Eating in a box

I know, I just did a SloMo theme not too long ago . I like the fire and forget nature of the slow cooker and I had plenty of dishes I wanted to try out from last time that I really had to come back and re-visit using my multiple crockpots. There's a good reason why a lot of busy parents rely on the crockpot to serve dinner. I mean who hates putting in a bunch of stuff and setting it cooking right when you leave for work and have it all ready for you by the time you come home. (well that's the dream anyway) I find practically speaking if you factor in transit time even six to nine hour cook times you will find yourself rushing home to turn it off. (perhaps it will hold that extra hour or two, sounds like a future experiment) Anyhow it's still got the no fuss, no muss factor working in it's favor, and newer models let you set on and off times. If you pair all that with my sous vide rigs you could probably setup for a large dinner party and just worry about plating when yo...

So this is a special milestone bento it's number 100! That's right, I've managed to churn out 100 of these babies. Looking back it doesn't feel like I've already been at this for nearly four years. This year has been a slower start for bento production but I'm pretty happy with my work/life/bento balance, sometimes it's not so easy to be inspired to cook up lunch other times my bentos are a refuge from the daily stress of life and work. Enough nostalgia! What did I come up with you ask? Well for this bento I decided to go with a fully Sous Vide bento, meaning everything in the box was prepared sous vide. I recently ordered a series of books from the good people at Sous Vide Supreme . I went with this as my theme for a couple of reasons but mainly to experiment with non-meat dishes. Don't get me wrong I love the meat that the sous vide cooking process produces. The end product is always amazing and if any of you ask, yes both rigs (the commercial version...

Got a nice mention in the Wall Street Journal today. Welcome new visitors thanks for coming by!

Back on track with another bento! It's gotten harder and harder to come up with new themes every week and I needed a bit of inspiration so I went over to the local Half Price Books and went through their ethnic cookbooks to scratch up some ideas. I tend to look for a nice worn out "old" looking cookbooks, usually those are the ones that have the super old school recipes that interest me the most (from a research standpoint). I did pull up some nice relics, so I'll be busy compiling, testing and cooking and hopefully come up with some new ideas and themes I can try. This week I went with the Swedish cookbook I found. I'm not certain how much of it is authentic. I know the Ärtsoppa is traditional and the rest do use typical ingredients but I avoided a lot of the items that wouldn't reheat well (fish primarily) and the more cliche items (like meatballs and dumplings) which didn't leave much left to pick from the book and I didn't have as much time as usua...