Eating in a box

  Happy Thanksgiving! I celebrated in Asian style this year with a traditional Hot Pot. Basically a hot cauldron of boiling broth is at the center of the feast and an array of raw ingredients surround the hotpot. You select what you want and cook it like in a fondue and cool it off with your personal blend of sauce. I'm actually having a Thanksgiving potluck on sunday so that's where I'll be busting out the turkey. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! For those of you that are black Friday-ing right now best of luck to you.

Three Day Shortribs. I know it's a repeat of a former bento but I didn't name that one three day shortrib err. oh wait.. well nevermind, better come up with a new title. Anyhow, it's been a while and I don't believe my current crop of bento-ers have had the chance the taste possibly the most wonderful thing that can come out of my sous vide machine. Outside of the fact that I wanted to do my short ribs again, the inspiration for the bento is the nice cool weather we've been having, it makes you wanna have something that hearty and "sticks to your ribs" if you'll allow for the pun. Besides, Thanksgiving is around the corner and I wanted to test out this sweet potato dish. So um. Fall Short Rib bento it is! I promise to work on more cohesive themes. Three day short rib, what's there really to say? It's meat, lots and lots of meat slowly cooking for three solid days in a water bath. Why three? It's some sort of magic number. See one day just ...

I couldn't really think of a good coherent theme this week. It's been so busy and although I've been busily clipping new ideas and storing them away it can get overwhelming when you stare at the "future bento" tag list for my note file. As it turns out I had quite a few recipes from the magazine EatingW ell so I assembled my top favorite looking recipes and off I went. I really enjoy the magazine, it's one of those that I pick up from the local bookstore when I happen to see it. There's always some interesting articles but the important part is they manage to put together some very tasty looking (while at the same time healthy and nutritious) foods. I might some day get around to a subscription, I just have so many magazines I have to "process" every month as it is.... oops I'm yammering. Anyhow healthy bento it was and I managed to score bonus points because I was able to make it a fully Gluten Free bento. This was suppose to be Spicy Chick...

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of bentos lately. Work has really ratcheted up and free time has gone down to a minimum. I've had a few photos and off topic posts that I wanted to put out but simply getting a moment to write a quick post has been difficult. I'm actually doing this one over my lunch just to take a break from my deluge of emails and meetings. Anyhow, enough belly aching. I had the great fortune to cook with a long time friend and coworker. She and her husband use to have a Persian restaurant in town and both are fabulous cooks! She invited me to help host/cook for a party of our friends just to get everyone together. We've done this in the past and it was a wonderful opportunity to learn a bit more about Persian cuisine. So given the chance I immediately jumped on it. Besides, her house is beautiful and her kitchen a joy to work in just look at the view (from the title shot) and this outdoor/kitchen grill. The indoor kitchen was just amazing it really has eve...

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 ...