Pomegranate Chicken & Psuedo Sushi (Bento #40)

Tonight's cooking brings more experimentation and fun! As you already know, dear reader, the word this week is pomegranate. The pomegranate I purchased and seeded this week was too much fruit for just me. Tonight, I decided to take the remaining seeds and try out the sauce from a recipe called Pomegranate & Balsamic Glazed Cornish Hen, found at http://www.recipezaar.com/.

I juiced the pomegranate seeds by hand through a cheesecloth (fun!). Since I didn't have any balsamic vinegar on hand, I used a light balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. This worked out well in my opinion. The sauce had a nice sweet flavor from the pomegranate, but I wasn't overwhelmed by the balsamic taste (which is why I don't often use balsamic salad dressing). The only thing I was unable to accomplish was to get the sauce to thicken and become syrupy. I think the reason for this is I didn't use enough honey; I ran out. All in all though, it made a wonderful sauce to baste the chicken breasts with and made for a very tasty dinner.

For tomorrow's bento, I also decided to try my hand at making a psuedo-sushi roll. I cooked some sushi rice and spread it out on a tumeric colored Sushi Party! soy wrapper. The rice was then sprinkled lightly with sea salt and liberally with toasted sesame seeds. Thinnish slices of carrots, cucumber, and radishes were added to the middle and then it was rolled up. I don't own a sushi mat, so I used my silicone baking mat to help me get the roll into shape. However, I think a bamboo mat might be necessary to get the thing to stay together. I didn't cut the wrap into sushi rolls because I could tell it would fall apart.

Here's a quick picture of what the inside of the sushi roll looks like. I cut one end to get a good picture. Then, I had to eat the portion I cut off. It is quite tasty indeed!



Tomorrow's bento includes:
Psuedo-sushi roll containing cucumber, carrots, & radishes
Wavy cucumber slices with french dressing in container for dipping
Pomegranate & Balsamic baked chicken breasts with wavy chip steamed sweet potatos
Pocky and chocolate "burger candy"

BTW, can you tell I purchased a wavy vegetable cutter. So much fun!


I included a picture of my lunch all wrapped up and ready to go. I'm excited because I now have matching bento/belt sets. Wheeeee!

Bento #26: Chicken & a New Bento Box

Lunch for 10/19/07:

Today, I used the new Clickety Clack bento box that I purchased. I originially purchased the set for some of the items in the set, not really for this bento box. It is a little too pink for me, but loads of fun use an actual bento box!


Today's bento includes:
Baked chicken with lime/basil dressing marinade
Sweet potatoes
Raw cucumber and carrots with dressing.
Grapes with ocean animals pick
2 Chocolate Pocky & 2 sesame candies for dessert

Bento #25: More Pork Tenderloin

Lunch for 10/18/07:
The rest of the shredded BBQ pork tenderloin
Sweet potatoes, small container of cucumber
Steamed carrot chips & green beans
Dressing for cucumbers
Chocolate graham crackers

Bento #24 - BBQ Pork Sandwich

For a quick lunch this morning, I defrosted the other half other pork tenderloin, madea week or so ago. I then put it into a saucepan with a bit of BBQ sauce and made some shredded BBQ pork. Then, I tried to figure out what to do with it. As I was toasting my half of a mini bagel for breakfast, an idea came to me. I put some of the shredded pork on the bottom half of the bagel with cheese on top. A few minutes in the toaster oven and voila, a weird sandwich I don't know what to call.

Other items found in this bento include:
Steamed yam - Okay, we'll see how this works out for me. This is a new experience this time. I purchased some frozen yam patties at my local produce stand. I was told this was just straight yam. I think it is, but I steamed it for way to long. It ended up being a viscous (sp?) mass. Not too sweet though. I think I'm going to have to try this again and steam for less time.

Egg - Below the steamed yam is an odd looking thing to the reader. I've been reading Lunch in a Box and love the egg molds. But I try not to eat the yolk of eggs for cholesterol reasons. I eat EggBeaters instead. So in an attempt to combine Biggie's info on egg molds and quickie egg tamagoki (sp?), I cooked the Egg Beaters until cooked but still slightly moist and then pushed it all into the mold. You can't really tell I used the fish mold, but that's okay. The main goal is that it kept it all into a neat little package. I'll have to try this again soon.

