| Lunch Box 648: Let Me Eat Cake |
[May. 28th, 2009|07:21 pm] |
 It's been a while since I made salmon saka-mushi. It still is, as I didn't have salmon, but the tilapia I substituted tastes just fine. Basically, this is fish and mushrooms and spring onions and carrots and snow peas, all steamed together in a tinfoil package until they're nice and juicy. Up above it I have avocado maki and, joy of joys, baked purple sweet potato. However, the market only had these skinny little things. "They're taking the babies!" I thought when I saw them. But I still got a few because I've been suffering from purple potato withdrawal.
On the other side I have a mandarin orange, strawberries, a few cherries, and a dried persimmon, which is more or less a persimmon that's been raisined, but instead of wrinkling up it is squashed into a flat ring. And I have a slice of pound cake made from a recipe my sister gave me. It's awesome, and easy to make if you have an electric mixer. If, like me, you don't, your arm will get a workout.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| 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 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 627: "It's cool in Hawaii!" |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|09:23 pm] |
 Today's lunch is all about the tropics, where I wish I could be, especially when I'm standing around in a windchill below zero Fahrenheit waiting for a bus. Here's some Spam musubi, which is to Hawaii what hot dogs are to the US, or so my Hawaiian friends would have me believe. Then I have steamed snow peas and marinated, stir-fried tofu, which are not all that tropical, I suppose, but they bring to mind distant places which are likely to be less bloody cold than Georgia was this morning. Then there's some tropic-ish kumquats, strawberries, pink grapefruit, coconut, and a yates apple.
It's not a luau in my box, but I'll take what I can get. Or pack.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 626: Saved by the Chicken |
[Feb. 4th, 2009|08:16 pm] |
 It's been nasty down here in the southeastern US. One day the low will be zero degrees Fahrenheit after you figure in the wind chill, and a few days later the high will be in the sixties. I just can't get used to this yoyoing around. It saps my energy, so when I drag myself in my front door I'm rarely in the mood to get creative in the kitchen, which is why I haven't been posting as frequently as usual lately. I've been packing bentos, but who needs to see my sandwiches day after day?
Last time I went by Kroger after work they had some rotisserie chickens on sale. It was cold and drizzly outside, I was tired and cranky, and tender hot herbed chickens for less than a fiver each appeared before me. I didn't even try to resist. So - here I have some roast chicken, light-fried plantain; a cafeteria roll, strawberries, pink grapefruit, and mochi. The plantain was from a batch I cooked over the weekend, and the roll was intended to be a hot dog bun, but it ended up kinda runty.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 625: Snow meatballs |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|11:21 pm] |
 A while ago I posted about the rice I'd bought, which is uber-short-grained, practically rice beads, and uber-sticky. It sticks to everything! Well, I found the exception: it doesn't stick as much to pearl meatballs. The ones here actually show some bald spots. Despite the blemish of exposed meat, they were still delicious.
I also have baked sweet potato - not purple? I don't know what got into me either - spinach with mayonnaise and strawberries.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 624: Spheres Themselves |
[Jan. 26th, 2009|09:01 pm] |
 Happy Chinese New Year! I didn't realize it until it was too late, so I don't have a single thing appropriate for the occasion in my lunch. Oh well. I do have homemade takoyaki, baked purple sweet potato balls, steamed snow peas, strawberries, and kumquats. Even if it's not very seasonal, it's still pretty hardcore, I'd say.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 623: Applet |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|10:41 pm] |
 My whole office spent lunchtime in the conference room, watching the inauguration. And In that spirit I present an all-American bento: meatloaf, baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed snow peas, strawberries, persimmon, and a yates apple.
Check out that little bitty apple! It's only about an inch and a half high by about 2.5 inches in diameter. I suppose it says something about me that the first thing I thought when I saw these was "chibi apples!"
