Eating in a box

"Now back to your regularly scheduled program. err. sorta" Today I decided to take the idea of returning to theme and apply it to the bento. My inspiration, the noble hungry man salisbury steak dinner. That's right kids, "It's salisbury steak day!". I stayed gluten free, and amped up lunch with a nice twist on what you would normally find in a TV dinner. I learned if I ground my own chuck roast I could get a nice ground beef for $2 dollars a pound less than buying ground beef! I'm paying someone $2 every pound to ground some meat. Unbelievable! I will say that the fresh ground beef tangibly tasted better than the normal ground I get from the store. Maybe it's the course ground I went with. Either way when you're making a batch of 4lbs of beef that's an $8 savings. What can I say, salisbury steak it's the first thing I came up with when thinking TV dinner. As a child I treasured the the times my mother would make us salisbury steak. (it wa...

Ok sorry for the no posts. Life's taken a tough turn and it precludes my ability to cook and make bentos. Fortunately I had the bug and really was compelled to cook *something*. I've been reading the book Ratio by Michael Ruhlman, It's a great book teaching you to cook by ratios of ingredients instead of trying to remember recipes. I chose beef stock today, I won't get into the actual "Ratio" cookbook recipe but sticking with the premise of the book, I took his suggestions of what would go into a Thai Green Curry soup and improvised with what I had on hand. I'll post when I've managed to read the whole book, but what I've read thus far has been very useful. The stock was a 3:2 ratio of water and beef bones (in weight) plus some aromatics and such. Weight? yes water is one of the few liquids that the fluid ounce is equivalent to the weight ounce. Normally the stock cooks for 10 hours, but I really didn't have the time and had to skip to skimmin...

Max's Wine Dive: that's their slogan up there. Seriously, a slogan like that will always get me to try a place. They weren't messing around, literally an hour before we starting the tables we were standing around had not yet been assembled. We're the *first* people this kitchen staff has ever served. I'm a bit speechless as they treated us like foreign dignitaries. It's nice to feel special and they really went out of their way to explain what they were about and show the perfect sampling of food that really underscores what you can expect if you went to Max's. The wine steward was great at explaining the wine selections and why he thought they paired well with the foods on the tasting menu. I'm under no illusions that this is what they want, folks to talk about how great they are. Keep in mind all of these events run a risk, if it goes bad then folks will blog about a negative experience. Personally, I'm not a critic, I'd rather say nothing than...

Ok, if I've not earned my stripes as a hardcore foodie, then I most definitely earned them last night. I present to you my adventure of making Haggis, no it didn't go into a bento so no haggis in a box. To get the full effect of how this transpired (and to earn the tag yammering) we must start our story from the beginning. My wife was away for the weekend and a coworker was in a similar situation. He suggested that since we're both adventurous with food we should do "some foodie thing". It didn't take long for him to further suggest we make the delicious treat we had in London, Haggis. I tweeted and searched high and low in an effort to find the ingredients for the weekend. Ultimately Addie Broyles from the Austin American Statesman suggested I contact Ryan over at Nose to Tail At Home . Ryan kindly replied with some mixed news. The bad news is the only way to get all the ingredients is to see a butcher in Weatherford, TX (a good 3+ hour drive) even then you...