Karaage Chicken & Teriyaki

Contents:
Fruit
Karaage Chicken (recipe below)
Kale, Carrots, & Broccoli fried in a nonstick pan with teriyaki sauce (the thin marinade/sauce kind, not the thick stuff)

Chicken Curry

Contents:
Chicken Curry w/ Rice
Yam slices with cucumber centers
Apple muffin
Fruit

Batch Cooking Beef

I finally got around to doing some lunch box prep! I made meatballs, miniature burger patties, teriyaki kobobs, and the filling for some miniature jamaican patties. Oh, and some more soboro. I now have a freezer stash for lunches whenever last nights leftovers are lacking in the protein department. If not for this, I'd be eating hard boiled eggs molded into fun shapes all the time. Wait, I like that. I guess I'll just do both. Variety is good in a meal. :)

Breaskfast Burritos

Today we made paper towel rolls! mmm!

Actually, it's a breakfast burrito, I'll post photos when I get a chance, which may not be for a while what with my skipping town for a week starting tomorrow.

Spaetzle!

Today I got a new spaetzle press, finally a good one, and made up a batch of the stuff with chicken, mushrooms, and 5 year aged cheddar. For those who haven't had the chance to try spaetzle, it's a member of the german family of dumpling-noodle hybrids,and leans more towards noodle. Generally. Recipe and bento contents below.

Mushroom & Spinach Buns

I've been titling my blogs based on whichever ingredient I haven't used before, but I might need to be more creative in the future when the only new ingredient is a storebought, reheated product. Still, I love steamed buns, and I'm pretty low on fridge and (useful) freezer contents. Time to go veggie shopping...

Pork Bork Bork

Today's star is... an unnamed pork dish from the professional chef upstairs. It's so nice having a professional chef upstairs who sends down food, don't you all agree?

Oh, Alex asked for my soboro recipe, so here it is. Remember, the secret to authentic cooking is to measure nothing, and hope it works out.

Fried Rice Special

Here's about half the leftover fried rice from Saturday. It was good for breakfast on Monday, so I bet it'll be good for lunch on Tuesday.

Fruit Salad Bento, Chocolate Bread, and Black Forest Cake

I made up some fruit salad bentos today, since A had a half day and wanted a lighter meal than she'd had the rest of the week. During the weekend, I made up some delicious chocolate bread and a black foest cake, the first one for the sake of chocolate bread, the second for the sake of valentines day. If you're wondering how I'm blogging about the future, it's because I'm a lazy butt, so I post blogs with the date of whichever meal they correspond to, even if it takes me a few days to get around to pulling the photos off my camera and posting them.

Soba Noodles

Package directions: boil water, add noodles, simmer 7 minutes, chill, serve. Results: noodles just a bit too firm to call mushy. Remember, package directions are just a suggestion, and not always a great one. Still, this was a good meal.

Sushi

Today, I made sushi. Good sushi is so much easier when using sticky rice instead of sushi rice, which is weird given that they're supposed to be the same thing. I think I once bought a bag of sushi rice which was white rice with an inaccurate label and a higher price tag.

Bibimbap

This was just a lazy dinner idea, based on my previous bento. It's called bibimbap, which simply means things mixed rice. I cooked up some rice, put some furikake on top, fried up two eggs, microwaved some tofu I deep fried and marinated last week, and sliced that, some ham, and some cucumber up. It was one of the lazier dinners I've made in a long time, and it was really good.

Soboro!

A made her own lunch today -- she had a lot less spare time to make hers, so had fewer ingredients, but did have better presentation I think. Note to self: curry leaks across everything else by lunchtime. Contain curry in a ricebowl in the future, or don't pack it in the main compartment.

Quiches and Pakoras, the lazy way

I seem to have lost the photo of the bento these were in, oh well. These are easy lunch box ideas, take 5 minutes or less to prepare and 20-25 minutes to cook in the oven (or 90 seconds for the quiches in the microwave), and received good reviews. I suspect they would all freeze well, although I haven't tried yet. The egg cups would also be good in a breakfast, and good if you need to cook for a dozen people at once.

Better Bento, Day 1

This blog is to keep a record of my daily bentos, so I can make sure they're getting better, and so I can remember how to make things.

Day One's Meal:

Yesterday, A and I took the skytrain to a japanese dollar store named Daiso in Richmond, where we each got a bento box, along with a basket of other mostly rash purchases. It came to $90 at a dollar store! Although $23 was for a scale, and it's really a $2 store, so it's not as bad...

Contents:
Leftover basmati rice with raisins/peanuts
heart-shaped molded hard boiled egg
beet and vegetable curry
edamame in lemon juice and powdered peppermint dressing
bell pepper & cucumber slices