| Lunch Box 631: More fun with chocolate |
[Feb. 24th, 2009|09:08 pm] |
 I have another glorious hodgepodge for lunch. Here you see the evidence of a walk through my fridge, or perhaps I should describe it as a drunkard's walk: okonomiyaki, yakisoba, steamed broccoli, baked purple sweet potato, grape tomatoes, mochi, and chocolate soybean clusters.
That last item is an aftershock from last week's chocolate covered bacon. When I ran out of bacon I had some melted chocolate left over, and the heck I'm going to wash that down the sink! So I poured in some of the dry roasted soybeans that I keep around as munchies, and lo and behold, a new treat was born.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 497: Soba is spooky |
[Jan. 14th, 2008|08:19 pm] |
 Yakisoba is a dense food, which means I can pack it in a smaller bento box, like this Nightmare Before Christmas box. So, here is some vegetable yakisoba, persimmon, and pink orange, with a side of takoyaki, and salad Pretz hidden under the lid. The closed container has yakisoba sauce.
Yakisoba is good winter comfort food. It's one of those dishes you can whomp up quickly using whatever you have in the fridge. As long as you have the noodles, you're in business. (And if you don't, leave 'em out and call it a stir-fry.)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| 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.) |
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| 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 311: There's a monster in my lunch |
[Feb. 27th, 2007|08:24 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, box, carrot noodles, flavored lotus slices, fruit salad, grapefruit, kiwi, mochi, quail eggs, seafood medley, steamed broccoli, takenoko no sato, yakisoba | ] |
 This lunch started innocently enough with carrot noodles with vegetables and seafood medley - in other words, yakisoba but with carrot noodles instead of soba. There's some foresty-looking steamed broccoli behind the noodle fry and, in front, flavored lotus slices that look kind of like flowers or something else that's vegetation-y. A pair of quail eggs and some yakisoba sauce, and now my lunch is glaring back at me. Yikes.
The other side is safer-looking. What could be more peaceful than fruit salad with apple, grapefruit, and kiwi fruit? Takenoko no sato (chocolate-covered bamboo-shoot-shaped cookies) and sesame-seed-covered mochi are also noted for their pacifism.
An aside: The noodle stir-fry includes lotus rootlets, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, scallions, cabbage, broccoli, bamboo shoots, shrimp, squid, octopus, crab sticks, and mussels. I wasn't in a mood to go halfway! The lotus slices are flavored with leftover niku-jyaga juice.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 303: Accidental vegetarianism |
[Feb. 14th, 2007|06:23 pm] |
 Today's lunch ended up as a vegetarian meal purely by accident. I have vegetable yakisoba, with cabbage, carrots, tofu, scallions, and shiitake mushrooms. All that plant matter, and I simply forgot to defrost and throw in some seafood! And there's steamed kabocha, steamed broccoli, an onigiri with shrimp furikake, and khoai mì nuong (cassava cake). Hmm... I don't think I'll miss eating flesh too much today.
Isn't the onigiri cute? That's what happens when I have an extra space in my lunchbox and no idea what to put in there. It's so easy to just mush some leftover rice into a ball the right size, stick on some nori and furikake, and drop it in. The dark bit in the middle of the yakisoba is yakisoba sauce, which I'll mix in when it's time to eat.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 288: A little of this, a little of that... |
[Jan. 23rd, 2007|08:56 pm] |
 Here's some more shrimp & vegetable yakisoba which bears an uncanny resemblance to yesterday's. With a little leftover rice I made an onigiri with ginger salad dressing. (That's Naturally Fresh brand ginger dressing, and it tastes great mixed in with rice!) There's a boiled egg I marinated in teriyaki sauce while packing the other goodies, simmered shiitake mushrooms on top of steamed broccoli stem stars, and for dessert a pair of some coconut covered red bean mochi balls.
Not bad for a festival of leftovers, eh?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 287: Surf and turf |
[Jan. 22nd, 2007|10:34 am] |
 The main part of this lunch is shrimp & vegetable yakisoba, although you wouldn't know it - the soba is hiding discreetly underneath the tumbleweed-like shrimp and a forest-like stand of steamed broccoli trees. For dessert are some pumpkin cookies, which are light little granola-like blocks of sweetness, and a cube of ginger caramel.
