The Steak Dinner Bento

What did I order last night?  If DH ordered artery spackle, then what would I call my meal?  Insipid steak, potatoes, and overcooked veggies.  Applebee's didn't do well last night with my meal but I remade its leftovers into something a bit more flavorful.  It's DH's dinner, since he's going to be at school and isn't coming home until after the "festivities" are over.


First course: a mushroom cap stuffed with herb dip, carrots and bell peppers for dipping.  Dessert: fruit (after lunch he's going to need the nutrients) orange slices, grapes, and of course, chocolate.

Main course:  Steak (leftover from my dinner), roasted tomatoes stuffed with panko breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and herbs, and one small potato topped with herbs.  I guarantee that it tastes better than what I was served last night because it's seasoned with rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper, and onion powder. 

The end result: a dinner that is much, much healthier than lunch. 

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Junk Food Bento

My darling husband took us out to dinner last night.  Our daughter had been baking in the kitchen all afternoon and simple seemed best, so off to Applebee's we went.  Today's lunch bento is the leftovers of DH's artery spackle appetizer platter with added veggies.  Yes, folks, he ate deep fried everything and tells me that he was sure to eat the celery that came along with it (as if that makes the dinner selection healthy).  LOL  I want the junk out of the house and today is a good day to do it since he's going to be at school all day and most of the evening.  Tonight is "Back to School Night" and I suppose a little deep fried food may give him the fortitude to get through it.  Boy am I glad we don't eat this way often!

So, as you can see, I can't claim ownership of anything but the veggies.  He's got a bacon cheeseburger slider, a single boneless wing, ranch dip, and celery, carrots, tomatoes, and yellow pepper.  None of it is good for you because even the veggies have ranch dip - just in case there wasn't enough fat in this meal as it was. 

I guess it could be worse: he could be eating fast food for lunch every day!

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

A Bento for Lovers

My daughter is going on a picnic with her boyfriend tomorrow and wanted me to pack her a special bento lunch.  It's actually quite touching that she asked since she's 17 and could certainly have packed something herself.  I think she wanted to see what I would do.  :)  Since she's leaving the house before 8 am, I wanted to make sure it was done early, so here it is - 12 hours ahead of schedule!

This is a single layer bento meant to be shared.  I could have made two separate bentos but that just didn't make sense.  There's a lot of food here and only one container for my daughter to worry about bringing home. 


On the left we have piccolini pasta tossed with butter, olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.  To that I added carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, and yellow pepper.  I put a terrine de volaille on top as the protein.  Then I added more tomatoes, yellow peppers and chives.  I decorated it with two hearts cut from red peppers and sprinkled on some Parmesan cheese.

On the right is dessert: two mini cupcakes (yellow cake) topped with a chocolate ganache and some frozen strawberries.

*****
Terrine de Volaille
Here's the recipe for the turkey terrine I made tonight.  By the way, this was dinner and I put the leftovers into my daughter's bento.  I actually made 3 lbs of turkey and will be making mini meatballs with the rest and freezing them for later lunches.

Ingredients:
1 lb of ground turkey or chicken  (I like to buy some white meat and dark meat and blend them.)
0.25 lb of ground pork (This can be omitted - I didn't put it in today.)
1 egg
1 shallot
1 onion
0.5 cups of white wine, sherry, or cognac
thyme, parsley, salt, pepper

Finely dice the onion and put it in a bowl with the turkey and pork. Add the egg, white wine, and herbs &spices. Combine like meatloaf. But into a loaf pan and bake at 400 for 25 minutes or until cooked through but still moist.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

OMG I have nothing made!

DH ate what I had intended for his lunch - yesterday as a snack!  Crappola!  What do I make this morning?!?!  We had gone away for the weekend and I didn't go grocery shopping.  Desperate times call for desperate measures!  A horrible discovery of cucumbers that had spoiled while we were away didn't help.  Crisis!  Should I tell him to order pizza or go out to lunch???  No . . . if we're spending money eating out, I'm going to enjoy it . . . darn it!

Level 1:  A salad with lettuce, carrot, and mini tomatoes that need to be used.  The dressing in the cup is the herb dip I talked about last week.  I had some leftover in the fridge.  I also found a peach and some leftover chocolate from last week. 
Level 2 contains something my husband named "meat sushi" when he saw it this morning.  I had intended to do this with ground turkey but the turkey was a little off and I didn't want to risk it.  Into the trash it went and I started to dig around the freezer for something I could throw together. So, I took out a single ground beef patty and was able to make enough for two lunches.  I wrapped the ground beef in ham and stuffed the interior with carrot and green onion.  There is some salt and pepper in the meat.  It's not raw - I pan fried it so there's a crispy layer of ham surrounding the beef.    Underneath the "meat sushi" there's some leftover rice tossed with sautéed onion, portobello mushrooms, and a little Parmesan.  For veggies, we have some leftover pea pods sautéed in olive oil with a little garlic, salt, and pepper (leftovers from Friday night) and some broccoli. 

