Eating in a box

So everyone around the office is doing the Crossfit training and the Paleo diet. It's really paying off for some of them. One guy has lost a total of 50 pound or so on just diet alone. That's the guy with the best result, others have similar, but with exercise and still others very small changes. Anyhow, since a bunch of the guys went on the diet they haven't been able to participate in my bentos. I told them I'd make a lunch just for them and they'd all be signed up so they didn't have to compete with the email crowd. I don't want to get into the details of the whole paleo diet, if you are curious you should buy the book or go to a whole host of websites that are dedicated to the thing. Basically it comes down to lean meats and no processed foods. It's a low/slow carb diet, no sugar, wheat etc so it's a very friendly diet for Gluten free folks. Without further ado, I give you Paleo Diet Bento or Paleo Bento (which sounds nicer) Paleo comes from the ...

By request I have produced another Indian themed bento. It was quite timely since the newspaper was featuring this Indian cookbook author that wrote a book on cooking traditional Indian dishes with a slow cooker. The book is called "The Indian Slow Cooker" by Anupy Singla. I just found her blog and will be earmarking it for a full read. I enjoyed the book, but I bought the e-book version for my nook and it's just hard navigating reference material on an e-book versus have the old fashion tree killing paper version. I do like the idea of adapting a cuisine to using the fire and forget slow cooker, it's a good way to save stove space and the lack of need to supervise the cooking lets me still have a reasonable Sunday. I will say I seized the opportunity to buy yet another slow cooker bringing me up to three (ouch am I like the slow cooker version of a cat hoarder?). This Lamb Korma recipe actually didn't come from the book. I grabbed a few recipes from online and t...

It has been one long and hot summer here in Texas. We broke quite a few records locally, most days 100+ degree weather, most consecutive 100+ degree weather, and I believe we clinched hottest August in the US *ever*. It's been one of those summer that felt so ridiculously hot you simply have to cry at the sheer absurdity when you step outside. Last week that all changed (apparently it was only a brief respite since we're back to 100F today) and over the course of a Saturday the weather was actually quite pleasant. Tons of people went outside and enjoyed the cool weather, and if that's our preview of fall then bring it on. In honor of that very brief week long preview, I decided on my theme to be a "preview of fall". Fall and winter foods always scream meat and potatoes to me and that's kinda what I went for this lunch. I started lunch off with a Beef Tenderloin in a Mushroom Cognac sauce. As usual I went with a Sous Vide treatment on the beef, it's really ...

It's been hot out here. We just broke the record for most consecutive three digit temperatures, it was set in 1925 I believe. Not exactly a "We're #1" cheering kinda moment but I noteworthy none-the-less. As the days of summer drag on, it really gets harder and harder to contemplate making lunch. There's all the driving around to buy food, and then cooking and rushing around, something about this heat just saps your energy. I pushed through and decided that a simple bento around the tastes of summer would be a nice theme. I tried to stick with things that were light and vegetables that tended to be in season. We start things off with the Asian caramel pork. I simply cubed up a bunch of pork tenderloin browned it up and made a nice sauce with some soy and brown sugar. After cooking the pork and onions I simmered the pork in the sauce until thick. This dish definitely needs some sort of accompaniment because I think by itself the sauce makes it too sweet. If ea...

I decided on a new tag, NIAB (Not In A Box) for any of my posts of meals I create but not in a bento. These are usually dinners or special occasions and allow me to put in an in between post when I don't have a bento to show off. So as I said I didn't have a bento this week instead I chose to focus on making a nice dinner for my girlfriend. I got some photos in so I figured I can share it with you. For dinner I did a quick and light menu. I started (Ok I say I started but i didn't want to be hussling so I really served everything up all at once) with a classic French Onion soup (a requested favorite), I think I could have eased up on the cheese as it was a bit much, still it was gooey and yummy. The long slow cooking time on the onions really paid off because the soup was delicious. There was some disagreement on how far you cook the onions, some say that you cook them down to caramelized, others say to stop short of brown. I went with "ju...

This week I saw a blog post in my google reader that took me into the rabbit hole of Sri Lanka cooking websites. Sri Lanka isn't one of the first countries I think of when I created my list of culinary countries to visit, heck outside of news reports of Sri Lanka I didn't know much about the place. From a brief study of the country it appears it inherits culinary traits from the Dutch and the Portuguese from colonial times, and Indian and Southeast Asia due to its proximity. I wish I was able to unearth more information about the culinary heritage. I only know what I've been able to find thru combing thru recipe stories and a brief blurb paragraph in wikipedia. What I know for sure is there's no shortage in the use of hot peppers, coconut and a large variety of spices and curry dishes which dominate the recipes that I ran across. The main dish today is called "Devil Chicken" and let me tell you it's a scorcher. The recipes I ran across were a bit vagu...

I went with a light italian themed box today, had to really keep things simple since I had guests over and needed to put together something fast . I don't think I was quite as successful this time with a record breaking bento production time so I couldn't call it a "quicky bento". It took me roughly two hours this time (with prep), granted I did handicap myself by making breakfast at the same time for my visiting family. Quite a few additional fails too. I didn't get a good picture of the box and I missed taking a picture of the lasagna, guess I was a little distracted trying to entertain folks. As I've mentioned in the past, if you want to get thru a dinner party (or bento in my case) it pays to be organized. That means prep in stages and much like you see on TV every dish they put together magically has all the ingrediants chopped and ready to dump into a pan. This really beats trying to run from chopping block back to pan and then back to measuring out thi...