Bento Lunch - The Return of Mr. Bento!

It only took me almost a month to start bringing lunch to work! (one of my goals for the year)

Today I have:

Top container - two pieces of chicken satay, broken up to fit
2nd container - Bird's Eye Steamfresh mixed vegetables, seasoned with salt & pepper
Rice container - stir-fried noodles topped with peanut sauce
Soup container - almond jello

The stir-fried noodles and chicken satay were leftovers from last night - the recipe borrowed heavily from Ellie Krieger's recipe. I didn't feel the peanut sauce was spicy enough, but then again I omitted the curry paste. Shame on me. The noodles were just spaghetti noodles cooked to al dente, then stir fried with frozen vegetables in a wok. I was most disappointed with the frozen vegetable mix I used so I don't think I'll be trying that again the next time I make this dish. I'll probably just use fresh vegetables and stir fry those before adding the noodles.

I saw the Bird's Eye Steamfresh veggies at the supermarket, and was intrigued. I think they're probably slightly more expensive than regular frozen vegetables, but if it's easy and good to eat, I think I can justify the extra cost. You just throw the package in the microwave, bag and all, and nuke it for about five minutes. The specially designed bag steams the vegetables to perfection. I was really impressed when I pulled them out of the microwave this morning. Hopefully they're as impressive when I reheat them at lunchtime.

Almond jello is one of my favorite childhood desserts. It's a fairly Asian thing, and something my mom would only make on occasion, which is funny considering how easy and yummy it is.

I don't really follow a recipe, although I know there is one in one of my Asian cookbooks. Basically you combine Knox gelatin with water and milk (the recipes I've seen use "real" milk, although in my experience I've only add dry milk to make enough for the amount of water that I used), sugar, and almond extract. Then you put it in the refrigerator to set. (There are more exact recipes floating around on the net if you do a search)

I completely spaced it at the grocery store and forgot to get fruit cocktail (you know they sell a tropical fruit cocktail at Ralph's too, but without nata de coco, which is the whole point of getting tropical fruit cocktail), so I guess this was a trial run. I'm sure I'll get better at it the more often I make lunch for myself. Does it count that I brought a banana and an orange for myself today?