Everything in my soul rebells against serving something entitled "meat sushi."  My daughter wants to call it "mushi" and this is a 17 year old talking.  Please give me some suggestions of what to call this dish!  Meat sushi sounds nasty . . .

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Rosemary Chicken and Pasta Bento

I'm tired this morning and I woke up with a headache.  As a result, I was a little more frustrated with this bento than I really should have been.  It is almost entirely made of leftovers.  The only thing I cooked this morning was some ramen.  To be sure, I dilly-dallied with it a bit.  I was slow and didn't have much of a plan.  Nonetheless, I think it turned out rather well. 

As you can see, we are back to the larger bento because DH snacked quite a lot yesterday.  To be honest, he was a bit of a piglet. This is the healthier option - a large lunch rather than a small lunch followed by a snack of burger, roll up, cheese, and later a full dinner including ice cream for dessert.  I think I'll spend less on groceries if I pack him the larger bento. :)   It's rather cute - he's looking ashamed of himself as I type this.


Ok.  The first course is slices of a ham and herb dip roll up.  I used about half of the roll up and can use the rest either for my daughter's lunch or as a snack for DH should he require it.  Boy, I hope he doesn't!  :)  There are also slices of carrot and mini bell peppers on this level.  I didn't give him any dip because I'm not sure it's necessary for so small a portion of veggies and frankly, after last night's excesses, I think he can forgo a little added fat. :)  Dessert is half an orange (sliced), some frozen strawberries, and two little Dove chocolates. 


The main course is ramen (which cooks perfectly if you just put it in a bowl of boiling water and let sit for 5 minutes) tossed with veggies, a little butter, and some rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.  There is about 4 oz of chicken as the protein today.  I baked a bunch in precut portions (by the way with the same spice mixture as is on the pasta) and then froze them individually.  Then, when I need a little chicken for a meal, I pull a piece out.  It's easy as can be and if you put the chicken in little snack sized baggies, you can then heat a portion (in the microwave) in about a minute without drying it out at all.  Per DH's request, the other side dish is mozzarella caprese made fresh this morning.  Instead of making skewers and a dip, this is just grape tomatoes, pearls of mozzarella, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little diced onion.  I threw all of it into a bowl and tossed lightly.

Well, we shall have to see how he does in terms of snacking today.  I don't think you can eat a lunch this large and still want more.   

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Back to School Bento - 2 for 1 Deal!

As promised, I'm using two differently shaped bento boxes today. 


You can see here that one bento is oval and the other is rectangular.  They are both two tiered but much smaller. While the first bento box I used holds approximately 1 liter, these hold around half as much.  Standard bento practice assumes 1 calorie per ml of volume in a bento.  But that assumes a higher carb and protein ratio to veggies and fruit.    You can certainly cut down on that calorie count as you'll see below.
Bento # 1:  DH's Lunch

Now, my husband likes to eat.  Since I started using the larger bentos, he hasn't wanted an afternoon snack at all.  He says his lunch stays with him longer.  I do wonder if this smaller bento will do the trick or if he will be snacking all day.  I'll report on this tomorrow.                                            


The larger section of the box contains red leaf lettuce with tomatoes stuffed with tuna salad.  I've topped that with green onion, tomato, and carrot.  The bottom contains green beans, carrot, and zucchini tossed with butter and rosemary and a tortilla filled with roasted red pepper hummus and lettuce.  I am willing to bet that between the mayo and the butter this bento is around 500 calories, but I am not entirely certain on this one.

Bento # 2:  My Lunch

My lunch is lighter and much lower calorie.  It's mostly veggies.
The larger section contains a salad  of romaine lettuce, cucumber, and tomato topped with a hard boiled egg.  There's a little container of dressing.  The lower section is just crackers, salsa, and some slices of apple.  Easy . . .   like takes 2 seconds easy.    But, also about 200 calories.  Not bad for something that should be around 500 calories.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Back to School Bento 4 - The Sandwich Bento

I've been a little unwell and haven't posted for a couple of days.  Sorry about that folks!  But, rest assured that I am feeling better and ready to go.  So back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

The tried and true American favorite lunch food, the sandwich, is a rather bland and boring creature.  And yet, we all eat them.  For school children and adults alike, they are the go to lunch, thrust into a brown bag or perhaps a used plastic shopping bag, further encase in a plastic sandwich baggie and by the time lunch hits, relatively uninspired. Sure we can go to Subway or Quiznos and get a massive hoagie with chips and a drink but it is still an inelegant lunch bereft of character and excitement.  It is still wrapped in paper, shunted into a baggie, and no matter how many sauces we add, is still a sandwich.  In Japan (as here in the States) they have cute little cutters designed to cut children's sandwiches into interesting shapes and make them more appealing.  But what about changing up the inside?  Well, that was the mission today - a pretty bento containing a sandwich with an a-typical filling.  Here it goes!


