Bento Snack

I actually made a whole lunch for Mr. Bento today, but here's just a photo of the snack portion (because it turned out the prettiest). This is the small tupperware container, filled with cheddar cheese, smoked sausage, and crackers. If I had a couple grape tomatoes I would have squeezed them in around the crackers, but other than that everything fit quite snugly. The angle of the photo just makes the container look half empty.

The rest of the lunch was Thanksgiving leftovers; stuffing and green beans in the rice container and turkey slathered with cranberry sauce in the soup container. The large tupperware container had peanut butter cookies and chex mix to snack on, but I haven't really tackled that one yet.

Bento Lunch - Cross Cultural Minglement

Top container - Cajun blackened chicken from my Blackened Chicken with Fettuccine Alfredo recipe.
Second container - Steamed broccoli florets
Rice container - Fettuccine Alfredo
Soup container - Coconut Sticky Rice

I've been craving this for a while. I made a less fancy, bastardized version of my blackened chicken and fettuccine alfredo (from memory, and I omitted the tomato).

The Coconut Sticky Rice is a Thai dessert, typically served with mango, that I really like. It's like a heavy coconut-flavored rice pudding. To make it, you cook up some short-grain (also known as "sweet" or "glutenous") rice and cook it according to this recipe. Don't add the vinegar, sugar and stuff to it. After it's done cooking you add a sauce made from coconut milk and sugar and let it stand until the sauce is absorbed.

If you're not serving this with mango you can sprinkle a little cinnamon or cardamom on top. It's really good. I could get fat on this stuff.

I just realized my lunch is insanely carb-heavy. Better push myself extra hard tonight on the treadmill.

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?

Bento Today

I finally started to bring my Mr. Bento into work again.

Took me long enough, didn't it?

Here's what I have:

Top Container - Microwave steamed broccoli
Second Container - Celery sticks filled with Skippy Natural Peanut Butter (it's truly the best I've ever had)
Rice Container - Cheese Mashed Potatoes (probably not good for the diet, but oh so delicious)
Soup Container - Salmon Filet from CostCo (they have these huge bags of frozen, individually wrapped salmon filets, halibut filets, and chicken breasts for a pretty good deal)

I also started working out last week (again) - this week I'm getting serious and am going to start weight training. With the way my schedule goes nowadays, I can only work out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and the weekend. Maybe that's enough.

Bento For Cheap Bastards

I got this link from Lunch in a Box and was amused.

I like the idea of mixing cheese in with rice and putting ham on top, although I'm not sure how palatable that will be to me when I actually try it.

I really like soaking hard-boiled eggs in tea or a soy sauce brine.

I need to start bringing Bento to work again. I kind of stalled on that when I lost the vent cap on my soup bowl (which reminds me I need to order another soup bowl, and probably another set of bowls so I don't have to do dishes every night). If packed correctly, I end up bringing way too much food. Maybe I should scale back and get some round Tupperware bowls or something.

I don't know why I'm even thinking about food. I've lost my appetite.

Pathological Bento

Salon Mothers Who Think - The bento chronicles

This is a good account of why the cuteness of bento is not only for aesthetics, but a necessity.

I'm so glad I'm not a mom in Japan. Talk about hard-core parenting.

Bento - Breakfast!

I'm taking a friend to lunch today so I just brought breakfast and a snack in a tiny bento box I found yesterday at the 98 cents Marukai.

Top Tier: celery sticks filled with peanut butter; a minicup of granola
Bottom Tier: Cottage cheese topped with strawberries

Bento Lunch - Picnic Time!

I lost the "valve packing" on the soup container in the dishwasher last night. Great. Hopefully I can just disassemble the food trap and it will be there and not down the drain in Borneo or someplace like that. This is what I get for thinking I could wash the rubber gasket and "valve packing" in the dishwasher.

I've heard the company who makes Mr. Bento, Zojirushi, has great customer service and that you can get a whole set of bowls for $15 + $3 shipping if you want. I've been thinking about getting an extra set anyway, since it doesn't make much sense for me to do a load of dishes every night. I don't cook THAT much. Hopefully they'll be able to send a gasket set as well.

