Eating in a box

Back on track with another bento! It's gotten harder and harder to come up with new themes every week and I needed a bit of inspiration so I went over to the local Half Price Books and went through their ethnic cookbooks to scratch up some ideas. I tend to look for a nice worn out "old" looking cookbooks, usually those are the ones that have the super old school recipes that interest me the most (from a research standpoint). I did pull up some nice relics, so I'll be busy compiling, testing and cooking and hopefully come up with some new ideas and themes I can try. This week I went with the Swedish cookbook I found. I'm not certain how much of it is authentic. I know the Ärtsoppa is traditional and the rest do use typical ingredients but I avoided a lot of the items that wouldn't reheat well (fish primarily) and the more cliche items (like meatballs and dumplings) which didn't leave much left to pick from the book and I didn't have as much time as usua...

Yes, I'm posting a bento solely around the entree, I've been wanting to work with short ribs for some time and my recent purchase of a nice dutch oven pushed me into action. The rest of the items in the bento really were, "what can I put in with short ribs?" so there's no real point in trying to fabricate a theme. This bento did include yet another coworker from my work, he's been standing in line asking when I'd bring the bento goodness to our work. I'll admit I was a little intimidated to cook for him, he's very well traveled, well knowledged about food, and has eaten at some of the best places, and has a brother that's a chef. I cringed as I put the bento in the fridge this morning. Hopefully it is to his liking. Ok let's just lead off with the entree. Short ribs, it's one of those things that if I see it in a menu there's going to be about a 95% chance it'll be what I'm having for dinner/lunch/breakfast whatever. Why th...