Eating in a box

I feel like I'm perpetually coming up with the same lame excuse: Life is extremely busy. I love to cook and love to get a chance to post but work has been such that I can do neither. Hopefully that changes soon. I have at least one theme for April that I want to hit. I've also got a ton of photos that I want to post and write about but again, time conspires against me. So in the mean time enjoy the the picture above. I'll let you ponder what it is.

I'm constantly amazed by the humble Slow cooker/crock-pot. Fire and forget, it's the savior to many households in the US for busy families trying to make a good meal after a hard day at work/school. Not just that, it's special power of slow low temperature cooking yields the most amazing results when it comes to tender meats. All of that comes in an varieties from dirt cheap to expensive and simple one knob Low/Hi/Off to fancy settings, timer controls and temperature control. You can't walk into a second hand store without seeing several of these lying around, it's just that common. A very noble intro, I actually used this bento as an excuse to acquire a 4th slow cooker. (I'll post more on the new toy later) The crock pot is magic when it comes to pulled pork. I've done various versions of this in the past but ran across the idea of a coffee/espresso based dry rub from a couple of sources. I cobbled together my version of this rub. Since I was working wit...

Work and life have conspired to rob me of my time to cook and blog. Boooooooo. Well I'm finally done with weekend commitments and work travel so I found a moment to put together a bento. I got a request to do Korean food. I've done Korean as a theme in the past and a couple of the dishes are a repeat. Considering there's five items I was very surprised that I was in and out of the kitchen (yes dishes in the dishwasher) in three hours. Not too bad when serving for people. Don't let simple preparations fool you the dishes packed a lot of flavor. I got a few "best bento yet" comments so I guess I am on the right track. I picked up some Tamari sauce so this box is indeed gluten free. Everyone was surprised I didn't do a Bulgogi. Two reasons I didn't: I did it before, and it was the first thing that popped into my head meaning it was too common and predictable. I like to explore new things so I found a nice bbq shrimp: See Woo Gui. The original recipe call...

So I'm in Denver for work and my friend/coworker told me he'd take me to a foodie worthy place to eat. So we went to Tag , above is a picture of their logo. The menu looked really tasty and I was all in to go. The menu is small but that just means they have time to really focus on some good food. I don't know much about the restaurant but my friend mentioned it was in the top 10 of Denver. Who am I to argue? The restaurant is a cozy place with plenty of smaller nooks for couples to feel a sense of privacy and an more open area where tables are right up next to one another. To start we got the Kobe Beef Sliders with Gorgonzola Aioli and Shallot Confit this was served with "Duck Fat Fries". The fries had a sweet, salty with a bit of heat very delicious, the fries (after being fried) were tossed in a bit of duck fat. The sliders were very very tasty, great flavor. My friend mentioned it was a bit unfortunate to think about grinding up Kobe beef, but the results were ...

It's a New Year and always hard to get back into the rhythm of things when you've had a whole month to derail yourself. I managed to finally get a free weekend to put together a Bento but I haven't had much time to consider a theme. After four to five years it's getting more and more difficult to think of untried themes so I asked one of my eaters to come up with something for me. After careful consideration he comes back with "Meat", everything had to showcase meat. To be a little more fun, I added the stipulation that each course had to feature a different "meat". The difficulty was to tie the dishes together so that each course wasn't such a jarring experience so after a bit of research I went with "quasi" japanese. We start in Beef land with this Fried Negimaki stuffed with King Oyster Mushrooms. I have to give credit to JustBento for the idea although I underestimated the effort of making 30 of these things. I went with the King ...

So one of the reasons for returning to Taiwan was to celebrate my Sister's wedding with my extended family in Taiwan. As you may have noticed food is a very central theme in Asian culture. What's that title picture got to do with it? Nothing. Actually that's a picture of the rock we were suppose to climb but got rained out. We did manage a nice hike, but I'm sure that was a poor replacement for my brother in-law who was looking forward to the climb. Anyhow it just seemed like a nice picture to lead us into "The Banquet", I'm not making light of the title, 13 courses of food with no fillers. That's right no rice, no "extra carbs" just lots and lots of food.  Ok there's 13 courses, no need for a lot of my yammering it'll be like the last post.  Small plate appetizers to start us off. I'll spare you the other photo. We have smoked tofu, bitter melon, roasted peanuts, lilly flowers, pickled daikon radish, and pickled seaweed.  Seafood...

Did this pic on our drive to sun moon lake. Took the pic with my iPhone and used the colorburst app. Anyhow, not bad with an iphone and doing the photo work with your finger on a bumpy car ride up a mountain. This is part two of my food post for my trip to Taiwan. It's been really neat, I've seen a ton of interesting stuff like, temples, lakes and mountains (we got up to 13,000 ft) and of course the food. So much neat food  and I have so many pictures I decided I needed to just pick out a few highlights and go from there.  Interesting preparation: TIlapia sliced length wise stuffed with greens and aromatics. Then folded width wise  tied and deep fried fried. The fish is extremely tender and the exterior fins and bones are completely edible.   Green Tofu with sesame and peanuts in soy vinegar sauce. Auntie said it was made from green beans (perhaps as opposed to white dried soy beans for soy milk). Maybe fresh soy beans like the edamame you eat in restaurants I was un...