Eating in a box

Nothing special. I had a hankering for some corned beef but I'm also trying to eat healthier so 4 oz of corned beef. Broccoli was a quick blanch and dry saute. I chopped up some King oyster mushrooms and stir fried it with garlic and soy sauce and Zucchini was like also quickly tossed until tender on a skillet. If I trust the nutritional recipe calculator it's 298 calories.

Found this perfect recipe on one of the blogs I follow Serious Eats . It's a one skillet dish, I made a few modifications to end up with the nutritional facts I list below. I think constraining myself to 300 calories a box has been an interesting challenge in balancing flavor and textures and cutting corners on unnecessary calories. Here's the original Recipe , I've so few modifications I'm only posting my notes. First I went with six ounce pieces of cod which really was fine for one portion I cut the sesame oil in half to finish the dish rather and spritzed the pan with my  misto olive oil sprayer to quickly sauté the garlic and ginger (I was using a non-stick pan too). Sesame oil seems to be too fragrant to compete with garlic and ginger. I also opted to use Chinese Michu rather than the Japanese Mirin. Mirin tends to be a little sweeter, they didn't specify so I picked based on preference. Finally a note: watch the cooking time 5-7 mins depends on the...

If your holiday season has been anything like mine then there was a lot of good food to be had and some pants to be let out. With that in mind, I wanted to bring in a low calorie, light lunch bento. Low cal does not have to mean low taste, so I set out to find a good blend of taste and technique to deliver just that kind of lunch. We'll start with our entree: Chicken with lemon artichoke sauce. The key to lower calorie cooking is to remove your usual suspects for taste (butter, frying, fatter cuts of meat) and replace them with taste highlights (lemon zest, spices) and plenty of vegetables. The veggies of course are there for low calorie filler and provide a satisfying lunch. I took some chicken breast cutlets and lightly dusted them with a season flour mixture and finishing them in a pan coated with a bit of cooking spray. Slow cooking got the onions and artichokes nice and soft while the lemon zest and juice punched up the taste. Next we have a polenta with mushroom ragu. I delet...

I have to confess, I was really struggling with coming up with a bento this week. Nothing I flipped thru looked good. I had no inspirations over the week, and the few things I saw were disqualified by the "must be healthy" guideline. Non-detered, I turned to the Food Network for some help. After watching a few shows I finally saw something of interest. They had this recipe for Wheatberry salad. I know my grains fairly well, but I've never worked with (or actually heard of) wheatberries. So there we have it, I built the box based off the show. I had to do some trimming and recipe changes to make serving the lunch calorie-friendly. It's weird even though the show is about healthy eating when you add up all the proper servings for the meal it came out to something like 1/2 the USDA calorie recommendation Anyhow, to the bento, we start things off with the main dish. I've got a do-it-yourself asian lettuce wrap. I used super lean beef and firm tofu as the basis of th...