5/5/2010- A rather traditional bento

Last night I was up kind of late working on updates for HB. But, I stayed up even later because I needed to cook something to take for lunch. We had dinner out after my late night at work because I was hungry then. Anyways, I digress...

Fortunately, there was enough stuff around that I made a pretty awesome lunch, even without having a particularly stellar plan for it.

Contents of Bento: Trader Joe's Yaki Onigiri with takuan slices in between, two fishes of soy sauce and rice vin, cucumber sticks, and okazu made with sesame oil, onion, carrot, celery, frozen spinach, and quorn--the sauce is a little soy, a little hoisan, a lot of miso, and a little sweet mustard and hot sauce.

For decoration, I have some striped cucumber ends and carrot hearts. Like I've said in previous posts: I just love those little carrot hearts. They make everything look better and more decorated.

I just sort of whipped up the okazu and then had to wait for it to cool. I know this doesn't look like a whole lot of food in the box, but it was really filling. Quorn fills you up comparable to chicken (if my memory serves correctly) so it's actually more calories than it looks like.

Everything was DELICIOUS at room temperature. So good, in fact, I may recreate the okazu for dinner tonight. When I made it last night, I just made enough for my bento. I also love those yaki onigiri. They've been languishing in my freezer for a while, but it was a great way to get some grain into this bento. My only problem with them is that they're really hard for me to pick up with my little lunch chopsticks. They get kind of slippery and they're pretty dense (heavy for their size). Too bad my mouth isn't big enough to eat them each in one go.

4/28/2010- Lemony Spanish Chickpeas

Once again, the lemony Spanish chickpeas recipe makes an appearance. This time I actually consulted the recipe, from Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates, and it came out pretty good. The first time I made it, I cooked them for almost 3 hours at really low heat after caramelizing the onions really thoroughly. I have not had the chance to repeat that process, but the quicker-cooking version I made for this dish came out very tasty. It's basically a saffron and garlic-flavored tomato sauce with chickpeas and lemon juice. I like it because it satisfies my never ending craving for tomato sauces, but it's not Italianate. A little something different. If you would like to know how to make lemony Spanish chickpeas, you'll have to buy the book or check it out at your local library.

Contents of Bento: mixed short grain brown and white rice (2 parts white to 1 part brown) topped with a takuan sun. Festive! Spanish lemony chickpeas garnished with an asparagus spear.

So, a pretty plain bento, sun deco aside. But I wanted something I could nuke at work, and this seemed to work really well. Of course, the takuan stained the rice yellow, but that's ok.

4/2/2010- My Famous Fake-BBQ-Chicken-Wingaling Pizza

Ah! My blog reading public--if any of you are left out there....

As some of you may know, I've been finishing up a master's degree this spring, which has left me with very little time for bento-ing. Homelife has been REALLY busy/strange as well, which all combines for no blog postings.

The end, however, is in sight! I'm posting the meager samples for April.

A bento featuring my famous BBQ fake chikin-wing-a-ling pizza:
Contents of bento: pizza pieces, baran, strawberries, mixed salad. (The little jar has salad dressing in it).

Unfortunately, I think this one would have been better refrigerated. The strawberries and salad were a little worse for the wear by lunchtime. I also should have used the lift-out trays; the pizza was a little damp from the strawberries. OH WELL, it's still delicious.

Here is my recipe for the pizza:

Make pizza dough (or buy preprepared--I won't look)
Flatten on pan
Top with BBQ sauce
Cheddar cheese
Chopped onions
Fake chikin-wing-a-lings *see note

Bake until awesome and done at 400°F. Allow to cool before you eat or you will burn off all the skin on the roof of your mouth...like I do every time.

*Ok, so I have LOVED the Morningstar Farms BBQ chikin wing-a-ling buffalo wing things for many years, but I recently learned that most low-fat soy products are processed using HEXANE which is a terrible thing. You're ok with organic soy, or with Quorn products (which are mycoprotein, not soy). Boo-Hiss!
In the next couple of weeks, I will be experimenting with other, non-neurotoxin-containing fake chikin products to see if I can come up with a tenable solution for what to use for the "fake chikin" part of BBQ fake chikin wing-a-ling pizza.

3/12/2010- Onigiri and Assorted Okazu

This is the first of the bento-rama bentos (from my spree yesterday evening). I'm really excited, because I took "process" pictures while I was making this. One of the first things I want to show off is what I use as a mini-steamer. It goes to show you, you don't need a fancy Japanese one.

