Big Shiny Bento

Ok cheesy title, I’ll admit.

Lunch was leftovers jambalaya, and rice with shredded daikon and carrot topped with scrambled eggs and soya sauce. Very tastey, and filling!

http://www.reusablebags.com/store/laptop-lunches-bento-wbook-p-528.html

A cool new type of lunch box.

It would be a great Christmas idea!

And check out other things on this website, they are Earth friendly!

Here we are starting 2009 already. It seems like only a few days ago I started writing this blog.

I’ve been looking back over some of my entries and there is some good stuff here! I think I’ll have to start using some of the old recipes again.

Over the holidays the food has been good - roast pork, turkey, steak, and even stuffed peppers to name a few. I’ll try to start posting about my suppers if lunches aren’t anything big that day.

And as always - let me know what you think!

A couple nights ago when I was putting my daughter to bed we somehow got onto the topic of colored eggs. My daughter is very young and doesn’t like to eat eggs in any form that I’ve tried yet.

So this morning I boiled a few eggs and tried dying them red.. well pink. I left the others soaking up some more color when I came to work so hopefully they will be red tonight. So far the plan is good - my daughter loved the color!

The rest of my lunch today (yes, I’m eating the pink egg too) is a larger version of my cabbage salad but with only salt and vinegar this time - no salad dressing. Besides that I’m having ramen instant noodles with carrot bits, and chicken and mushrooms in a garlic soy sauce. Essentially its salad plus leftovers, but don’t tell anyone.

My favorite lunches are the ones I don’t have to make! They are even better when they are leftovers from New Hong Shing take away!

The top is General Tsao’s chicken with chicken fried rice. New Hong Shing makes really really good General Tsao’s - good breading, a bit crispy but not dry, and the sauce is sweet with good zing to it. But don’t eat the peppers!

The bottom is beef with chinese greens (baby bok choy) and more fried rice.

This is honestly one of my favorite lunches. Its one of the days I wish my lunch box was even bigger!

I had a great breakfast today, never mind lunch yet!

On the weekend I used some leftover stewed chicken, carrots, onions, and frozen peas along with a pack of instant noodles to make a really tasty noodle bowl. But I only got a couple bites out of it before I had to leave it. Since then it has been my breakfast twice now, and will be again tomorrow.

I scramble 2 eggs in a bowl and add soy sauce them. Take a portion of that noodle dish and heat it up in a fry pan until it smells good! If I had fresh green onions I’d add them at this point. Then pour the eggs over the noodle mix - there should be enough eggs to make sort of like a pancake in the pan. If not, next time use more eggs or a smaller pan. Then just let it cook until almost firm. Loosen the edges, and flip it in the pan to brown the top. If its good and firm, you can plate it, slice it, and add hoisin sauce (or other sweet sauce) and hot sauce to taste. Otherwise, it will be a bowl of stuff. Either way its very yummy!

This dish is very much like the one I cooked a while back using leftover fried rice - click here to view bento #28.
PS - anyone know the quote this article’s title is taken from?

For those of you who don’t cook that much here is a tip.

If you want things to cook faster, cut them into smaller bits. When you hear that it seems to make perfect sense, but many people don’t think about it. Potatoes, carrots, turnip, or any other hard food that you want to cook will take a long time and benefit from dicing before cooking.

And here’s a tip on presentation. If you are dicing one thing in the dish, say ham, it makes sense to dice it all. Unless you want something to stand out, uniform shape and size will make the dish better. Think about it - have you ever seen string beans in the same dish with cubed ham? If you did, you likely didn’t even notice the ham at first. And to go with the diced bits, rice fits perfectly since its about the same size.

Next time I’ll talk about matchstick recipe tips.