| 646: The Naked Lunch |
[May. 20th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
 Sometimes I have leftovers before I even finish cooking. That is the source of my "inspiration" for today's naked gyoza. I ran out of wrappers before I ran out of filling, so I meatballed the rest and fried them up. Since gyoza wrappers are noodly I served these over udon noodles. On the other side I have miscellaneous stir-fried vegetables with some tonkatsu sauce (which also seasoned the noodles), simmered shiitake mushrooms, and light-fried plantains.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 644: I'm not dead yet. |
[May. 8th, 2009|10:06 pm] |
 Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. This is due to 1) my vacation, which was my birthday present to myself, and 2) being overloaded in real life and not having much energy for cooking. I've been packing bento lunches, but they haven't been interesting enough to blog about. I'm working on some new stuff that ought to be worth posting, though.
Anyway! Here I have a boiled egg - wow, I'm starting right back in with the fancy cookin', ain't I? - simmered shiitake mushrooms, baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed broccoli, and a banana bread muffin. By the way, I made a dozen of these things and brought the other 10 in to the office. (Had to test one beforehand to make sure it wasn't poisonous. You know how it is.) It's gratifying when goodies disappear as fast as these did.
(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 595: Candy-box Bento |
[Oct. 17th, 2008|09:45 pm] |
 Normally when I pack a lunch I make patterns with the food. No real reason why except that I like pretty, symmetrical designs. This time I decided to avoid that, and instead pack it so it looked as chaotic as possible without being a true mess. The maki sushi, steamed sugar snap peas, baked Japanese sweet potato, baked purple sweet potato, simmered shiitake mushrooms, and mochi are integrated to make a delicious little mosh pit.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 590: Red pickles |
[Oct. 1st, 2008|11:15 pm] |
 This is a confused lunch. It doesn't know if it is decent healthy American or Japanese food, or American or Japanese junk food.
Here I have some okonomiyaki, made on a day when I didn't have much in the way of toppings and fillings - so, what the heck, I cut up some turkey bacon and mixed it in. Result: good! (The little container is filled with okonomiyaki sauce, of course.) Then there's the everpresent steamed broccoli and some simmered shiitake mushrooms that think they look classy. And next to the Kool-Aid pickles they actually do. Finally, I have apple slices and almond jelly for dessert.
If you pack almond jelly in your bento lunch, don't expect to be able to eat it with chopsticks. That way lies madness, not to mention humor if anyone sees you. Pack a little fork or toothpick or something you can skewer those slippery bits with.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 567: Sushi or not |
[Jun. 12th, 2008|07:49 pm] |
 When is sushi not sushi? When it's Spam musubi. Technically, the difference is that sushi rice is seasoned with vinegar, salt, and sugar - "sushi" (鮨) means "vinegared rice" - but I often get lazy and use unseasoned rice to make sushi. (Shh, don't tell anyone.) Anyway, here I have three pieces of Spam musubi and two pieces of unagi-zushi, the latter made with some of the recent batch of unagi no kabayaki. Then there's steamed snow peas, simmered shiitake mushrooms, spaghetti squash with a little container of yakisoba sauce, and a taro mochi.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 566: Extra tentacles |
[Jun. 10th, 2008|08:03 pm] |
 The main part of today's lunch is one of my favorite easy-to-make dishes, okonomiyaki. If you zoom in on that picture you can see what looks like earthworms on top of it - those are squid tentacles. When making the recent batch of calamari I cut the longer tentacles off so they wouldn't tangle when I cooked them, and they ended up as a topping here.
I also have calamari, simmered shiitake mushrooms, steamed broccoli, and dorayaki. The dorayaki - a pancake sandwich with sweet red bean paste in the middle - was made with regular Aunt Jemima pancake mix. So inauthentic, but also so quick & easy to make.
(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 552: Bits and Bobs |
[May. 9th, 2008|09:57 pm] |
 Another end of the week, another catch-all lunch!
On the top left I have some omurice. There's two layers, and if you look between the pieces you can see the ketchup I sandwiched in there oh so cleverly. Going counterclockwise, there's simmered shiitake mushrooms, homemade takoyaki, baked purple sweet potato, some Lotte cookies, and steamed breadfruit.
Have you ever made takoyaki? Once you get the hang of it, it's easy and kind of fun, and if the idea of eating octopus bugs you, you can substitute shrimp. I experimented with this batch by adding a teaspoon of baking powder to the batter. The result was lighter & puffier takoyaki.
I don't know what kind of cookies they are. The brand is Lotte, and they're little hamburger-shaped cookies with a bit of chocolate inside. On the outside of them are little images, including a character that makes me think of a Sanrio-ized Charlie Brown. I've done some Web research and come up with nothing. Gee, wish I'd saved the package. Edit: Those are Kancho cookies. Thanks to those who replied and E-mailed me to set me straight!
(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 523: Broccoli beef |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|07:39 pm] |
 I likes me some beef & broccoli stir-fry, which is why I packed it for lunch. Nice how that works out, isn't it? In fact, a lot of the things I cook just happen to be things I also like to eat. Among them are rice, simmered shiitake mushrooms, baked purple sweet potato, and an manjuu.
An manjuu are steamed sweetened things, somewhere between bread and cake, with anko (sweet red bean paste) in the center. Out of the last batch I made I brought most of it to a get-together with some friends. They compared them to fig newtons. Now that took me by surprise.