Layer 1:  A first course of mini bell peppers, tomato, and cucumber with cheese and nuts.  Dessert is a homemade spice cake mini muffin (fresh from the oven this morning) with orange slices and dark chocolate. 

N.B. I have a little pet peeve about lunch trading.  We all know school children do it.  Oreos, chips, and other junk food are hot commodities in the lunch room and command high prices.  Whole lunches have been exchanged for a baggie full of oreos.  Well, if I pack a lunch, I want my kid to eat it!  Is that really too much to ask?!?!  Bentos have a nice side effect: nothing is encased in plastic for easy hand off to another student.  The Dove chocolates are the only "trade worthy" item in the bento and they are really small.  Even an elementary aged child knows that bigger is better when it comes to lunch trading.  :)  Evil . . . I know. 

Layer 2:  Where's the sandwich?!?!  It's there . . .  I've made a wrap on a whole wheat tortilla that I've filled with a fresh herb dip and brown sugar ham.  It is rolled and cut into pinwheel shapes and surrounded by lettuce leaves.  I should have added some sliced tomatoes or perhaps lettuce to the inside of the wrap but I was baking spice cake this morning and didn't have time.  The other two sections hold sides:
  • homemade fries (oven baked with only a little Pam, salt, pepper, and garlic)
  • a salad of cucumber slices, tomatoes, and a red wine vinaigrette.

What's in the herb dip? 
The base is equal quantities of mayonnaise and sour cream.  Crème fraiche adds an even better tang to it but I didn't have any on hand.

To the base you add:
  • herbs - anything you like together  (Here I have cilantro, chives, sage, dill, and parsley.)
  • salt, pepper, garlic, and ginger to taste
  • lime juice
Blend the whole thing until smooth (a food processor is your best bet here).  I make this in advance and use it as a veggie dip, sandwich filler, salad dressing (just add a little more acid - lime juice, lemon juice, vinegar), or even a filling for roasted mushrooms and the like.  But, remember don't eat a lot at once.  It's still basically artery spackle - and not a health food (no matter how many herbs you put into it).  :)

 What's happening tomorrow?  Well . . .  The first 4 bentos are all in the same type of box.  It's time for something a little different!  I'm changing up the shape of my bento. I have different containers and we'll be using one of those. 

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Back to School Bento 3 - Leftover Chinese Food

I'm doing this bento early - in the evening rather than early in the morning.  This is a leftover bento and tomorrow morning is a little crazy.  I need to drive to the airport to pick up our foster daughter.  After that I have tutoring and then people coming over dinner.  So, in order to start day with a semblance of calm, I used some of the dreaded leftovers to hopefully make something pretty.

This first layer contains crab rangoon cut into fourths to make it fit.  I think the shape is kinda neat.  There are some pieces of mushu pork in a pancake and some onigiri. Onigiri are traditional Japanese "rice balls."  They are sometimes filled with things like pickled plums.  Often, they have a seaweed wrapper or handle to make picking them up easy.  I made mine with a little cookie cutter shaped like a heart.  I couldn't think of anything to stuff them with but I didn't want plain white in the box.  So, I dusted them with Spigol - a saffron substitute.  This gives them a fabulous yellow color.  DH won't be able to pick them up though.  In the center is a little dessert: pieces of frozen pineapple.  I've added a few small pieces of carrot to give a little more color to the box.  I could have cut out shapes of veggies and placed them on top of the mushu pork.  That would have been nice looking.  - Maybe next time.


The bottom layer contains leftover fried rice, some General Tso's chicken, and a piece of the same mushu pork pancake found in the top layer.  Everything looked rather brown and dreary after sitting in the fridge for 48 hours, so I tried to add some color.  I put frozen peas and chunks of carrot into the fried rice and I added more carrot and chunks of fresh broccoli to the chicken.

In the picture, you can see a plastic divider.  This came with another bento and is meant to divide the rice from the protein and veg in a traditional bento.  It is common to see bento that contain a lot of rice like this one.  It is not my preference but I had leftovers to use up.  :)

How much time did this bento take?  10 minutes or less.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Back to School Bento 2 - A Mediterranean Bento

Good morning! 

In our house, Wednesdays and Fridays are meatless days, so I had to search a bit for a lunch that was both a) not leftover Chinese food and b) meatless.  Hmm . . .  Mediterranean food.  Yummy!

