Pork Tenderloin Tortillas (Bento #47)

Some of yesterday's tasty pork tenderloin became leftovers for today's bento. Amazing how something that was cooked specifically for this week's bentos could be a leftover...odd.

Anyhow, I took some of the pork tenderloin and cut it into small chunks, added some boiled corn kernels (cut from the cob), and topped with mozzarella cheese. It was all then rolled up into 3 pretty tortillas and baked. Here they are ready for baking.
Now, here they are in my bento not so pretty anymore. This bento could have used a bit more pre-planning. In other words, I should have wacked the ends off the tortillas before baking. Instead, I had to tear the ends off to fit inside the bento. Ah well, cook and learn ;)

Today's bento consists of:
Pork and corn tortillas
Grapes, blueberries, tangerine
Dessert is 2 peanut butter filled pretzel, 1 chocolate covered pretzel, and 1 chocolate covered dried cherry.

Bento #31

Today's lunch was delicious! I'm getting the hang of this bento thing I think ;)
For today's lunch, I tried something I've never made before: pizza crescent rolls. I made these using the garlic buttern Pillsbury crescent rolls found near the biscuits in the grocery store. It was the only kind of crescent roll available. I was worried the taste would be too strong because the rolls smelled heavily like garlic when I took them out of the can. However, they tasted just fine.

In this bento, we have:
Two pizza crescent rolls. The rolls were stuffed with pepperoni slices and mozzarella cheese.
A lady apple & fish-shaped hard boiled egg.
Raw carrots & cucumber. Grapes too!

Hello Again! (Bento #27)

I was sick last week and only made one bento.

It consisted of spaghetti, carrots with dressing, grape & pineapple skewers, and a piece of dove chocolate.

Rolled Tortilla Sandwich with Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday, I saw a nutritionist familiar with working with women and insulin resistance. She reviewed with me the diabetic exchange list and gave me a meal plan.

So, today's lunch is packed with this in mind. My biggest problem with this lunch is the 1/2 cup of sweet potatoes. This isn't quite enough variety for my liking. So next time it's a 1/4 cup sweet potatoes with a bit of fruit to complete the 1 starch portion of the meal. All in all, it won't be a bad lunch.

So here's my lunch for today:
1 rolled sandwich with whole wheat tortilla, roasted turkey, and a piece of provolone cheese.
Small bottle of Organic Zesty Italian dressing, 1 square of chocolate
Sweet potatos and a "salad" of carrot shreds and sliced cucumber.


I'm showing my snack picture today due to the cute picks. I've seen lots of bento websites that have food on picks and I think "how cute." After the appointment yesterday, I went to a nearby craft store and looked in the cake decorating department where I found these great picks. So yesterday's snack that I didn't have the chance to eat was rearranged out of its food cup and onton food picks. At first I thought I would feel silly, a 30-year-old woman with food on plastic toothpicks. LOL! Now I'm looking forward to make snack. It looks like so much fun.

A Rolling We Will Go...

Today's lunch is another rolled sandwich. However, this one has been rolled up ahead of time, no assembly required. Lunch consists of:

One rolled sandwich with a whole wheat tortilla, champagne honey mustard, smoked ham, and baby spinach.
A small amount of Zapp's BBQ potato chips, carrots with french dressing for dipping, grapes, and on the side of the dressing 3 Hello Panda treats.

Lovely Leftovers

Whew! After this weekend, I have bentos for the
next day and a half of meals. Wheee. Leftovers are great. So here goes.

Bento #1:
Leftover chicken from lunch with a friend.
Leftover boiled Dungeness crabmeat (yum!) from family get together.
Steamed green beans made to go with the bento. Carrots, grapes, and a bit of chocolate in the aluminum foil. The little blue cup holds dressing for the carrots.

Bento #2:

Leftoever boiled Dungeness crabmeat.

Stirfried noodles with greenbeans and carrots made to go with this bento.

Watermelon.

I added a small packet of aluminum foil with a bit of chocolate after I added the picture.

There is a third bento that looks just like this with boiled shrimp substituted for the crabmeat.

The next day and a half are going to be YUMMY!

A New Recipe

As I think about this blog and what I'm going to write about, I realize it is highly possible this blog will be as much about my trying to learn to cook as it will be about trying to prepare a bento-style lunch.

