Eating in a box

So for whatever reason my food blog news feeds have recently been posting more and more Polish food recipes. And when a meatball recipe came thru and I was pretty sure I had to do a Polish Bento. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I LOVE meatballs and like I said it's what got me to make enough time to cook. Klopsiki Pulpeciki is a meatball (I went with pork only this time) in a mushroom sauce. But since I'm going off gluten for a little while, I made this a gluten free recipe. The binder was breadcrumbs and I used a cornflake gluten free substitute, for the sauce I used some of my all purpose gluten free "flour" blend and it thickened up like charm, and of course I served it over a brown rice flour pasta (regular egg noodle pasta pictured above). The interesting part of this dish is the use of sour cream as part of the binder for the meatballs and a lack of sour cream in what tasted like a "Stroganoff" type dish. I seared up the meatballs ...

I'm constantly amazed by the humble Slow cooker/crock-pot. Fire and forget, it's the savior to many households in the US for busy families trying to make a good meal after a hard day at work/school. Not just that, it's special power of slow low temperature cooking yields the most amazing results when it comes to tender meats. All of that comes in an varieties from dirt cheap to expensive and simple one knob Low/Hi/Off to fancy settings, timer controls and temperature control. You can't walk into a second hand store without seeing several of these lying around, it's just that common. A very noble intro, I actually used this bento as an excuse to acquire a 4th slow cooker. (I'll post more on the new toy later) The crock pot is magic when it comes to pulled pork. I've done various versions of this in the past but ran across the idea of a coffee/espresso based dry rub from a couple of sources. I cobbled together my version of this rub. Since I was working wit...

So everyone around the office is doing the Crossfit training and the Paleo diet. It's really paying off for some of them. One guy has lost a total of 50 pound or so on just diet alone. That's the guy with the best result, others have similar, but with exercise and still others very small changes. Anyhow, since a bunch of the guys went on the diet they haven't been able to participate in my bentos. I told them I'd make a lunch just for them and they'd all be signed up so they didn't have to compete with the email crowd. I don't want to get into the details of the whole paleo diet, if you are curious you should buy the book or go to a whole host of websites that are dedicated to the thing. Basically it comes down to lean meats and no processed foods. It's a low/slow carb diet, no sugar, wheat etc so it's a very friendly diet for Gluten free folks. Without further ado, I give you Paleo Diet Bento or Paleo Bento (which sounds nicer) Paleo comes from the ...