So here it is:

Yes, I actually had to add a container! :)  Dessert is in the little locking container on top.  The box I used also doesn't have a spoon attached, so I added one from my stash. 

Level 1: A first course of pita slices (I didn't have time to grill them this morning) and baba gannouj, tzatziki, and roasted red pepper hummus.  Mini tomatoes are holding the little cups of spread in place.  I'm not very fond of this level's prettiness factor but I know it will taste good.  I typically keep these types of dip on hand and would have added veggies for dipping but I ran out of time and space.  Maybe another day!

Level 2: The main course is roasted zucchini, carrots, and green beans in a rosemary butter sauce.  I've sprinkled it with a little feta and more rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper.  There are also little mozzarella caprese skewers (with balsamic vinaigrette in the sauce container on the top level of the box) and puff pastry stuffed with spinach and cheese (store bought).  The base is spinach and orange slices frame in the little cup of roasted veggies.

Dessert?  No cookies today!  I decided to go a little healthier, so here we have low fat Greek yogurt topped with agave nectar and walnuts.  I chose the agave over honey because it has a lower glycemic index. 

How to Make Mozzarella Caprese Skewers
You will need:
  • toothpicks
  • grape tomatoes
  • mozzarella pearls
  • basil leaves (small ones)
Cut the grape tomatoes in half.  Put half a tomato, a basil leaf, 1 mozzarella pearl, and the other half of a tomato on each toothpick.  Too easy!

This goes exceptionally well with balsamic vinaigrette.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Back to School Bento 1

Dear Hubby needed a lunch today for teacher training.  I had leftover Chinese food in the fridge to serve as lunches this week and keep it simple.  BUT, the school ordered Chinese for lunch yesterday for all the teachers.  To change it up, I decided to make a more western meal.  So we have a two tiered bento with a three course lunch.

This is the top level. The first course is veggies: carrots and cucumber with a Laughing Cow wedge as a dip. The dessert is apple bars cut in half (to fit in the space), slices of frozen strawberries, and a some thin orange wedges. The center cup contains Parmesan cheese for the next level.
This is the lower level of the same box. Here I whipped up some ramen noodles with a tomato sauce - sauteed red onion, red wine, crushed tomatoes, and herbs - and pulled some lovely petit farci balls from the freezer.  Lettuce leaves and cherry tomatoes fill the gaps.

What's a petit farci?  Glad you asked!  :)  It's a French meatloaf - sort of.  There is a lot more veg in a petit farci than in any American meatloaf.  This makes it a great way to sneak veggies into a picky eater's diet.  It also stretches a small amount of meat.  The actual dish might look something like this:
Each veggie is hollowed out and restuffed with the meat and veggie mix.  This image has a lot of bread in it.  Mine doesn't have any bread at all. 

Basically, I take whatever veggies I have on hand: mushrooms, small eggplants, zucchini (this time of year we have lots), tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and peppers (the mini peppers can be very cute) and I hollow them out.  I take the pieces I've removed from each veggie and put them through a food processor until I have a finely grated veggie mix.  I sauté the veggies in butter and olive oil (a little butter - just for flavor) with garlic and herbs de Provence until tender and fairly dry (there can be a lot of moisture in the veggies).  I let the mixture cool and add it to about a pound of ground beef.  I add an egg, some salt and pepper, and mix together (à la meatloaf).  You can also add Parmesan cheese if you like. Then, restuff the veggies and bake at 400 degrees for about 20-30 minutes. 

I typically make A LOT of this when I decide I have the time to play in the kitchen.  They make a lovely dinner when you have guests and can be made a few hours in advance which is always nice. 

I always have leftover farci filling.  I use a cookie scoop and fill mini muffin tins and bake that way.  Because the pieces are smaller than your veggies, these cook a lot faster, so do watch them in the oven.  I then freeze the mini muffin trays until the farci balls are solid and then remove the farci balls and place them in a labeled bag in the freezer for lunches and quick snacks. 

Variations:
  • Deglaze your sauté pan with white wine (a little - you don't want too much moisture)
  • Try different meats.  This is traditionally done with veal but it's expensive, so I usually just use beef.  But you could do half ground pork, half beef.  You might also try turkey or chicken.
  • Add bread or perhaps some leftover rice to the mix (you may need to add a little milk or egg to keep the mix moist).
  • Try different cheeses.
  • Press the farci filling into different shapes - hearts, stars, leaves, dinosaurs, whatever.  Small cookie cutters would be cute for this.  You could even pan fry the shapes for your little audience; little kids like to help make the shapes.
  • Take the farci filling and make dim sum with it.
Do you have any ideas?  Please share!

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS