Eating in a box

I so love Indian food, I grew up with the cuisine in high school trading lunches with my Indian friends. I like to believe I got the good end, trading my sushi rolls, and fried rice for their home cooked yummies from their mothers (my mom made 2x to help me accomodate my trading)! Anyhow it's probably a good reason why it's been a repeated theme here. I've been collecting recipes hoping for new themes and all the ones I tended to tag recently are Indian. I centered around this menu because they are a departure from what I normally get to experience, new items that I don't always get to see on the local menu. Butter Chicken shows up in many London menus, I don't see it much here but I couldn't resist when one of the blogs I follow did a fast/budget version that look scrumptious. I went with the more flavorful chicken thigh (instead of breast) which added a bit of flavor. I loved that the recipe called for yogurt to add some flavor instead of the usual heavy cre

As I said, May is a tough month for my blog. Lots of travel and weekend commitments are keeping me from my usual bento delivery at work. I plan on doing one this weekend so stay tuned. In the mean time I wanted to post some pictures from my birthday dinner. My fabulous girlfriend Sophie treated me a very romatic dinner at the Mansion at Judges' Hill. The restaurant is in fact an old Mansion that has been renovated to be a bed and breakfast. There are two dining areas one in a large hall and a smaller secondary room (about the size of a living room). We got really lucky because a large conference booked the mansion and large dinner space and they decided not to accept any further reservations or diners but since we reserved before the big group we got the whole secondary room to ourselves. (nice and cozy) We each got the tasting menu, which at $35 per person is a really good deal for the amount and quality of the food we got. First course started with a cheese plate. The cheese is

It's gonna be a busy May for me, lots of travel and filled up weekends so I feel the need to try to get in bentos where ever I can because I know getting cooking time in will be tough. I originally had a more ambitious theme but I was reminded that my weekend was going to be packed. So in honor of the dragon boat races I was at this weekend I decided to do a super quick Chinese bento. I wasn't messing around; from a dead start to clean kitchen I was in and out in an hour and a half (a new record for me I think) I even raised my arms in victory. \(>.<)/ So what makes for a quick bento? I've given this a lot of thought because I really enjoyed my extra free time. I think the keys are familiar dishes and very few cooking steps. Take this Asian marinated pork, step one put all the stuff in bag, step two next morning put in probe thermometer set for 155F dump it into oven, step three yank it out of the oven when loud thermometer starts beeping. Step four declare great succ