Boston Bento

Another older one:

Contents:
Baked egg cup with spinach
tomato and cheese salad
candy
baby carrots
Spanish rice with beef and ham

That’s right people! Beef and ham! The ham was planned for the bento, but I also had a little steak left over from dinner that I didn’t want to waste. As you can tell from the pic, this is another older one and you can see that there is a lot more food in here than I normally have in my lunch now.

Looking at this reminds me of how much I love those egg cups though. A perfect bit of protein to get me through the afternoon and if you like eggs, there are a million difference combinations you can try. Best of all, they are really easy to bake in the toaster oven the night before.

Sometimes when work is throwing me for a loop and I want to spend my lunch hours hiding from the world, I will use my bento as a way of a little pick-me-up. I’ll pack something extra special and it makes me remember that small moments and treats can have a really large effect.

And so I present, Shrimp Cocktail Bento…complete with the semi-homemade (with recipe posted at the end) cocktail sauce. Trust me, it’s hard not to feel awesome about your lunch when everyone else in the lunch room is eating boring sandwiches and brown/red smoosh in Gladware containers. You can start to feel the sophistication oozing out of your pores and creating an aura of kick-ass all around you.

Contents:
shrimp and cocktail sauce
sauteed spinach with garlic
wasabi peas
chickpeas with parsley, olive oil, and vinegar
raspberry gummies

Homemade cocktail sauce:
ketchup
horseradish to taste (I like mine pretty spicy)
squeeze of lemon juice
hot sauce to taste

This bento is a bit of an old one, but I found a bunch of pics I that never used on the site. Rather than just throw them in my flickr account, I figured they deserved their spotlight time.

Contents:

breaded chicken breast strips (my own kinda shake and bake)
cucumber slices
sesame dressing
bbq sauce with chili sauce swirl
olives
reduced fat cheese
rice cracker

This bento was fun because i had a good time using the chili sauce not only to spice things up in terms of taste, but also in the look of things as well. The trick is to make sure you mix it into the other food before you eat it if you want things to be a bit more mild.

The chicken was really simple to make. While you can buy pre-cut chicken strips and pre-seasoned bread crumbs, I often like to do these things myself. Buying whole chicken pieces can help you cut down on the cost, and making your own bread crumbs from that bread you forgot about helps reduce waste. Also to be sure these stay healthy, I baked these in the toaster oven rather then fried them. It’s nice and fast and makes a pretty satisfying lunch.

Recently a restaurant near me had added carpaccio to their menu for a limted time. I was thrilled, we are talking all kinds of excited and demanded we go for it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. When we placed our order at the restaurant, I noticed that the chef came out with a plate and the waitstaff all kinda crowded around him. They talked for a few moments and the chef himself came over without plate. It turns out that we were the first people to order the dish, and the chef wanted to know about our background, experience with the dish, and to pretty much give us a culinary pat on the back.

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed to discover that no one was ordering the carpaccio, but considering that very thinly sliced or pounded raw beef is one of the main ingredients, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

For a pretty decent picture of what all this looks like, check out this link.

The meaning of what carpaccio is has changed a bit over time to be pretty much any thinly sliced raw meat or fish (even fruit or veggies sometimes too) with some sort of dressing on top. When I was a kid however, carpaccio was always the same thing: very thin raw beef topped with shaved Parmesan, a drizzle of good olive oil, capers, and perhaps some lemon juice. Yes, yes, I know, raw beef can be challenging for some people to eat (and even scary considering Mad Cow Disease and all that), but when prepared by a reputable chef, it might be one of my favorite dishes of all time. Imagine if you will the beef melting on your tongue, set off by the sharp and salty toppings…. I am getting hungry just thinking about it!

If this sounds appealing to you in anyway, I highly suggest you try it. The Boy tried it for the first time that night and we have already gone back a second time for more (only to discover that we are still the only people ordering it). Alton Brown even has a pretty easy recipe for those of you who want to take things one step further and make it at home. Considering my level of obsession, this might be a better option than camping outside my local restaurant every Wednesday night for the summer.

While I am hoping to post something food/bento related this week, I wanted to take a minute to let you all know about a project a friend of mine is doing.

Please please donate if you are either a Troma fan or just a fan of indie films. In this final days of pledging, the goal is in reach and I’m hoping that letting the word out a bit more might help. Geoff is a stand-up guy and a true foodie, so you can give yourself a strong pat on the back for donating or even forwarding the message along.

Assuming I still have any readers out there, feel free to spread the word and let me know in the comments with a link or something. I might even reward your efforts with a little bento something if you are in the first few people to notify me. You gotta do your part before he reaches the goal to be eligible.

I have to admit that I am pretty lucky when it comes to friends. I’ve managed to surround myself with a pretty adventurous crowd of people who always like to push their culinary boundaries. May it be braving the snow to fry a turkey in the back yard, or seeking out Chinese soup dumplings and cold pig ear salad, my friends are pretty much up for anything. And yes, this includes the infamous durian fruit.

So one afternoon I found myself at the home of The Red Menace for my first durian tasting. For those of you not familiar with durian, allow me to point you towards the Wikipedia article. It will save us both some time I’m sure.