Here is the bottom part: a small, round bowl from Target. Broccoli and purple cabbage with about a teaspoon of the vinegar-based dressing I used in the cucumber salad from yesterday. Quarter is for scale.

And the top part, another bowl from Target, this one is larger and slightly flower-shaped. It's so perfect for bento-sized steaming. I just make sure that there's a little liquid in the with whatever I'm steaming and stick it in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds. And it looks so cute! Like a little mushroom/flower thing!

Bottom layer: onigiri with umeshiso paste inside, red pepper on top. Roasted asparagus, baby carrot, cut to add some lift to what's going on top of them.

The final thing! (Onigiri and asparagus and carrot from the previous picture) + 3 Okazu: vinegar-steamed broccoli with red cabbage, saffron/lemon Spanish chickpeas, soy-roasted portabello mushrooms with carrot flowers. Also, a cup of frozen sour cherries.

You can see the quarter peaking out there for scale. This box is also the one that I took pictures of while holding it in this posting, so long ago. It's pretty small, only holds 450 ml, if my memory serves me correctly.

I had a lot of fun with this bento, I actually made little portions for it, instead of just using little bits of what's in the fridge already. The asparagus and mushrooms were roasted with a little olive oil and salt in the toaster oven. When the asparagus was pretty and bright green, I took it out, and poured a little soy sauce over the mushrooms. Then they got turned once and cooked until brown and the soy sauce was all glaze-y.

It was also fun to use my little onigiri press. It makes the process soooooo easy. The only complaint I have is that it's hard to fill tiny ones, but I prefer tiny onigiri to the bigger ones because I can eat them in one bite without stuffing my face like a chipmunk. Also, I usually use 2:1 white to brown for my rice blend and I have to say that having more brown rice makes for less cohesive onigiri. What price fiber...

By lunchtime, though, everything was still great. Delicious and great and filling. I'm not totally sure how much rice 6 mini onigiri is in cups. Maybe I should measure that. Anyways, I was nice and full after lunch. Hooray!

3/6/2010- Leftovers (a little of this and that) and a Pretty Salad

I decided to pack a bento last night, since I wasn't going to get any school work done. The faux-gratin potatoes I made took waaaaaay too long. (Who knew slicing 10 lbs. of potatoes by hand would take a long time??)

Contents of Bento: Faux-gratin potatoes with a flower, pasta salad, 2 silicone heart cups on a bed of steamed broccoli, filled with black bean quesadilla filling. Gratuitous carrot letters. (I meant to highlight how cool the texture of the broccoli florets looked as a background, but it just looks self-aggrandizing.)

Tiny side car of salad with carrot garnish and cranberries. Don't it look purdy?

Everything was very tasty and the pasta salad was dry enough not to bleed over. However, there was a dressing disaster. I packed a little spice jar with some salad dressing and laid it down on its side on top of everything in my little bag. Biiiiiig mistake. Lots of leaking dressing everywhere. But I'm pleased to say that I washed my bag with hand soap and it seems to be no worse for the wear. So, make sure your dressings and sauces are packed in leak-proof containers: don't do what donny don't does!

Because the faux-gratin potatoes are so darn easy to make, I'm going to include the recipe here:

1 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 c. baco-bits (which contain no actual bacon...just lots of food coloring, salt, and soy protein)
1/2 c. strong vegetable stock, or 1 bullion cube in 1/2 c. water
1 lg. container FAGE greek yogurt
1 bag of mixed shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

oh yeah, and 10 lbs. of potatoes, actually, only 5 lbs. (still a lot though!) thinly sliced. If you have a mandolin cutter, please use it and save yourself the hassle.

Mince onion and garlic and sautee in olive oil until nice and brown. De-glaze the pan with the bullion stock. We use this awesome stuff called Better than Bullion, which must have about 40% of your daily salt in each teaspoon, but MAN, is it tasty. Add in the baco-bits and cook. Add more liquid if it gets looking a little dry. Dump in the potatoes (I pre-cooked mine a little, but not enough, in the microwave). Add greek yogurt, salt and pepper to taste. Put a lid on it and let it sit over low heat while you preheat the oven to 350 (which you forgot to do before). Get out a nice, big casserole. Put a layer of cheese in the bottom, add a thick layer of potatoes, another layer of cheese, a layer of potatoes, and finish with cheese. If you have restraint, you'll have between 1/3 to 1/4 of the bag left. If not, throw away the empty bag.
Bake, covered, until the potatoes are done. Then remove the cover and bake until the cheese is browned and bubbling. Allow to cool slightly before eating so you don't burn the heck out of your mouth. This would also be great garnished with scallions or green onion.

