Eating in a box

It's been a tough weekend and despite that, I still really wanted to get a bento out the door. So I designed a bento that had some flash but was able to cut corners on complexity on two of the items to bring the overall effort down a notch. We start with the entree, Chicken Saltimbocca. There are many ways to put this dish together you can either flatten the chicken and wrap it around some ingredients (in my case baby swiss, prosciutto, and roma tomatos) or you can put the ingredients on the chicken breast and secure it with the prosciutto. I happen to like my way better. This was one of the first dishes I learned to cook when I started really taking cooking seriously (moving on from the instant ramen staples of my college years). It's a lovely dish that's still impressive, you get plenty of oohs and ahhs when your diners cut into the chicken. I try to grill this by pan as I'm afraid of the chicken getting too dry if I try to bake it. Perhaps a sear on the stove and a...

I confess this week's box came from watching Food Network. I only made tweaks to the for taste reasons. The idea was to go out to the farmers market and see what was fresh and good. It just so happens all the fresh and good stuff I found conformed to the recipes for the show I was watching. It was a yummy menu so why not? I'm not sure why but I've not really gotten around to visiting my local farmers market. It's a habit I intend to change, everything was so fresh and looked very inviting. Yes, in some cases the food is a little more expensive but it's nice to support my local farmer. Well let's tuck in shall we? We start with a nice Pasta Primavera, originally a vegetarian recipe, I felt like I need some protein. I happened to have some marinated chicken breast in the fridge. A quick pop in the oven yielded not just the chicken I needed for my Bento-eaters lunch, but for my dinner tonight as well. I can't believe how easy it was to put together this bento, ...

I'm back! Yes, finally! I think there will be some sporatic posts until I get my feet on the ground, but I forced myself to get a lunch box out today. As much as I am tired from working on the bentos yesterday, I'm very happy to have been able to get back into the groove as it were. So first bento back, we have light fare. My wife suggested the tea sandwich route, so I picked 3 different sandwiches, a soup, and a nice healthy side dish as the menu. I tossed in some "sugar free" shortbread cookies instead of the full on bad for you shortbreads and voila we have our bento. I tried really hard to stay the course on high fiber/low cal. I picked up some of the low-cal bread for the sandwiches, the veggies are basically free on the health scale. I was able to pickup a good "split pea" soup alternative that was fat-free and high in fiber. So we start with the sandwiches. I picked three tea sandwiches (out of the many out there) that sounded the most appealing. The...