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 622: Sebastian for lunch |
[Jan. 14th, 2009|09:27 pm] |
 I loves me some snow crab. It's very rare - as in never - that I and up with any left over, but somehow I saved two claws for lunch. They look lovely, don't they? The only problem with putting them in a bento box is that you can't exactly pick them up daintily with a pair of chopsticks. You have to break into 'em. And when it comes to crab, I have the table manners of Henry the 8th. So, it's a good thing I eat in my office, where there are no witnesses.
I also have yaki onigiri, some steamed broccoli, and some baked purple sweet potato. On the other side are chunks of breadfruit, strawberries, persimmon, and kumquats. Kumquats, for those not in the know, are like grape-sized oranges, and you et them whole, rind and all. They are also very funny-sounding, which makes them worth buying right there.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 594: Odd things |
[Oct. 13th, 2008|06:59 pm] |
 For some reason I found my fridge blessed with an abundance of fruits & vegetables but very little in the way of protein. It took a few minutes before I hit on a solution to this problem: a boiled egg. Whew, saved from veganism at the last minute!
(You know I'm just kidding. I have nothing but respect for vegans. Please don't hurt me.)
And I also have steamed, butter-fried breadfruit, light-fried plantains, strawberries, almond jelly, fresh longans, and mochi. That's a pretty exotic meal, except for the egg, isn't it? If you live in Atlanta, I recommend you check out the Buford Highway Farmer's Market; lately they've been selling boxes of fresh strawberries for 99 cents. Now you know why they keep turning up in my lunches.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 592: Stir-fry |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|08:52 pm] |
 What do you do when you are making my mom's pork chops and you find you have one more pork chop than will fit on the baking sheet? Simple - make pork & vegetable stir-fry the next day. This batch of stir-fry has shiitake, carrot, lotus root, onion, zucchini, broccoli, and maybe a few other things I'm forgetting right now. I basically wandered through my fridge until I had enough stuff to cook up.
On the other side I have baked purple sweet potato, a strawberry, and a mochi.
By the way, this past weekend I went to my sister's house and introduced her & her family to yakiudon and melon pan. Both were a hit, the former more with the adults and the latter especially with her kids.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 587: Meatloaf in a shell |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|09:27 pm] |
 Today's lunch includes meatloaf gyoza with ketchup, baked purple sweet potato, edamame, and strawberries
Yeah, meatloaf gyoza! I had all the stuff to make meatloaf, but I needed to use up some gyoza wrappers, so I mixed up everything but the breadcrumbs - don't need that filler when I have the gyoza wrappers - and made a batch of gyoza. They came out really well, too, especially when dunked in ketchup. Oh, I used a dumpling press to get those cute ruffled edges.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 586: Hemicircles |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|08:16 pm] |
 This box is a collection of miscellania, yet its variety balances it out, I think. I have crab rangoon gyoza, edamame, steamed broccoli, baked purple sweet potato, omelet, and strawberries. It looks like a festival of leftovers, but surprisingly it isn't. Go figure.
I do like me some purple potatoes.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 585: A bit of Priest |
[Sep. 19th, 2008|09:05 pm] |
 Today I have some meat pie. Normally I make those in a muffin tin so I end up with small pies just ready to be dropped into a bento box, but this time around I had a few preformed crusts to use up, so I made it in a regular pie dish. The result: it tastes just the same, it's just not as handy to pick up in your bare hand. No problem if you're like me and are willing to tear food up with your chopsticks.
Then there's some baked Japanese sweet potato, steamed broccoli, and strawberries. The anko turnovers were a whim, made because I had some pie crust left over after I cut it to the shape of the pie dish. I just mushed it up, rolled it out, and filled it with some anko I had on hand. They turned out quite nicely.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 531: Another big batch |
[Mar. 26th, 2008|09:27 pm] |
 I made a big batch of pseuki yaki, which is like sukiyaki except not. (It's a family recipe which has been called sukiyaki, but is more like a Japanese beef & vegetable & stuff stew. I've tweaked the recipe on my site just a little. I think it's just about perfect now. (Perfect meaning it matches my memories of deliciousness.) It's served with rice, strawberries, and cherries because what else could stand up to it?