So, it's definitely faux-gratin, since the yogurt tastes very yogurty. But it's quite addictive. I ate way too much of it last night, despite the fact that I got tired of waiting and the potatoes were not all the way cooked through. Usually I pre-cook potatoes (after they've been sliced) in the microwave to speed up the process, but I guess 5 lbs. of potatoes just take a long time to cook.

Retro-posted from 12/28/2009- No-chicken Parmesan

On the 26th I made a special dinner for HB and me. This bento has some of the parts of it.

Contents of bento: sauteed broccoli and mushrooms (very savoury and delicious), stove-top applesauce with dried cranberries, and no-chicken Parmesan.

No-chicken Parmesan was made with Quorn, this bizarre myco-protein chicken substitute. Basically, I made my awesome homemade tomato sauce, cooked it down, then dumped in the Quorn. Then it went over fancy, Italian squiggly pasta and was baked briefly in the oven (under the broiler) to melt the Mozzarella and Parm I put on the top. So good. Too bad it looks so ugly in my bento. As you can see, the portion in the box just has shaved Parmesan on it. It didn't take a magical trip through the broiler. I microwaved everything in the box a little bit before I ate it. I love warm applesauce.

Also, I think it's impossible to make applesauce look pretty. I guess if I had used a pretty-shaped food cup, or decorated the top, I could have pulled it off. But sadly, it just ended up looking like mush. But the mush was as tasty, as tasty could be....

Bento Contest

I'm the finalist in a bento box contest!

If you like, feel free to vote (you don't have to vote for mine, of course, but you could...)

Here is my original posting:
(The contest is for a colorful, 4 container, flat, square bento box. To win the contest, you had to say what you'd fill each section with.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would fill it with Thanksgiving leftovers from our vegetarian feast.

Purple- Butternut Squash Lasagna
Green- Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes with apricots and sour dried cherries
Red- Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie with Red Pepper cut out fall leaf
Yellow- Sauteed Brussels sprouts with red wine, onions, pine nuts, paprika (and whatever other things my hubby puts in them...)

I don't really cook with recipes, but I can give you the gist of what is in the Lasagna and Shepherd's Pie. My mom made the Tzimmes, which is basically a Jewish vegetable dish cooked over low heat. It was also sprinkled with chopped walnuts. A nice contrast to the green container. :D
My hubby does the brussels sprouts every year and just makes it up as he goes along. I do know he always starts with onion and garlic in olive oil over high heat and deglazes the pan with red wine. I'm not sure what else was in them this year, but they were savory, pan-roasted, and delicious.

Butternut Squash Lasagna-
Cook Lasagna noodles, roast butternut squash. Combine Squash with garlic powder, salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and a little cream. Layer with noodles and provolone cheese. When you reach the top layer, prepare a cream sauce with a roux base (I always caramelize onion and garlic in the butter). Crumble dried sage into the butter as well. Then add flour, then milk in small amounts. Pour over lasagna. Top with more cheese and bake in 350 oven until bubbly and golden brown. This was a big hit with everyone who ate with us. (18 people this year! a new record in our tiny house....)

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie-
Prepare mashed potatoes in your favorite way (mine have roasted garlic and yogurt in them). Sautee one onion and 3 cloves of garlic in olive oil and butter until dark brown. Deglaze pan with sherry. Add 2 kinds of finely chopped mushrooms with a pinch of salt (white button and crimini) and cook until all the water has come out of them. Deglaze the pan again with sherry if you need to. Add 2 bags of Morningstar farms crumbles (fake ground beef). Cook down. Add powdered rosemary, worchestershire sauce, pickapepper sauce, and thyme. Add finely chopped carrot and turnip and continue to cook until carrot and turnip are slightly soft. Mix mashed potatoes with shredded cheddar cheese. Put fake meat mixture in casserole and top with the potatoes. Bake in a 350 oven until bubbly and the potatoes get a little golden (this actually takes a long time and I gave up before the potatoes started to color.) It was still delicious. And this kind of thing tastes better as leftovers--perfect for bento!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, yeah. Vote!

