| Lunch Box 636: Lame and Lamer |
[Mar. 12th, 2009|11:30 pm] |
 I was going for the paintbox look with this lunch. It includes a pair of meatloaf cupcakes, which is simply meatloaf cooked in silicon cups instead of a loaf pan; baked purple potato, which is a purple potato that tastes like a white creamer tater; steamed broccoli, pink orange, and taiyaki.
When I saw that Kroger had some new food like lotus root and purple potatoes, I thought "Cool!" When I saw that they had no prices, I thought "Lame." When the produce clerk had no idea how much the purple potatoes were, I thought "Quite lame." When I went to the self-checkout and they were not in the system I thought "totally lame." When she shrugged and gave me two pounds for 79 cents I thought, "Cool!'
When I went back the next time and found out those potatoes are actually $2.99 a pound... LAME.
(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 596: One Order of Disorder |
[Oct. 20th, 2008|07:42 pm] |
 It was clean-out-the-fridge day, but then every day is clean-out-the-fridge day. I just have to decide which part to clean out. Some of you know what I'm talking about.
Anyhow, here's some maki sushi, baked purple sweet potato, simmered shiitake mushrooms, spinach, orange segments, golden kiwi, and craisins. I tried to make it look kinda jumbled and funky, but now I see that it has my usual semi-pathological, art-college-grad set of patterns and rhythms. Sometimes I think my lunches would come out that way if I put on a blindfold and threw stuff across the room in the general direction of my lunch box. But - hey, look at the sweet potato. Some odd colors there, huh? Parts of it were purple, and parts were whitish. Usually they have some shading on the inside, but it's rarely this pronounced.
(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 561: We have arrived in Greece. |
[May. 29th, 2008|07:54 pm] |
 My mother finally told me how to make Greek chicken! It turns out that I got pretty close when I cooked baked chicken breast last week; I just needed to add a few steps. So, here at last I have my Mom's Greek chicken. It's accompanied by ohitashi (with a little container of mayonnaise), blue country cornbread, a mandarin orange, and some fresh longans.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 558: Garden of Lunch |
[May. 22nd, 2008|09:53 pm] |
 I had just a little too much fun putting this lunch together. I won't give you the background because it might put some of you off your food; let's just say that I was never afraid of creepy-crawlies. So, here's a millipede-like mutant hot dog patrolling a garden of inari-zushi, edamame, steamed broccoli, baked purple sweet potato, mandarin oranges, and grass jelly.
I cut the grass jelly into cubes and soaked them in the syrup from some coconut gel overnight to give them a bit of flavor. It worked, but not as well as I'd have liked - the jelly is still kinda blah - and that stuff is hard to eat with chopsticks!
(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 542: My Mom's Bento Lunch |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|08:26 am] |
 I almost feel like I'm cheating here, although I don't know why. I've got my Mom's pork chops over rice, with the pork chops cut up into bite-sized bits so I won't be hauling a whole pork chop around with my chopsticks. I don't know why that should seem like it's cheating, as I will happily do that with other foods. (Er, cutting them up, not wrangling big chunks of food with my chopsticks.) Maybe it's because it's such a non-Japanese dish. Maybe if I called it 母のポークチョップ it would seem better.
Anyway, on the other side there's some zucchini & onion stir-fry, and orange segments. Those are both fair game for bento, although it would be more authentic if the orange was a mikan.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 537: Colors and shapes |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|10:21 pm] |
 The food in this lunch isn't anything particularly groundbreaking, but I sure went to town on the geometrical aspect of it, didn't I? All those colors and shapes, it looks like a toddler's activity board. Got some pigs in blankets, no-winged ones this time. Got both baked sweet potato and baked purple sweet potato, because I happen to like sweet potato. Got boiled spinach with a container of mayo. Got orange slices and grapes. Got milk? Fruit2O, but that's not in the picture.
(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 522: Vegan for a day |
[Mar. 3rd, 2008|09:29 am] |
 Whoa. It's finally happened. I've finally packed a vegan lunch. It wasn't by accident, either. I had some boiled eggs, and some carrot & raisin salad (which is made with yogurt) but I decided, nope, it's straight plant matter and fungus today. I can cope with it just to prove I can.
So, this day I ate simmered shiitake mushrooms, baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed broccoli, grapes, and pink orange. And I enjoyed it. I've heard that some call shiitake mushrooms "vegetarian steak," and while that my be taking it a bit far, they do have a substantial taste and texture to 'em.
Tomorrow, back to omnivorosity.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 511: Dragon dog |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|07:48 pm] |
 Today's lunch features a mutant hot dog that looks kind of like a Chinese dragon, or maybe some kind of crawly bug, I don't know. It's served over corn bread, which I made for the first time. It tastes all right, but I'm going to hold off on posting a recipe until I get one I like a little more. Then there's steamed broccoli, and orange and grapefruit segments.
I'm looking for a good cornbread recipe. If you have one you like - that you actually use, not just something you Googled up - please let me know.
(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 462: Three things |
[Nov. 5th, 2007|07:05 pm] |
 This past weekend I got up the energy to make a batch of pseuki yaki. It's a big production, involving boiling soup bones for many hours and prepping the various ingredients. When all is said and done I have a cauldron full of deliciousness, and that is not a small cauldron either, so don't be surprised if you see it again in the near future.
