baked purple sweet potato, steamed broccoli, and a few pods of edamame. On the other side we have a pumpkin cookie, a steamed bun with anko filling, and a fruit salad of mango, kiwi, blood orange segments, and lotus nuts.
The container on the right looks like a face to me. This face, specifically: ;D
(Blogger's Choice Awards! My self-worth is measured in votes! If 50 people vote for me I'll cook blue food. And, hey, why not vote for other bento sites like Ss-biggie's blog? Bento needs more exposure!)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 342: Crouching chicken, hidden flowers |
[Apr. 11th, 2007|07:33 pm] |
 Today's lunch features yakitori over rice. Why haven't I been making yakitori? It's so easy and tasty. I guess I've been so busy being hardcore that I haven't paid attention to the simple elegance of marinated chicken meat impaled on a pointy stick. Anyway, this comes with a side of stir-fried zucchini, which is not incompetently burned as it may seem; I was going for a more seared kind of thing as opposed to a well-oiled stir-fry.
On the other side are a trio of pineapple-stuffed rambutans, the last of the imo kenpi, and a fruit salad of mango and grapes. (Can it be called a fruit salad if it only has two items? Dunno. Is there a strict definition for fruit salad?)
Hey, I got nominated for a Blogger's Choice Award. "Best Food Blog," go figure. Wanna vote for me?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 340: Pseuki yaki at last! |
[Apr. 9th, 2007|08:36 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | blood orange, box, crab rangoons, fruit salad, grapes, imo kenpi, mango, onigiri, pseuki yaki, pumpkin cookie, tangerine | ] |
 You may have thought that I'd never get a recipe together, but after decades of experimentation I finally did! (wild laughter, lightning flashing overhead) I have a recipe for pseuki yaki* that I can share! This is version 1.0 of the recipe, and I plan to tighten it up a little but after making it a few more times.
Keeping the pseuki yaki company are an onigiri and a pair of crab rangoons. Then, on the other side, we gots some imo kenpi- sweetened sweet potato sticks - a pumpkin cookie, and a fruit salad with mango, blood orange segments, tangerine segments, and grapes.
* Pseuki yaki is a family recipe that I have had to backwards-engineer based on decade-old memories and a "recipe card" that is nothing but a list of ingredients. It's called "pseuki yaki" because real "sukiyaki" is something completely different.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 324: Mmm, tentacles. |
[Mar. 16th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
 So I have a lot of leftover rice. Time for fried rice! But with what? Beef? Nah, I'm gonna use what I have for the next try at pseuki yaki. Chicken? That'll take too long to defrost and I'm hungry now. So what won't take too long? Hey! lookit those little Ziplocs of octopus! SOLD!
Wouldn't you know it, what I thought was octopus was actually squid. You know what I'm talking about; you've probably made the same mistake yourself. Oh well, I got extra tentacles in my squid fried rice out of the deal. (Click on the pic to see lots of tentacles. I didn't skimp on the squid!) I fixed the rice as per usual, and added the squid in at the very end and cooked them lightly; squid is easy to overcook and overcooked squid is tough and not too appealing.
There's also the last of the stir-fried asparagus and a fruit salad with mango, baby bananas, strawberries, grapes, and persimmon. I've certainly been in a fruity mood this week, haven't I?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 308: Pink eggs? |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|08:42 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | box, edamame, food coloring, fruit salad, grapes, lychees, mango, mochi, rolled omelet, stir-fried teriyaki tofu, takenoko no sato, tofu | ] |
 Ah, food coloring. There is so much fun contained in those four tiny bottles. It allows one to make things like the shading in the rolled omelet here. I started with a cup of beaten eggs, and made the first layer without coloring. I added a drop of red and made the next later, which was orange. Another drop for a pink layer, and another drop for brighter pink. For contrast, the omelet is resting on a bed of stir-fried teriyaki tofu. Below it is some edamame fresh out of the freezer. On the other side, we got a sesame-seed-covered mochi, a grove of takenoko no sato (chocolate covered bamboo-shoot-shaped cookies), and a fruit salad with mango, grapes, and lychees.
Just for the record, I went to Tomato - another of Atlanta's Japanese groceries - right before making this, and somehow I didn't use a single thing I just bought. Go figure.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 300: Squid & Squash |
[Feb. 9th, 2007|08:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, box, calamari, edamame, fruit salad, kabocha, kashiwa-mochi, lychee, mango, steamed kabocha, tempura, toasted kabocha seeds | ] |
 For my three hundredth bento entry I wanted to cook something all special and hardcore. So, check it out! I've got some calamari (or squid tempura, depending on how you look at it) with a little bottle of tempura sauce. Then there's some steamed kabocha, kabocha being a sweet Japanese squash that looks like a runty, dark green pumpkin. Of course I have some edamame. On the other side I have some toasted kabocha seeds, which were a byproduct of the aforementioned steamed squash. Then there's fruit salad with mango, apple, and lychees, and finally kashiwa-mochi, which is sticky mochi wrapped in an oak leaf.
I cooked for quite a while to make all this, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, This is my first experience with kabocha, and I plan to find more recipes for it. If you find it in the market, give it a try!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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