No, I have no idea what I meant by that either.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 530: No liver or kee-yanty |
[Mar. 24th, 2008|09:49 pm] |
 Today's color-box meal includes grilled chicken, baked purple potato, sauteed fava beans, some white mountain bread toast, strawberries, and raisins.
Fava beans. When I saw these in the farmer's market I had to grab some, despite my not having any earthly idea what to do with them. I'd heard about them the same way most everyone else has, and I had to see what they were. Simply put, they're beans that come in thick pods, take forever to cook because you have to get them out of the pods and then parboil them and then shell every single bean, and which you can cook like lima beans. These don't have the yuck factor that I remember from lima beans, though. Anyway, I found an easy recipe that involved sauteeing them in garlic butter and went with that.
More purple potatoes! I'm pretty sure those aren't Purple Peruvian potatoes, as I've seen them under several brands in various grocery stores. They seem just to be purple Idaho potatoes, and taste like other mini-spuds.
...I have to admit, I lied about the chicken. That's not technically grilled. After I cooked the beans I had some garlic butter left over in a hot pan and some raw chicken that needed cooking. So, I cut the chicken in half to make it thin enough to pan fry and did just that. The result is pretty much the same, except I didn't have to clean out my grill afterward.
(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 398: Domino |
[Jul. 13th, 2007|07:43 pm] |
 Last night I made some more takoyaki. I varied the recipe and worked on my technique a bit, and I things are improving. I'll keep tweaking the recipe until I'm satisfied with it, then update what's on my site. (The recipe currently posted works fine, but there's room for improvement.) The takoyaki pictured here have little black bits visible because I made them with red cabbage - that's what was in my fridge - and the leaves are so dark they look black. The blue container contains mayonnaise, my usual takoyaki condiment.
Then there's ohitashi, which this time I made without soy sauce because I like spinach better with mayo. And there are slices of baked sweet potato, and strawberries, and peanut mochi.
Nyom nyom.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 397: Not sloppy joe |
[Jul. 11th, 2007|07:51 pm] |
 Lately I've been in the mood to cook by figuring out what I can do with what's already in my fridge rather than starting with a recipe and then getting the items I don't have. This time around I put together some ground beef; basil, garlic & oregano tomato sauce; and cheese dip (I'm embarrassed to admit that I have that stuff in my fridge) to make... well, I don't know what to call it. Ground beef with cheese and tomato sauce? Hmm... how about ground beef salad? Yeah, that'll do. It's one of those handy-flexible things that you can whip up in minutes and serve in a lot of different ways. In this case, I stuffed mini-pitas with it to make mini-pitaburgers.
Then I have the totally-unsurprising steamed broccoli. Below that is lotus root, which this time I didn't cook up fancy. I cut it into coins and parboiled it, so it has its own mild flavor, and a pleasant crunch. On the other side, fresh lychees, strawberries, and almond cake.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 396: A study in textures |
[Jul. 10th, 2007|09:27 pm] |
 Here's some food! Namely yaki onigiri topped with smoked salmon, storebought pork & shrimp dumplings, fried potato skins, edamame, a turnover, and some strawberries.
The turnover is a mystery dessert to me. When I made this batch I used a variety of fillings and deliberately didn't mark the turnovers, so I have no idea what's inside. Cherry? Strawberry? Anko? Nutella? A mixture? Your guess is a good as mine!
By the way, I always see new things then I look at the photos. When I packed this I was just trying to put together a more-or-less balanced lunch with a variety of compatible flavors, but when I saw the photo today I was struck by all the neato textures and shapes. The rough potato skin, the smooth dumplings, the wood-grain-like fish, the fuzzy bean pods, and so on. This is, I suppose, the legacy of my years on art college, in which we deconstructed images in terms of compositional elements. Which is a complete non-sequitur here, but I've typed it and I'm not gonna delete it. So there.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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