Lastly, I have some salad to go with it all. Hopefully this all tastes okay together.

Bento No and Bento Yes

The bento below I made with leftover chicken I had cooked for a panini sandwich. Which came out wonderfully btw. However, this bento never ended up seeing the inside of my lunch bag. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend of mine and I went to P.F. Chang's for lunch over the weekend, and I came home with leftovers. After my lunch at P.F. Chang's, I had a major case of CRASH! My body needed sleep. I could tell I had eaten something that was setting off the insulin problem, but couldn't figure out what. I'd eaten carefully at Chang's, didn't overeat, and was carefuly on the portions of carbs. That night, I had a small portion of the noodles below with some chicken. I felt that same crashing feeling. I realized it must be these noodles. They were tasty enough, but were sort of thick and floury tasting to me. I think they simply overwhelmed my system. I'm sorry to say I ended up disposing of them.

So the rest of the bento was recycled into a new bento that I enjoyed immensely on Monday. This bento consisted of leftover fried rice (which I was fine with), leftover chicken from a panini sandwich I had made (yummy tasting), cucumber, carrots, and a jello cup.

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!

Bento #2

Chicken quesadilla with grapes, carrots, and a little french dressing in the container for the carrots.

The First Bento

My new bento obsession came at an opportune time. First, I was laid up at home with a cold and bored out of my skull. I'm not a person who relaxes well feeling I must always be doing something. Second, I'd been giving serious thought to rejoining some type of gym for the whole do-your-health-good thing. Finally, I'm just sick and tired of eating out all the time.







Now, any type of meal is tough to do when one doesn't know how to cook. For anyone who stumbles across this blog and thinks, "Hey, I can't cook either! How did you learn?," I don't have any tips to share. I'm still learning. I some great cookbooks here. But I've found it really hard to find a good basic cookbook for the cookbook challenged. Until I got the book pictured right from PBS. This is the book that has the boiled egg recipe I mentioned in my first post.





So, now I can bento to my little hearts desire. All the bento sites I've read talk about the bento boxes used and containers they have. I don't have all that (remember, we're only 2 weeks old here). Besides, I'm not sure if I want all different bento boxes. I want to be able to microwave and so many seem incapable of that. So, Lock & Lock is what I use. Be careful those out there who are reading this and think, "hmmmm, i might try lock & lock." They can be an obsession in and of themselves.





On to the first ever bento...(don't laugh)!







Okay, let me say right now, aesthetics will probably never be my strong suit. My goal here is to pack lunches that are more interesting and a wee bit healthier than the normal fast food fare I partake of. Whenever, I try to arrange things it takes me 3 times as long. Just like my website took 8 years to complete. Not because I didn't know what I was doing...but because I couldn't decide on a design! LOL!

So, in the bento....Spaghetti and meatballs (meatball recipe from above referenced book). Peaches in an aluminum foil cup, salad, croutons, and dressing in the little blue bottle.

And so it begins...

I've resisted blogging for some time now. Not because I don't like it. But because I didn't think I had the time. But lately, I've been making the time to do things I want to do.

So what's the blog about? Well....

I have a hobby I love. I make jewelry. I was even published once in BeadStyle Magazine. But not even that hobby was enough to make me start blogging.

Then, nearly 2 weeks ago (time flies) I was reading a blog by a jewelry artist I admire. And there was a picture of her son's lunch, and she described it as a bento. How cute I thought! I'd eat that! So, off I went in search of what exactly a bento was.

And what to my wondering eyes appeared? But a completely interesting way to pack lunch and make it fun. See, I can't cook. This is a running joke in my family. I look up the recipe (yes, there is one!) on how to boil an egg each time I need to. I'm always worried I'm going to mess it up. I spend alot of time and money, yikes!, on take out/fast food. We won't discuss in this post the health consequences of that...

But these bentos are just little portions of food, lots of variety, cute, and not intimidating if I don't try for the whole arranging/artistic aspect.

And so began an new obsession and this blog with some judicious prodding from a great friend of mine.

This first post will be broken up into several entries. I have some bento pictures to share. Maybe one day, I'll have some jewelry to share when I stop thinking of bentos!