I do admit to being pretty nervous about this afternoon. I was genuinely worried that the smell would get the best of me. I had visions of myself turning green and hiding under a bush with a clothespin on my nose, or worst yet…getting an unexpected visit from my breakfast.
The durian itself is heavy with hollow spikes. This is definitely something that is not something you want to carry around with you. Regardless, we all insisted on touching it anyway:

Before we cut into it, there really wasn’t that much of a smell coming from the durian. There was just a faint smell of onions oddly enough. Nothing too scary. So we all prepared ourselves as to dive on in.

When the smell hit me, it started off rather sweet. Not so bad. But then the durian got closer and I got a better whiff of the finish. Think sweet fruit and onions that have been left out in the sun and are just starting to turn. It smells like it’s rotting. Much to my relief though, the smell wasn’t nearly as strong as I thought it was going to be and it was just kinda icky rather than horrifying and vomit inducing. The Red Menace suspected that the smell wasn’t too strong because the durian might have been previously frozen, also she had heard that durian from different regions can vary in strength.

The durian itself reminded me of an almond custard. There was a sweet fruitiness at the beginning that reminded me of melon, but then the finish was almost creamy and tasted like almond butter. All-in-all I could see why people would go nuts over this. The consistency was custard-like as well, but had fibers running through it, kinda like the furry stuff around a mango pit, only these fibers were longer and maybe even a bit tougher. The fibers also had a drying quality that coats the top of your mouth like when you eat a really unripe banana or persimmon.

Final consensus was that I liked it, but I was too afraid to go back and eat more because some people were reporting an onion taste in their bites. I figured it was best to quit while I was ahead. Escaping with no regrets can often be essential to having a positive food adventure experience.

That’s right, I did it. I realized that I needed to hold myself more accountable for what I eat so I joined Weight Watchers. The plan is to at least follow it through until my sister’s wedding in October and then focus on maintenance. However, I promise this won’t become a diet blog. Really, I want to focus more on better and whole foods rather than talking about what strange non-food based packaged product I can eat for hours without racking up the points. Food is not my enemy, and I’m the one who is choosing what to put into my body. Eating crap makes me feel like crap, so it’s time to move on for now.

While I do have a more exciting durian post in the works, here is an example of my new quickie but good for me bento:

Contents:

1/2 blood orange
1 cup turkey breast
1 plum tomato with cilantro, and kalamata olives
English cucumber with seasoned rice wine vinegar

Point Total: 8

Notes: Seasoned rice wine vinegar has a surprising amount of points. I am guessing this is because “seasoned” rice wine vinegar has the addition of sake, salt, and sugar. Lesson learned.

Next post: Durian? Don’t mind if I do!

I wish there were a prettier way of saying this, but this post is about pig skin, and no I’m not talking about football.

Growing up in an Italian-American household, this meant that we had a lot of pasta dinners and the sauce of choice was tomato. My mother would cook her sauce for hours, slowly working out the acidity of the tomatoes without adding onions or sugar. Then towards the end, she would add her pan fried homemade meatballs, sausage made by my grandfather at his shop, and rolls of pig skin.

I know that this might sound horrible to some people, but I can’t explain how delicious this can be. And since pig skin can be kinda hard to find these days, I got really excited when my mother told me that she had some that she didn’t want.

The preparation is simple. Cut the skin into large rectangles so they can be rolled up nicely. Then just chop up some parsley, garlic, and add some good Parmesan cheese. Since I’m lazy, I like to do this in my food processor. Spread this mixture onto the rough side of the skin and roll the whole thing up. Tie the roll together so it won’t come apart later when you cook it. Lastly, quickly pan fry the whole roll quickly before adding it to the sauce. At this point, it will need to cook a long time. We are talking hours here, and as it cooks it will plump up and shrink. Once the roll is soft and kinda translucent, it should be done. Cut it into little wheels and serve with pasta and sauce.

Word to the wise though, eat these little guys while they are HOT, otherwise they can get kinda sticky and unappealing. Otherwise, they are pretty incredible. The skin soaks up all the flavor from the sauce, garlic, parsley, and cheese to make a really rich treat. If you are a more adventurous kinda eater, it is definitely worth trying.

While my wrists continue to be a rather painful annoyance, I’ve decided that I really have gone too long without blogging.  Frankly, there are too many exciting things happening right now NOT to be blogging about them.  The most exciting of these things is Mokey, my new dog.

Please feel free to take a second to marvel at the size of those ears.

Kitsu, the fluffy little Pomeranian who is often featured in my blog is moving with his owner/mommy to California in a week or so, so Mokey will now be assuming the mascot duties for this blog. She doesn’t seem too thrilled about the silly outfits, but it’s possible some progress can be made if there are enough treats involved. Oh, and in case you are wondering, she’s a rescue, so we aren’t entirely sure what breed(s) she is. We just know that she seems to be made of awesome, and ears.

The dreaded Carpal Tunnel has hit again. This means that updates are going to continue to be a bit sparse lately. I will still try to post some pics if I make anything good, but even holding pots and pans has become a bit difficult. Maybe I can get The Boy to guest post again.