10/1/2009-Soba Noodle Stir-fry and HB bento

This posting is a kind of exciting posting because it features pictures from the first photographed HB-Bento! Woo! The very first bento I made for myself (long, long, ago) was accompanied by the very first HB-Bento (i.e., the first bento for HB). Well this posting contains the illustrious SECOND HB-Bento (the first one to be photographed). Back when I started I thought it was a little weird that people take pictures of their lunches. But then I got into reading bento blogs. Man, are those pictures key.

Contents of my bento: plum, 2 mini-peppers stuffed with garlic and herb La Vache Qui Rit; soba noodles stirfried with edamame, sweet-soy simmered tempeh, and topped with broccoli and turnip.

I simmered the tempeh with some kombu and dried black fungus (mmmmmm fungus) in soysauce, mirin, and a little rice vinegar. I also added in a big spoonful of brown sugar. Deeee-licious.

The whole reason why HB got a bento today too was because I bought him this swank new bento box. It's a tiffin-style container from World Market. And it's dishwasher safe, which I have tested out. Mostly, though, it holds a lot of food and doesn't look plastic or girly, which means there are more places he can take it. It also looks like it would hold up to some beating, which is also crucial.

Tiffin! Metal (stainless steel), Indian bento-style container. This one has two compartments and it snaps together nicely. It's pretty waterproof, though I haven't really tried testing the limits of that. The outer surface of the compartments has this nice dimpled pattern in the metal. It's really quite an attractive item. Purchased from World Market for the low, low price of $10.

And here it is filled with foods.

Contents of HB bento: on left, mini-pepper stuffed with La Vache Qui Rit (garlic and herb), some baby carrots, a plum, 2 toothpics of edamame, packet of miso soup, and a silicon baking cup filled with homemade spicy, salty cashews (I do them on the stove top with curry powder, salt, and cayenne). On the right, soba noodle stir fry (same as I got, just in a huge, HB-sized portion).

A closer view of the bottom container.

I did pack this the night before and stuck it in the fridge, as is my wont.

The verdict was very positive. Hooray! And he said he didn't mind the container, so I think there will be more HB bentos in the future. Excellent. The term that I found in this book I got from the library (The Food of Japan: Authentic Recipes from the Land of the Rising Sun, by Takayuki Kosaki and Walter Wagner) is aisai bento, or loving wife's lunch. Essentially, it's the lunch that a wife packs for her man, which may or may not embarrass him in its decorativeness. The book is, to my estimation, so-so. But it does have some nice narrative in the beginning about different areas they cover in Japanese cuisine.

6/10/2009- Onigiri and other stuff bento

So the other night when I made the thai-basil sort of eggplant dish, I made Japanese short grain rice to go with it. And I made a few onigiri, using the plastic wrap method, which I stuck in the fridge. I have made them by hand before, too, which is fun and painful (a little bit), but since I wasn't going to use them the next day, I thought I would use the plastic wrap method so they'd be prepped to not dry out. Two days later, here they are in my lunch, with a strange assortment of some other things. I left the onigiri wrapped in their plastic when I packed up my Totoro box, so they wouldn't lose any moisture into the box (no soggy cheese).

Contents of Bento: two plain onigiri on left; baybel cheese with heart cut-out (the heart ontop of the onigiri is the wax from it); under the cheese is celery and carrot; also celery and carrot at the bottom of the box.
In the middle is some leftover orzo salad from going out dinner the other night, with pine nuts and red pepper added, garnished with basil, in a red silicon cup. It needed some serious help, it was quite bland.
The blue silicon cup has 3 artichoke hearts and two olives; under that is one prune. I lined the bigger compartment with a lettuce leaf.

You may ask, why is there a big, honking space in the top right corner? Well, it was waiting for one of those mushroom "meatballs" from Trader Joe's to cool down from the toaster oven.

Voila! Finished bento.

Well, sort of. I needed some serious sauces, since most everything was dry. So, I brought some of my containers:

Sauce bottles!

The two fishes have soy sauce in them. The panda bear is filled with Balsamic vinegar (for the artichokes and meatball) and the tan bear is The Bear of Salt. He always has salt in him. :D I love these little sauce bottles, they're such a boon to bento packing. All the sauce bottles were just jammed into the box wherever they would fit (not very pretty) so there's no picture of the whole thing as it looked like when I went to eat it.

Everything was tasty, including two-day old onigiri. The pasta salad stayed in its cup and there was no leakage. Hurray!