Comfort food mmm mmm good

Sorry about the late post. I'll further apologies for the bad photos. First, my camera takes a head first dive into the bowl of tomato basil soup thus splashing my entire light box setup so that's why everything looks like it's shot in the dark. It's not all bad I come to update the site and I've hit the big 10k vistor milestone! Yay!

On with the show, the big thing with going gluten free is you miss some of the old staples that you got use to. We were out one night with some friends and one of their kids was hungrily chomping on a grilled cheese sandwich. It was a bit of a trial for my wife, ok it was torture and it didn't help that the little girl kept exclaiming how good it was. So, I set upon my mission to find a good gluten free bread recipe. I have to hand it to this blog, it has been an invaluable resource for ideas and building blocks for me to put bentos together. I'll do a separate post on the bread itself, but I took the idea of grilled cheese and extended it towards building a comfort food gluten free bento.

This is actually a Monte Cristo sandwich containing a multi-mustard mayo blend, cheddar, swiss, ham and turkey battered and pan fried to get that yummy melty goodness. Monte Cristos are a strange beast, some serve them batter deep fried, some serve them with fruit preserves, others with Thousand Island dressing so this is just my version. I have to say the normally gluten free breads tend to be meally, dense, or off in some other weird (bad) aspect and although my bread this isn't exactly like normal bread, it's still pretty darn good compared to the stuff from the store.

What goes better with a cheese sandwich than good ol tomato soup. Course I can't leave well enough alone, so this a nice tomato basil soup. I added a little richness to it but all in all it still pretty healthy side. Yes this is the bowl of soup that is causing me to still get rid of flecks tomato from my camera.



Confession: the next two items came from a box. Mac and cheese quintessential comfort food heck mac and cheese from a box is comfort food at it's finest. I remember as a kid, this was a staple we'd buy in volume. Not always considered healthy, but I cut a few corners so it wasn't megabad . As always, I have to remind myself the goals of this bento project was to try to put together lunch for my wife and coworkers that's healthy, fast, and budget conscious, so box foods are ok and modifications on those boxed foods are a must.

Last but not least tapioca pudding. Dunno if it qualifies as comfort food for everyone else, but as a kid it was my favorite dessert. If I did this bento over again, I would use real tapioca instead of the minute kind because the texture was just not there.




Anyhow that's lunch and as always thanks for tuning in.

Box Contents
  • Monte Cristo Sandwich
  • Tomato Basil Soup
  • Mac and Cheese
  • Tapioca pudding

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