Eating in a box

So on my business trip the NY times reported on the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah. It's pretty interesting learning about a culinary culture that has adapted to all the places it has immigrated to. The concepts of the original dishes remained true, but as Jewish settlers migrated to other places like Northern Africa they made use of spices and ingredients that they had on hand. We start with a Mustard honey glazed chicken breast. Sweet foods are a big highlight during Rosh Hashanah, the sweetness is the blessings for a sweet new year. The sweet glazed chicken breast came up over and over again during my recipe search. The mustard honey gave the chicken a beautiful color after the oven treatment and I think helped seal in some moisture. My alternative to the chicken was fish. Fish is often eaten to symbolize fertility and abundance. I stayed away from the fish since it tends to not reheat (re: stinks in the microwave) well. There's not any such thing as light eating in what I...

I confess there's not really a good cohesive theme for this box. I just got two things of free food product and decided to just throw something yummy together. Above you see my attempt at creative swirling with the cream in the soup but it just looks like weird modern art. I need more practice. So part of being plugged into the food blog community I seem to get product samples a lot. By no means do they say, "hey you must shill for us" or obligate me to do so, but I figure it's nice if I find a product useful to put in a nice blurb at the very least, I like to let my bento eaters benefit as well. Kinda like the foodblogger events, I go, I write a nice entry about it. This is no different, but I figure it's important that I disclaimer that I did get free stuff, I'm using free stuff, and I've decided to write about the free stuff I got. I'm no professional so I'm in no obligation to disclose all this stuff, but I figure it shouldn't hurt to be up...

Whew a long winded title, I know. Ever since I bought the Sous Vide Supreme, I knew it was inevitable that I would try my hand at the Three day short rib. (I'll post on that more separately) the problem is that it's not a theme on it's own. I freely admit this bento was built around the fact I needed to make some short ribs that took three full days to cook. Heck even wedging the thing into the box created a layout nightmare for me. Fortunately I persisted in my endeavor and hopefully my eaters will enjoy. I needed to try to keep my bento some what light. I borrowed a recipe that I found from Paula Deen on Roasted Beets with feta. I really am intrigued by beets, I didn't grow up eating (read: forced to eat) beets, I find their slightly sweet flavor and texture to be quite nice. I understand that they are some sort of bain to the typical American kid, I cannot imagine why. The dish called for pitted olives and feta that provided the necessary salt to a typical variation...