Eating in a box

It’s been a busy season, holidays are a little different in Australia. Since they don’t have Thanksgiving  their holiday season starts near Christmas and stretches thru to Australia Day on the 26th of January. I have been cooking but just no time to post anything so I’ve got a huge backlog of posts to put up. Ah, so many bento boxes to choose from which one to post?  I found inspiration in a shrimp with red pepper garlic pasta dish, no sauce just tossing in fresh ingredients infusing the oil along the way. I substituted zucchini noodles for pasta to save on the carbs and get more veggies into diet and since my wife isn't big pepper I decided on capers and lemon.  Five ingredient and a one skillet meal you can’t ask for a simpler recipe. 500 grams (about one pound) of Tiger prawn (they call shrimp prawns here) which I shelled and cleaned (you could use the shells for a stock). Four Zucchinis, a couple of tablespoons of capers, 1/2 cup of parmesan chee...

Happy Lunar New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Welcome to the year of the Monkey! So the story goes: The great Jade Emperor of heaven and earth called on all the animals for a great race to name the years the order would be determined by which place the animal came in. Before the end was a great river which was a major obstacle that each animal had to overcome to finish the race. Rat came in first by hitching a ride with Ox and then jumping off on shore to just beat out his ride. The rest of the animals came in various fashions each displaying their unique characteristics (force, teamwork, cunning, speed etc.) The stories are all a little conflicted on the details but that’s how it goes sometimes. There’s also a side story about how rat and cat were neighbors and either rat screwed over cat and didn’t wake him for the race or when they were riding on ox over the river rat pushed cat into the river and he drowned (thus explaining why cats hate rates, and maybe water). Sydney h...