I work at a library where I get to see alot of the new books that come through before they go out to the general public. I love looking at cookbooks. However, I don't use them much. For one, I don't know how to cook so well and many cookbooks don't give the level of instruction I need to complete a recipe. Secondly, I don't like recipes with loads of ingredients. Cooking makes me nervous. I'm always worried if I'm going to "get it right." In fact, I lay out all my ingredients beforehand in little containers to make sure I have everything I need. I have a small kitchen with limited counterspace. I don't have room to lay out all those ingredients. Finally, I don't have alot of time to cook. So, I need things that taste decent but are simple enough to prepare.

Well, with the current goal of "let's stop eating out and start making food and packing bentos," I've decided to start looking for new recipes. One gets tired of spaghetti and baked chicken after awhile. So, the yesterday at the library I browsed the cooking section looking for cookbooks that interested me. My requirements were simple but not always easily found. First, I needed a book that a picture for every recipe. This isn't always very easy to come by. For instance, I own a copy of "The Joy of Cooking." I never use it. No pictures means no use by me. I can't envision what something is going to look like, and I can't imagine what it might taste like by the ingredients list. However, I can come much closer with a picture.

Secondly, I looked for books where the recipes seemed manageable for me. This means ingredients that, even if I've never used them before, I've heard of before. Manageable ingredient lists are a plus too.

Finally, I looked for things that had food that looked like something I'd actually eat. People that know me call me a picky eater. To that I say: if I was a truly that picky of an eater, I'd be alot thinner. In actuality, I think I'm a plain eater. By this I mean, I like simple food, sort of "meat and potatos" in my tastes. I even know what this comes from. As a kid I had many food allergies, and I just never developed a taste for alot of things.

One of the books I checked out from the libary was Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking. This is one beautiful book. Each two page spread is like this: the left hand side is the recipe; the right hand side is a beautiful, full-color picture of the dish. YUM! There was a tantalizing picture of a Cashew Chicken stir-fry that I decided I needed to try. It came out beautifully and is included in tomorrow's bento below.

This bento includes:
Cashew Chicken stir-fry with garlic and cucumbers. (Don't worry, that chicken is browned and fully cooked. I'm having trouble taking pictures of my bentos!)

Edamame - Another new experience for me tonight. I've never had this before and it was suggested to me by a friend to try. Not bad. I'm still deciding how to make it a little better.

Carrrots, grapes and watermelon round out the box. I'm thinking the cashew chicken will be yummy cold as well as warm!

The final of the first posts...

I want to apologize for ye few readers of this new blog. These posts aren't formatted well. I'm having some learning curve issues here. Hopefully, we can straighten them out as we go along!

Now, on to today's lunch bento. Today's snack bento was the same as yesterday.

Lunch bento contained mashed potatos with skins and a mini hamburger patty cut in half. This wasn't aesthetics as much as trying to fit everything into this tiny container! Carrots with dipping dressing and grapes as the sides.

But as I think about it, I can share tomorrow's snack bentos with you.

Morning snack: Granola with a container of yogurt to go with. Pistachio nuts and watermelon too.

Afternoon snack:

Triscuits with cucumber and mozzarella cheese slices.

A note about this snack...if you're a cooking enabled you'll probably giggle.

I purchased an inexpensive mandolin V-slicer to help me cut veggies for my bento adventures. Why an inexpensive one you ask? Besides the obvious money reasons, Cooks Illustrated says they aren't bad, and I trust them implicitly. So, off to the kitchen outlet store and a new mandoline slicer now calls my home, home. It looks alot like this one at Amazon:

So, I tried it out with an apple the other day. EESH! Such thin thin thin slices. Nothing I did seemed to work. I thought it defective. Figured it was cheap plastic and was a waste of money. Sooooo disappointing. Tonight, when preparing the cucumbers, I thought, "Let me try again." So, out comes the mandolin. I try again. Pitiful little slices. So, I look at the thing. I see those two screws on the brain and the mechanical part of my brain says, "Maybe the blade is screwed in too tight. It sort of looks depressed a bit in the middle." Off I go to the toolbox, pull out my trusty screwdriver and try to loosen the screws. Only one problem, that durned interchangeable part keeps popping out as I try to hold the thing. So I look at that interchangeable part. I look at the little hooks that hold it in place. Hmmm, I see that those hooks are offset on one side, and if I just FLIP THE PART OVER it gives it more depth. Voila, perfect cucumber slices! Maybe I should have called this blog "Adventures of the Cooking Impaired." LOL!