I love making yakisoba. It's a very flexible recipe, so you can use whatever you have on hand. This batch included lots of cabbage, salad mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, frozen peas, and medium-sized (31-40 ct.) shrimp. Yum! The broccoli is unusually long-stemmed, which suggested trees to me, hence the forest motif. I could say that the red yakisoba sauce container in the corner represents the sun peeking through the trees, but... yeah. That's how I intended it. Subconsciously.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 264: More soba squid |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|08:50 pm] |
 Here's some more squid & vegetable yakisoba. Besides these two lunches, I also had this yakisoba for two dinners. I didn't think I was making such a big batch, but the stuff is so filling that it goes a long way, I suppose. With it is some steamed green beans, a takoyaki - which yakisoba sauce compliments, by the way - and half a storebought an pan.
Takoyaki is octopus dumplings. Then there's the squid in the noodles. I'm really into invertebrates lately, aren't I?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 263: Tentacles and noodles |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|08:47 pm] |
 I'm back! Life has been very busy lately, so while I've been making bento lunches, I haven't been posting about them. Sorry!
Today I have squid & vegetable yakisoba (with yakisoba sauce in a little container), baked plantain, edamame, persimmon, and storebought daifuku. I'm a lifelong National Geographic reader, and on looking at this photo it occurred to me that the squid is perfectly camouflaged against its background of soba. However, that turned out to be ineffective as a survival strategy.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 257: Not the Olympic rings |
[Nov. 21st, 2006|08:29 pm] |
 Behold the triumphant return of my tiffin! This day it bears beef gyoza; carrot noodles with cabbage, broccoli, and seafood medley; zucchini & onion stir-fry; and fruit salad with banana, orange, and longans. Each is in its own containerlet to prevent the horror of flavor sloppage.
The carrot noodles are flavored with yakisoba sauce (which I haven't mixed in yet) and there's a little pig-shaped container of tempura sauce, which I also like as gyoza dipping sauce. The seafood medley contains octopus, cuttlefish, mussels, shrimp, and artificial crab. That carrot noodle dish is practically yakiudon, really, but with carrot noodles instead of udon noodles.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 233: Eatin' green |
[Oct. 16th, 2006|07:38 pm] |
 Today's intensely green lunch contains seafood yakisoba made with yomogi soba. That's soba noodles with mugwort. Mmm-mmm, sounds delicious, doesn't it? Well, it is tastier than the name would imply. Yomogi soba has its own taste, which is a pleasant change from the usual soak-up-the-surrounding-flavors noodliness of, er, noodles. Adding to the greenness is the cabbage I stir-fried with it - outer leaves, which are the greenest - and the everpresent steamed broccoli. I also have simmered shiitake mushrooms, rice, rambutans, and honeycrisp apple slices. Honeycrisps are a good combination of sweet and tart, by the way. I'd say they're somewhere in between braeburns and granny smiths.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 44: Picnic box |
[Aug. 28th, 2005|10:08 pm] |
 Kind of an odd picnic box. You don't usually find yakisoba and grilled tofu in a picnic.
The yakisoba... well, I don't have a lot to say about this except that it's tasty stuff and I made a lot of it. It's much like yakiudon, but the noodles have a different flavor and texture. By now I'm getting used to these stir-fried noodle dishes, so I left the measuring spoons in the drawer and just put in some o' this and some o' that. This and that being cut-up cabbage, bamboo, carrots, and tofu.
Next is the grilled tofu. It doesn't have a strong enough flavor to be a main dish, but it's a nice counterpart to the noodles. The baby corn is straight out of the can, and the steamed pole beans and an pan (cafeteria roll variant) are from recent batches. The soft pretzels swarming around the an pan... well, they're okay, but I'm going to try to get them to turn out a little better before I post a recipe. These ones ended up kinda weird. I think I may have boiled them too long.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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