(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 518: Back on the grill again |
[Feb. 26th, 2008|08:14 pm] |
 I'm recovering from my recent double-match with the cold, so now I'm doing some decent cooking. Here's some grilled chicken, which I cooked wrapped in tinfoil. That keeps it juicy and tender, but it almost eliminates the grill marks. It's served on mustard greens ohitashi, which is basically mustard greens rolled into cigars and sliced into maki-sized cylinders. To the side is a little container of mayonnaise because that's how I eat my greens, especially mustard greens, which taste like a condiment that I don't keep in my kitchen. Then there are some simmered shiitake mushrooms and lavender rice, the latter of which is made with water left over from my recent purple sweet potato pie. (It's made with water reserved from the potato-boiling stage, and thus tastes slightly sweet.) Finally, I have some orange segments, grapes, and pomegranate seeds.
My, it feels nice to once more have the energy to do real cooking!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 477: These are the beans that never end |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|10:16 pm] |
 Long beans sure are long. If I hadn't cut them in half they would have gone all the way around the box! And if you thought those long-long noodles were difficult to eat without getting sloppy, well...
Anyway! Today I have Spam musubi made with some more pink beet rice. Pink Spam, pink rice - it's like an edible Valentine's Day. And I have pork & shrimp dumplings alternating with simmered shiitake mushrooms, because I thought that the sauce I simmered the mushrooms in would add a nice flavor to the dumplings. I have the aforementioned steamed long beans, whose unwieldiness is more than balanced by their neatoness. Finally, I have a half moon rice cake, and if that bean thinks it can sneak a bite, it has another think coming.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 476: Can't beet that |
[Dec. 3rd, 2007|07:09 pm] |
 Today's lunch starts with grilled chicken on plain ol' boiled spinach, and simmered shiitake mushrooms. Then there's rice that is all funky and pink, not with food coloring, but because I put some beet juice in the water. Most people play with their food when it's on their plate; I get it out of my system while it's still on the stove. Finally, in the cover I've stashed some caramel Pretz, and in the little container at the top I have some mayonnaise for the spinach. Yeah, I eat my spinach with mayo. That's how I roll, baby.
(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 415: Mutant eggs |
[Aug. 8th, 2007|08:17 pm] |
 This meal's Mad Scientist Creation is simmered quail eggs in a nest of steamed broccoli. Well, the broccoli is ordinary; it's the quail eggs that are kind of weird. I had some left over from when I made oden, and canned quail eggs are... not a spectacular taste sensation. So what could I do to improve them? I had some leftover teriyaki sauce in the fridge, so I simmered the eggs in that. The result was quite nice! I'd try it with regular eggs, except it'd take plenty of teriyaki for one of those.
I also have simmered shiitake mushrooms - simmered in with the eggs, as a matter of fact - rice with umeboshi, and banana bread. That's the heel of a loaf, and it is dark brown as opposed to black. Ah, the wonderful lighting in my kitchen!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 384: Return of the Fruit Salad Monster |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|07:41 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, baked japanese sweet potato, blue food, blue omurice, blueberry mochi, box, fruit salad, grapes, lychees, mochi, omurice, persimmon, pink lady apple, simmered shiitake mushrooms, tamarind | ] |
 Guess what? The Blue Food Thing is still going. I got home an hour late last evening due to foul weather and the resultant foul traffic, hungry and in the mood for comfort food. As I already had rice, it took little time to make up a batch of omurice... and, hey, why not add some blue food coloring to make blue omurice? That helped snap me out of my foul mood. So did the egg I used to make the omurice, which was a double-yolker. I felt like I'd somehow gotten a little bonus.
I also have baked Japanese sweet potato and simmered shiitake mushrooms, and on the other side blueberry mochi, some tamarinds, and a fruit salad made with pink lady apple, persimmon, grapes, and lychees. Mmmm.
Not pictured: Wendy's ketchup packets. Hey, they always give me more of those than I need, and I don't like wasting even small things like condiments. Plus, it saves me the trouble of cleaning out little sauce containers.
(Blogger's Choice thingie. Vote for my blog if you want. Vote for other bento blogs like Ss-biggie's blog if you want.)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 383: All the veggies of the rainbow |
[Jun. 18th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
 WI spent all weekend judging auditions, which didn't leave a lot of time for cooking. But there's always time for noodle & veggie dishes! So here's some yakiudon-style vegetable noodles with broccoli, snow peas, red cabbage (which looks quite bluish!), and carrots. How's that for colorful? It's also especially flavorful and low-calorie, because I didn't fry anything in oil. Rather, I simmered it in some of the water I saved from the last time I soaked shiitake mushrooms. I had to keep adding more in, a tablespoon or two every five or so minutes, but I really like the result.
I also have baked Japanese sweet potato, simmered shiitake mushrooms, and some fresh lychees. Looks like lychees are in season again! YUM!
(Blogger's Choice thingie. Vote for my blog if you want. Vote for other bento blogs like Ss-biggie's blog if you want.)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 380: The spice of life |
[Jun. 12th, 2007|08:38 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | baby corn, baked japanese sweet potato, blue food, blue okonomiyaki, blueberry mochi, box, crab rangoon, mochi, okonomiyaki, simmered shiitake mushrooms, steamed green beans | ] |
 Whoa. That's a lot of different stuff in there. Would you believe it actually took me only a few minutes to assemble? Everything here was already cooked previously and set aside for bento purposes. There's blue okonomiyaki - yep, I'm still making with the blue food! with okonomiyaki sauce in a blue container. I also have steamed green beans, baby corn, baked Japanese sweet potato, simmered shiitake mushrooms, a crab rangoon, and blueberry mochi.
That is one serious party in my bento box.
(Blogger's Choice thingie. Vote for my blog if you want. Vote for other bento blogs like Ss-biggie's blog if you want.)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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