Eating in a box

What's the surprise? Well down here the first day of fall is usually still a hangover of sweltering heat from the last days of summer. I was pleasantly surprised by a beautiful week last week (actually starting on the first day of fall) into a wonderful weekend of bike riding. In honor of the awesome weather I immediately retooled my plans and scrambled for a fall inspired theme. I did a lot of browsing through my large backlog of food magazines and managed to cobble something together. Edit: I forgot to mention this box is gluten free. So, due to some unfortunate circumstances, my one of my lights for my light box got broken. I've been doing photos for some time now with, "just get by" gear as I didn't know how long I'd be able to keep this blog going. Well, now that you're reading post 112 I decided to go ahead and get the macro lens and flash. Yay! New toys, hopefully you'll see improved photos. Still got lots of manuals to read but I digress, back ...

I know I've been promising for quite some time now to post about my Aerogarden I got for my birthday. I waited until I had a no bento week so I could use this as a filler post. I'm sure most of you reading are home gardeners that, as we speak, are turning your nose up at me since I'm not actually gardening and communing with the earth. Unfortunately, I have a tendency towards killing all things green. I also have a voracious mosquito population in my backyard just waiting to feast on me. So what better way to have my fresh herbs than to turn to technology to solve my woes. Ever since moving up north the single largest cost impact to my bentos was the "fresh" herbs I was forced to buy. I mean $3.50 for a small package of basil/oregeno/dill/chives? Really?! I was use to going to Central Market and picking up a beautiful bunch of basil for a dollar. Besides, a package of thyme was usually a waste, you only need two or three sprigs. So I was really excited at the ...

No such thing as a free lunch? There was today! My official debut to my new potential bento eaters. Six have signed up and I wanted to give them a free preview of what they were getting into. I stayed in budget and whipped up some nice little tidbits to kick things off. I endured a soaking wet trip to the farmers market this weekend and grabbed some farm fresh made goat cheese. It's been really dry here in Austin and far be it from me to complain about rain, but it did make for quite a soaking at the market. The goat cheese stand caught my eye, and I tucked under the tarp to see what they had. I came out with a cranberry horseradish goat cheese and a garlic and chives goat cheese. Not quite knowing what I was gonna make, I took a gamble that I could build something from goat cheese. I settled on a chicken roulade two ways. I flattened out some chicken breast and spread out the goat cheese. With the garlic and chives I added a some chopped roma tomatoes. A quick sear and I finished ...

Quick guest post here. I was amazed at this little creation from a young budding pastry chef :) I promised a post and here we have it. Rainbow cake. I was really surprised at the color layers especially when she described how she managed to get it all together. Apparently the batter is separated into equal portions and colored with food coloring. Later the whole cake is combined (carefully) and then baked. I'm amazed that the colors didn't blend more, it's got a cool lava lamp feel to it. What we have is a unique cake that has it's own color fingerprint every time. Yummy and delicious! Thanks Megan for sharing your creation!

It is with mix emotion that I post this bento. This bento represents some of my hardest work and my attempt at a really special lunch. The purpose of this blog was to deliver a healthy, delicious, economic meal for my wife and her coworkers. Unfortunately, I've no more wife to cook for, all the more reason to make this the best lunch I could produce, it's my last chance to cook for someone I care for and the new friends that I've come to care for. It was hard to plan out this lunch as I had to contemplate this being my last chance to cook for folks been cooking for for so long. There's just so many wonderful things I wanted to cram into this lunch and make it uber special. Here's what I came up with: We'll start the bento with the main entree: Crab artichoke stuffed raviolis with pine nut butter sauce. I have to admit, I spent a *lot* of time on this bento, by the time I got to the raviolis I was so tired I decided that instead of standard raviolis I would ma...