Here's what's in Mr. Bento today (I really should start taking photos, but I'm lazy and also feel I'm not making the food look pretty enough for the camera - also due to laziness!):
Top container: Vanilla & Almond Granola from Sprouts' bulk section
2nd container: Leftover "Beanies & Weenies" from last night
Rice container: Potato salad (Homemade!)
Soup container: Cottage cheese and sliced strawberries for breakfast

The theory was that I could bring both breakfast and lunch to work, since Mr. Bento can pack a lot of food. The granola was supposed to be eaten with the cottage cheese, but I didn't care for the mix in textures. My neighbor really raved about the granola at Sprouts (they have something like 8 varieties), so I wanted to try it out. It's pretty good, even if I think it's a tad too sweet.

If you have a Mr. Bento and want to get replacement bowls for it, here's Zojirushi's contact information:
800-733-6270 (ask for customer service)
310-769-1900 (local number)
support@zojirushi.com

Bento Lunch - Pasta Salad, Dumplings and Eggs

I've been trying to make a recommitment to bringing lunch as opposed to buying lunch; you usually can't get lunch for less than $10 and it's a huge financial drain.

Today I packed in my Mr. Bento:
cashews and a lychee gel cup in the top container
fried dumplings and a soy sauce mini-bottle in the second container
chilled antipasto pasta salad in the rice container
sliced "ludan" (soy sauce eggs) in the soup container (I was testing out my new crock pot!)

All of this is obviously way too much for me to eat in one sitting. I think I'm going to stop by Marukai (a Japanese household item and grocery store) on the way home and see if I can find a smaller bento box. I have a hard time justifying spending $18 (plus $15 shipping) on a Hello Kitty one sent straight from Japan.

Mr. Bento is Here!

Mr. Bento finally arrived yesterday, and I was up half the night because I was so excited about making lunch. Who knew?

So, what's for lunch?

Rice
A cut-up Plum
Fresh Green Beans I boiled in some hot water last night
Two soy sauce (or "brown") eggs with some savory sliced tofu that was steeped in the same brine
A lychee gel cup

The soy sauce eggs are one of my favorite ways to eat eggs. What you do is hard-boil some eggs, then when they're cooked you remove their shells, and steep them in a brine made up of water, soy sauce, a TB of brown sugar, and some star anise (you can add some cinnamon too) for a few hours. There's a recipe for them in Chinese One Dish Meals; unfortunately, I think that book is out of print. Chinese Rice and Noodles I've heard has a lot of overlapped recipes from One Dish Meals and may have the recipe in question. I recommend Wei-Chuan's series of cookbooks; their recipes are quite authentic.

I'm not sure how "healthy" it is for me to be eating a lot of eggs, although I read in Runner's World it's OK for runners to eat two eggs a day. Hopefully I'm not misquoting them. On the bright side, I could be eating something truly unhealthy like a burger.

Mr. Bento

I don't pack my lunch to work. I should, because then I would have more control over what I eat, not to mention I'd probably eat more vegetables. Sometimes I bring an apple or banana into work with me, but it's not very exciting in a plastic bag.

The big limitation (that I see) is that I don't have a proper lunch "box" or "pail" to put food in; no one likes smushed sandwiches or bruised fruit.

The Japanese are light years ahead of Western Civilization - Zojirushi makes, among other things (I have an 'air pot' from them), "Mr. Bento"! The basic concept is you have these Tupperware-like containers that fit inside a Thermos-like container, and it keeps your hot foods warm and cold foods cold until lunchtime. What a great idea!

Digging a little further, there's a whole online underground devoted to making these little box lunches. Some people on Flickr take photos of their Mr. Bento contents - the group is called "Mr. Bento Porn". One woman keeps an excellent blog devoted to her Bento tips and tricks.

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento

How can you go wrong when your lunch looks so adorable?! Who knew you could get little single-serving condiment bottles, cute garden-themed cutters and Hello Kitty "stuff" (I'm a closet Hello Kitty fan) for your lunch and still retain the appearance of a responsible, completely mature adult?

I'm totally going to try this.