Eating in a box

I know I've been quiet lately, it's been a busy year for me. My latest excuse is that I moved last week. I will just say this about my move: Paying movers to pack your stuff and haul it to the new place COMPLETELY WORTH IT.  In half a day they had everything packed up whereas it took us nearly a month to pack up five boxes worth of what we considered valuable enough for us to hand pack and move. Anyhow we've been in a mad dash to unpack and put everything away because we have 12 people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. I question my judgement inviting everyone but what's done is done.  So why this post? Well, one I need to test my new kitchen stove to make sure I can cook dinner in a couple of days. Two, I wanted to post about this new thing they're doing at the local grocery store (but apparently only this one by my house not the rest of the chain) where they are packaging stew and soup kits (which is not new) with raw meat (which is new). This is in...

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...

So once upon a time, many years ago I asked a friend for a food challenge. I was in the full swing of my life goal of cooking as many cuisines from appetizer to dessert to learn as much as I can about food. Austin, at the time was still more of a college town and food had not exploded to be what it is today. My friend said, "fine Ethiopian food" my response, "well that's not fair, we don't even have an Ethiopian restaurant for me to try the cuisine." him, "you asked for a challenge, and my favorite place in Houston is an Ethiopian restaurant". I wasn't really willing to drive out to Houston so I set to the web. I studied countless recipes and poured over every description I could find and created the tastes in my head. Did I pass? An enthusiastic yes. This turns out to be my favorite cuisine to cook, and I think it was because of the surprise complexity of the cuisine as well as the amount of research I had to do to get there. Anyway, I'm v...

So this is a bento I've been wanting to do for quite some time. This isn't the first time I've dipped into South America, the cuisine has a lot to explore. Even something as simple as a grain (quinoa) has been featured quite a few times on the blog. Good prep and slow cooking made this an easy bento to produce. Hopefully the flavors prove just as successful for my eaters. Main dish is Feijoada, this "national dish" of Brazil is the whole reason I've been meaning to take a look at the cuisine. This dish features four distinct uses of pork. I actually drove all over town and ended up in a small Brazilian store to buy the linguica sausage that I needed. I had to settle for some salted beef instead of the carne seca (which I couldn't find), but tasting a before and after, the dried salted beef added a depth the the dish that would not have been there otherwise. I gave a friend a good sized sample of the dish I produced and he agreed it was worth the six hours ...

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...

With the holiday season upon us, my wife prevailed upon me to take a break and take sometime off bentoing to actually enjoy the holidays. So this is my final box for the year. We've got a italian inspired lunch today. I tried to stay with a lighter theme the only hearty fare today is the stew. I had a pretty big hole since I decided to move the stew into an outside container. Fortuneatly the big plump strawberries were ready to take the spot. We start with a nice italian lamb stew, I didn't use the crockpot this time, I was actually afraid to make the meat too soft. Lots of great hearty ingredients to keep my eaters warm (it's getting cold down here). Carrots, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers potatoes, and of course lamb put that together with a hearty blend of herbs and you get some pretty tasty stuff. This side was a bit of a struggle for me. There were plenty of sides, but part of my new mandate was that the menu had to be doable very quickly. All the other sides I origin...

Yeah, I could have saved this bento for March and St. Paddies day, but corned beef is good any day of the year. I've been on a kick to try to make it easier in the kitchen to churn out 10 meals in a night. Whereas preparation is definitely key and important, I'll say that the crockpot is the hardware lynch pin in making that happen. Anyhow, It's getting cold and I needed some hearty food to warm up my eaters. I'll confess the menu this time was a bit difficult to come up with. Irish food tends to be on the starchy side so trying to stay with the low glycemic was difficult, but I think I found some good alternatives to being somewhat low carb and glycemic index friendly. First up, we have the corned beef, this is one of those no brainer dishes. I love cooking up a corned beef brisket in the cooker it gives me something to munch on through the week so it was an easy choice to deliver as bento. I usually punch it up a bit by stewing it beer, but I didn't know how that ...

Today we go into South America for our bento. This was a hurry up offense menu creation. I was away for a business trip and didn't have much time to plan or decide on what to make, let alone figuring out if I'd make it within budget (Still working on that for this week's bentos). Somewhere in the back of my head, I decided I wanted to grill something, it all moved forward from there. A popular favorite when I grill at a party is the matambre. I believe literally translated from it's Argentinean origins means "hunger killer". It's basically a flank steak roulade with carrots, bell peppers, kielbasa, romano cheese, ham, and celery, rolled up and grilled for about 2 hours. Unfortunately the cut that i got didn't stand up to grilling that I usually do so the matambre was both smaller and ended up a little dryer than usual. The Chimmichurri sauce helped with that. For the sides I put together a Peruvian chickpea stew and a spicy tomato rice. From the feedba...