Eating in a box

"Now back to your regularly scheduled program. err. sorta" Today I decided to take the idea of returning to theme and apply it to the bento. My inspiration, the noble hungry man salisbury steak dinner. That's right kids, "It's salisbury steak day!". I stayed gluten free, and amped up lunch with a nice twist on what you would normally find in a TV dinner. I learned if I ground my own chuck roast I could get a nice ground beef for $2 dollars a pound less than buying ground beef! I'm paying someone $2 every pound to ground some meat. Unbelievable! I will say that the fresh ground beef tangibly tasted better than the normal ground I get from the store. Maybe it's the course ground I went with. Either way when you're making a batch of 4lbs of beef that's an $8 savings. What can I say, salisbury steak it's the first thing I came up with when thinking TV dinner. As a child I treasured the the times my mother would make us salisbury steak. (it wa...

No bento this week, had to relax being that it was a holiday. None the less I still have a entry in my back pocket. This one comes from my Dad. It's called "Lu Rou" , it's a braised beef shank, normally served either as a cold appetizer or if cooked a little longer in a Beef noodle soup. Growing up in a Chinese restaurant there were many restaurant recipes that I learned and many traditional things that my father produced like magic. I'm glad I have a chance to get to catalog these. The braising liquid is a mixture of traditional Chinese five spice, a misc bag of spices and soy sauce. It's a pretty ubiquitous blend of stewing spices for many a braise which is used later for noodle soups. The cut o f meat used doesn't really have to be beef shank, however in a long slow cooking process, beef shank, having a lot of connective tissue, breaks down and gives you an interesting texture for a final product. Yes the final product isn't very pretty but it...