| Lunch Box 576: Foodstuffs |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|07:30 pm] |
 Some of my lunches are more leftover-ish than others. This is one of those. I have chicken & vegetable yakisoba,with a little yellow container of yakisoba sauce. (the wheel-like thing is lotus root.) On the other side I have baked sweet potato - the regular kind, not the purple kind, for once! - steamed green beans, and purple imo-yokan, which is a dessert made with purple sweet potatoes.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| 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.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 510: Burgertime! |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|06:46 pm] |
 Sometimes you want funky, exotic foods, and sometimes you want something ordinary. So, here we have an ordinary miniature ham burger. That's two words, because it's made with ground pork rather than ground beef. It's served on a homemade cafeteria roll bun because I am that hardcore. And there's baked potato sprinkled with cheddar cheese popcorn topping, steamed green beans, an onigiri, and a bit of almond cake.
Except for the beans, this was pretty much a finger-food lunch. I kind of felt that I should have put in some corn on the cob too.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 509: Albino hedgehogs |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|07:29 pm] |
 Recently someone requested that I make some pearl meatballs. Now, I cook what I wanna cook - ain't nobody the boss of me but ME! But, on the other hand, pearl meatballs are tasty. So, here ya go. Or here I go, actually. On the side are steamed green beans, dried cherries, and chocolate chip melon pan.
This past weekend I went to a potluck at a friend's house. I bought home-baked French bread and a batch of the above chocolate chip melon pan. They liked 'em, the melon pan especially. I'd say melon pan are pretty good party food. A little exotic, but not enough so that it'll put anyone off.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| 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. |
|
|
| Lunch Box 488: Christmas tempura |
[Dec. 27th, 2007|07:31 pm] |
 Today's lunch is pretty basic, if you ignore how I turned my kitchen into a war zone to make it. I have tempura - the source of the carnage - with yellow squash, shiitake, Japanese sweet potatoes, carrots, and shrimp, plus a little bottle of Kikkoman tempura sauce. I have steamed green beans because after having oil and breadcrumbs splattering everywhere I needed something non-oily that I could cook on the back burner, and a satsuma 'cause by the time I packed this lunch I wasn't up to anything more complex than shoving a piece of fruit into the corner.
This tempura brought back some memories for me. The first time I ever tasted Japanese sweet potato was when a pair of friends took me to the sushi bar at the Happy Sumo, and one shared a bit of her tempura side dish with me. I had no idea what the tasty, slightly sweet, soft-but-not-mushy thing I was eating was. Only later, after I baked a Japanese sweet potato, did I recognize it.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 410: Oden is still good. |
[Aug. 1st, 2007|06:49 pm] |
 Hmm, it's been a while since I've used my little blue "moon usagi" bento. Well, here it is, bearing its load of lunch. Left to right and counterclockwise, because I feel like being confusing, I have selected highlights of my recent batch of oden over broth-cooked bean thread noodles. Since I ended up with so much broth in this batch of oden, I simply heated some of that up and cooked the bean thread in it to give it extra flavor. It worked nicely! Then I have Spam musubi with steamed green and wax beans, cherries, and honey & milk Pocky.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 407: ReBoot! |
[Jul. 26th, 2007|08:30 pm] |
 Click-click! Today I have a trio of onigiri made to look like ReBoot icons. I'm a longtime, hardcore booter, and I felt particularly motivated by recent news, see below. The Guardian (yellow) icon has a bit of thin omelet on top, and the viral (green) one has some.. er, green egg on top. Then there are some off-the-skewer tsukune, steamed green beans (from my coworker Maria's garden!) fresh lychees, bulla, and chocolate dipped cherries.
Totally off-topic: if you're a ReBoot fan too, guess what - Rainmaker Entertainment, the company that bought Mainframe, wants to bring it back! Zeros2heroes has much more info.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 403: Brown-bagged Spam |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|07:00 pm] |
 Recently I ran out of nori and had to get more. The only sushi-type nori I saw at 99 Ranch Market was brown, not blackish-green. So, I got some of this weird nori, and here it is, covering slabs of Spam musubi like plain brown wrappers on the magazines in the highest rack. Weird, eh? But as far as I can tell it tastes pretty much the same, if it's not as attractive. Then there are chicken flavored lotus slices, a pork & shrimp dumpling, and steamed green beans. On the other side I have a merry mix of grapes, cherries, and lychees.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 402: Some more |
[Jul. 19th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
 I'm in the mood to pack lunches that include lots and lots of different things. This may look like a festival of leftovers, but actually I planned it this way. So, here we have chibi pita pizza (with a single pepperoni and olive), crab-topped sushi, steamed green beans, fried green tomatoes (with tartar sauce sandwiched in between them), flavored lotus slices (simmered in chicken broth, to be precise), jjol myeon (Korean spicy chewy noodles) with chicken & vegetables, cherries, and a microwave s'more.