Ahem! Anyway, here's pseuki yaki over rice and a pair of satsumas. I wanted something for dessert that wouldn't get all contaminated by the pseuki yaki juice (even though the rice should keep that under control, but still...) and I just happened to have this big box of satsumas (AKA mikans, AKA mandarin oranges) that I acquired on my first-ever trip to Trader Joe's.
(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 434: Fishy fishy fish |
[Sep. 19th, 2007|09:45 am] |
 Today's lunch has no theme that I can identify. Not that that's ever slowed me down before, so never mind. Ahem - here's some grilled whiting a la Foreman (whiting wrapped in tinfoil to hold in the juice and cooked on a George Foreman grill) over couscous made with oden broth, yay recycling! Feeling that to be a bit visually dull, I decorated it with some baby carrot curls. For a green veg I packed some steamed broccoli, but I didn't have quite enough, so I filled it out with edamame. Dessert is a few orange segments and a trying-to-be-invisible mochi.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 429: By Arrangement |
[Sep. 10th, 2007|09:04 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | blueberries, boiled egg, box, fruit kebabs, grapes, mini-pita sandwiches, orange, palm seeds, pita sandwiches, simmered shiitake mushrooms, steamed japanese sweet potato, steamed purple sweet potato, stir-fried cabbage | ] |
It's all in the presentation Wow. This lunch is quite an eclectic mix of "whatever I had in my fridge." Mini-pita chicken sandwiches, each of which is a little bit of chicken smeared with mayo, wrapped in a lettuce leaf, and stuffed into half a mini-pita shell. I have a boiled egg (which spent some time getting acquainted with my star-shaped egg mold) on stir-fried cabbage which is bordered by simmered shiitake mushrooms. Then there's steamed Japanese sweet potato and steamed purple sweet potato, and finally fruit kebabs served on a few orange slices.
Lately the sweet potatoes I've been buying have been kind of dry, so this time I tried slicing them into 1/2" thick coins and steaming them instead of baking them. The result is as you'd expect: moister, differently textured, but tasting the same. Sure doesn't look as pretty, though! I stuck the fruit on toothpick-sized bamboo skewers after thinking that the grapes and berries and such reminded me of the gems in "Columns" (an old Sega Genesis game) and thus they would look pretty impaled in groups of three on wooden stakes. Er... well, you know what I mean.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 419: Spam attack |
[Aug. 15th, 2007|08:06 pm] |
 I would have posted this lunch yesterday, but I was ill yesterday, so this lunch sat in my fridge, alone and uneaten. (I make my lunches the night before and store 'em in my fridge overnight. Or over two nights, as the case may be.)
Anyhow, here be some Spam musubi, always a treat. The zucchini & onion stir-fry is a little unusual in that I didn't peel the zucchini as I normally would. It alters the flavor and texture a bit but, what the heck, there's nutrition and stuff in the skin - there has to be, it's dark green - and I was in the mood to keep the nutrition in. Then some light-fried plantain chips, bulla, and finally orange segments.
I should have known I was going to call in sick when I packed the orange segments. Whenever I'm unwell I develop a craving for orange. Orange tastes like health itself. You know those magic healing potions in video games? Orange juice.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 413: Recycling is good. |
[Aug. 6th, 2007|09:27 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, banana bread, blueberries, box, craisins, edamame, fruit salad, hunter's stew, oden, orange, second stew | ] |
 The main item in today's lunch is a strange hybrid of oden and hunter's stew. The last time I made oden I used light soy sauce, which is much saltier than the regular stuff. It wasn't so bad when I was eating the chunky stuff, but the broth itself - whew, salty! So, when I finished the solid bits I thinned out the broth to half strength with water and threw in a bunch of veggies and stuff - potatoes, quail eggs, squash, cabbage, carrots, shiitake, seafood medley - and basically made a second stew. It turned out good.
I have the some of my usual staples: edamame and a fruit salad made with apple, orange, craisins, and blueberries. And I also have banana bread, which I baked for the first time ever this weekend and it turned out just perfect. I was really impressed with how easy and delicious it is. I love it when new dishes turn out so well!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 399: Homemader than usual |
[Jul. 16th, 2007|07:47 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baby bananas, bly, box, edamame, french bread, fruit salad, garden, grapes, hoddeuk, kool-aid pickles, lychees, orange, red grapes, spongebob edamame | ] |
 Today's lunch starts with a turkey-bacon BLT on French bread. I baked the bread myself, of course, and this time around I'm making it with tomato grown in my own garden! This is the first tomato of the year for me. You can't see it, but it's there. Oh, you may notice that the French bread is a little bubblier-looking than usual. I tried adding a few extra tablespoons of water, and that makes a softer dough that rises more. I like the resulting light bread.
Then there's a package of... Spongebob Squarepants edamame. When I saw that in the grocery freezer I snickered. What does Spongebob have to do with soybeans?! But, what the heck, it was the cheapest edamame per ounce, so I bought it. On the other side I have some Kool-Aid pickles and a fruit salad made with baby bananas, orange segments, lychees, and red grapes. And, finally, I have some hoddeuk, which is a Korean pancake stuffed with cinnamony brown sugar and walnuts. I've packed that before, but that was storebought, and this is homemade. And easy to make. And gonna be part of my regular repertoire, I predict.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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