Eating in a box

Three Day Shortribs. I know it's a repeat of a former bento but I didn't name that one three day shortrib err. oh wait.. well nevermind, better come up with a new title. Anyhow, it's been a while and I don't believe my current crop of bento-ers have had the chance the taste possibly the most wonderful thing that can come out of my sous vide machine. Outside of the fact that I wanted to do my short ribs again, the inspiration for the bento is the nice cool weather we've been having, it makes you wanna have something that hearty and "sticks to your ribs" if you'll allow for the pun. Besides, Thanksgiving is around the corner and I wanted to test out this sweet potato dish. So um. Fall Short Rib bento it is! I promise to work on more cohesive themes. Three day short rib, what's there really to say? It's meat, lots and lots of meat slowly cooking for three solid days in a water bath. Why three? It's some sort of magic number. See one day just ...

It has been one long and hot summer here in Texas. We broke quite a few records locally, most days 100+ degree weather, most consecutive 100+ degree weather, and I believe we clinched hottest August in the US *ever*. It's been one of those summer that felt so ridiculously hot you simply have to cry at the sheer absurdity when you step outside. Last week that all changed (apparently it was only a brief respite since we're back to 100F today) and over the course of a Saturday the weather was actually quite pleasant. Tons of people went outside and enjoyed the cool weather, and if that's our preview of fall then bring it on. In honor of that very brief week long preview, I decided on my theme to be a "preview of fall". Fall and winter foods always scream meat and potatoes to me and that's kinda what I went for this lunch. I started lunch off with a Beef Tenderloin in a Mushroom Cognac sauce. As usual I went with a Sous Vide treatment on the beef, it's really ...

Not really any good cohesive theme today. These are a few of the dishes I've had on my list of "gotta try" that say fall to me. It's gotten cold and dreary lately and what better way to warm the bones than with some stews and soup. Let's start with the main dish, Chicken and chickpea stew. Its a nice blend of spices and vegetables, more reminiscent of a thin curry with more going on than I usually attribute to a stew. The carrots provided a bit of unexpected sweetness to the overall taste. The original recipe called for chicken thigh, but in the interest of trying to cut back on fats I went with chicken breast, in hindsight this may have been a mistake because the chicken thigh would have produced a more flavorful stew it was a call between health and flavor we'll see what the jury has to say about it. Here we have a nice Penne pasta with Green Pea Pesto. Usually that much basil pesto would really turn me off of a dish, but the green peas really sweeten and li...

It's cold, it's October, time for some more hearty food and where better to find such food than to celebrate with a German themed Oktoberfest Bento. It was tempting to go with standard well known Oktoberfest/German foods. I was ready to break out the meat grinder and sausage stuffer for some bratwurst when I stopped myself and thought, what else do Germans eat? Thinking back to my business trip this summer, the menus I saw in Frankfurt were chock full of great tasting foods. So I began researching German foods and came up with an nice list of stuff and found some good stuff from various "Omas" (grandmothers) and made some modifications for my own tastes voila we have lunch Let's start with the main entree Kummel Klopse. I'm a sucker for meatballs, really, if there's a list of things I can make and meatballs is on that list, then I'm going for the meatballs. I'm fascinated that every society/culture has some form of meatball, they are all different ...

Sorry about the no post last week. Most of my wife's coworkers were out so I busted out another wrap. It wasn't too exciting so I decided it wasn't post worthy, maybe I'll save it if I get into another drought. I ran into this wonderful post from one of the many blogs I follow on a Pumpkin Masoor Dal . Being that it was halloween (this bento was meant for last week) I thought what better time to try out this yummy sounding recipe. One dish does not make a full bento, at least it would leave me a lot of room, so I rummaged into the freezer to see what else I had on hand, low and behold I had a very large pork tenderloin (which turns out to be 2 normal sized packed together). I thought, wow why not a nice tandoori marinade and break out the indoor grill?! I did a bit of searching, I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good tenderloin if my hair brained idea didn't work. After a bit of google searching I came up zero. So to be safe, I experimented on some pork loin ch...

I don't count fall here in the south unless I get a full week of cool weather. In celebration of our break (finally) into fall. I created a nice bento full of fall goodness. I managed to still keep on budget, it's for some reason getting harder and harder as the weeks go by. I'm pretty certain it's general food costs at the store :( anyhow enough whining. So we start with a sheperd's pie, honestly this was the hardest part for me. It's hard to cook single portions in plastic cups.... I had to improvise and take the top off the finished pie and put it back onto the bento cup after the fact. The other challenge was that this recipe asked for a whole stick of butter! Definitely not on the healthy side. I managed to cut this recipe down to 2 tablespoons *and* packing this into the right form factor. I added flavor to the mashed potatos by cooking the potatos in some chicken broth (and mashed a bit of it in) to compensate for the lack of butter We celebrate fall wit...