I wasn't sure the tiny pita pizza thing was going to work. Those little pitas aren't a flat as their larger cousins. But, hey, they came out fine, and they're the perfect size for a bento box. As for the s'more, why have I not made those before? I've had graham crackers, chocolate melts, and mini-marshmallows on hand forever! You'd think I'd be smart enough to realize the possibilities before now, wouldn't you? Sheez, you'd think I'd completely forgotten my childhood.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 401: Green! |
[Jul. 18th, 2007|07:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | bacon and egg sandwich, banano split, box, cherries, french bread, fried green tomatoes, green french bread, mochi, peanut mochi, steamed green beans, storebought pork & shrimp dumplings | ] |
 I got green with today's lunch. See the French bread? It's green, not blue. I think it's a pretty color, even appetizing. Hidden underneath are the additional elements which transform mere bread into a bacon and egg sandwich. Since the egg was actually part of an omelet, it has the additional plus of being full of crab stick meat, which is what I made the omelet with. Bacon, egg, and crab sammitch. Mmm.
There's more green, of course. Most obvious are the steamed green beans, and on the subtler side I also have fried green tomatoes, made with tomatoes from my own garden. (That's the only way I can get thoroughly green tomatoes!) However, the storebought pork & shrimp dumplings, cherries, and peanut mochi are not green at all. Shame on them.
And on a totally non-bento-related topic, I present to you last night's dessert: a Banano Split.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 394: Hardcore leftovers |
[Jul. 6th, 2007|09:36 pm] |
 Friday means leftovers! And, whew, did I ever generate enough of those this week. You know the situation is critical when you tell yourself "no more cooking this week!" (And then you go ahead and cook a little something anyway 'cause you find something that just needs to be cooked.)
Anyhow! Here's some yakisoba bordered by a fish fillet (the fish is kind of hard to see; it's between the yakisoba and everything else), homemade takoyaki (that I made in a big batch, froze against future need, and have been eating a few at a time ever since), steamed green beans, light-fried plantain chips, and chocolate dipped strawberries.
Does dipping strawberries in chocolate qualify as cooking?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 392: From the garden |
[Jul. 3rd, 2007|07:33 pm] |
 Today's lunch is sponsored by my coworker Maria, whose garden produced the squash and beans here. When are my plants going to start puttin' out, huh?
Here's some yakisoba with a little of everything I could find thrown in. What's in the fridge? crab legs, lotus root, snow peas, zucchini and yellow squash, broccoli, onion, carrots, shiitake and regular mushrooms, and I forget what else. It's a great way to use up stuff. The only problem is that I tend to use so much stuff that I can barely stir it all In my deep pan. But I persevered, and the result was lots of noodles and vegetables. No oil, however - I simmered this in shiitake water to add flavor and save on calories.
And then there's some baked sweet potato and steamed green beans. What's up with the yellow beans? There were a few of those mixed in with the regular greenies. They look and taste just the same. Maria didn't know where they came from, so I suspect Gregor Mendel may have snuck into her garden at night. Finally, there are some rice crackers, which are lighter and puffier than the usual hard ones, so that little box contains very few calories.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| 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.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 378: That Fearful Symmetry |
[Jun. 8th, 2007|07:12 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | arare, baby octopus sushi, blue food, blue takoyaki, boiled egg, box, cacao pretz, gyoza, hantako sushi, pretz, rice crackers, sesame crisp flakes, steamed green beans, sushi, takoyaki | ] |
 Friday! Leftover day! Some leftovers are more leftover than others. I made the beef gyoza months ago, and froze a batch before cooking for future use. Well, the future has arrived. Between them is a pair of hantako sushi, which is a fancy way of saying baby octopus sushi made with only half an octopus each. I figured that was the best way to display the pretty way the tentacles are curled up. Down below that are blue takoyaki, steamed green beans, and a boiled egg, Off to the right I have rice crackers hiding below Sesame Crisp Flakes. The latter are... well, they're kind of like peanut brittle, but made with black sesame seeds. Sweet and munchy, despite their looking like roofing. Finally, not pictured here, I stuck some cacao Pretz in the chopstick space between the lid to the upper compartment and the top lid.
(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.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 377: Keeping it simple |
[Jun. 7th, 2007|08:09 pm] |
 Like my new box? It's a Lock & Lock I snagged at 99 Ranch. Watertight, dishwasher & microwave safe, removable inner containers, decent size, $4. Gimme!
And inside this box are gyuudon (AKA "beef bowl," for you Urusei Yatsura fans), steamed green beans, and baked purple sweet potato. The gyuudon was a bit of a fluke. I was planning to make broccoli beef, and was thumbing through my stack of unorganized recipe printouts when I found my gyuudon page. Hmm, that'll use the beef & onion too, and I haven't made that in how long, and it cooks fast. Yeah! And I made it, and it was good. Too bad it doesn't photograph all that well. 'Tis the fault of the photographer, not the subject.
(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.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 376: Revenge of the blue food |
[Jun. 6th, 2007|07:40 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, baked purple sweet potato, blue food, blue takoyaki, boiled egg, box, dwarf bread, dwarf melba toast, fruit salad, lychee, persimmon, pink lady apple, steamed green beans, swedish fish, takoyaki | ] |
 Bet you thought I was done with the blue food. Hah! I made a batch of 3 dozen octopus balls on Monday, and the last dozen turned out like the ones pictured here. So, add blue takoyaki to the list of blue foods. (They also have red cabbage inside 'em, adding a purple tinge.)
In an astonishing break from the usual broccolifest, I have steamed green beans. Then there's a boiled egg and some baked purple sweet potato. On the other side I have a little container for mayo for the takoyaki, some Swedish fish (I had to fill that little empty space somehow), Dwarf melba toast, and a fruit salad made with pink lady apple, persimmon, and lychees.
I have not posted a recipe for Dwarf melba toast because I haven't posted a recipe for Dwarf bread. The reason for that is that I don't want people thinking I'm actually recommending it. It looks like granite, and... well, I haven't broken a tooth on it yet. You can find the recipe in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook if you're really determined to bake it. To make Dwarf melba toast, slice the Dwarf bread really thin and toast it on low heat several times, turning to heat it evenly. You don't want to brown it, just dry it out a bit.
(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.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 267: Another lunch |
[Dec. 11th, 2006|08:44 pm] |
 Yeah, that's a pretty lousy title. I need to plan my lunches out so they have a unifying theme I can make up a snappy title for.
Anyway, today's lunch includes omurice (ketchup packets not pictured), takoyaki, and steamed green beans. On the other side is a fruit salad with apple, persimmon, and mangosteen, and almond cake. Mangosteen, the white fruit in the right half of the box, is a kind of cool-looking fruit that we in the US are unlikely to get fresh because of import restrictions. (It would be bad if the Asian fruit fly got over here, y'know.) It's called "The queen of tropical fruit," but it's hard to tell why after it's been soaking in heavy syrup.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 266: Miscellaneous sushi |
[Dec. 11th, 2006|08:41 pm] |
 This lunch started out with free-form sushi. I didn't have a lot of the traditional sushi ingredients, so I used what was on hand: shiitake mushrooms, avocado, omelet strips, and ikura. I mixed up some teriyaki sauce from the stir-fried teriyaki chicken recipe and used it for marinade to make stir-fried teriyaki tofu. Then there's some more steamed green beans, some baked plantain, edamame, and longans and persimmon slices.
I brought a persimmon to the office and gave it to a coworker (the one I've mentioned several times before - she named this site's shrimp mascot and gave me Spanish cheese). That persimmon got a lot of attention from various people in the office. It was like show and tell!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 265: Finally, some sushi! |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|08:53 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, avocado maki, box, fruit salad, longans, mayonnaise, persimmon, shiitake maki, steamed green beans, sushi, takoyaki | ] |
 You know I'm finally out from under the pile of leftovers when I make sushi. I've been wanting to make some for a while, but somehow it just kept not happening. Well, here are some avocado maki and shiitake maki. Yum! Then there are takoyaki, steamed green beans, and a fruit salad with apple, persimmon, and longans. I packed some mayo for the takoyaki, but it's not picture here because... well, it's a leftover Chick-fil-a packet, and those aren't terribly photogenic. But waste not, want not, right?
I didn't have the time to make more elaborate sushi because yesterday was a bit too eventful for my tastes. Among the events were: my mother breaking her ankle, my TV blowing out, 6 hours of baking, a trip to 99 Ranch Market, a cast meeting, and the process of buying and installing a new TV. By the end of the day rolling a few simple maki was about as much as I could manage!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mylunch's journal
