Some Assembly Required

I've been intrigued for some time now by the concept of a rolled sandwich using tortillas or flat bread. Today for lunch, I tried one and enjoyed it so much that I decided to bring one for lunch tomorrow. I didn't preassemble my sandwich. So I brought all the ingredients in the Fit 'n Fresh box I purchased at the same time I purchased my Lock 'n Locks. This is it's maiden lunch voyage.

In the bottom tier we have all the stuff to make our sandwich: a rolled piece of Flat Out honey whole wheat bread, some deli smoked ham, a container of Harry & David's Champagne Honey mustard (yum!), carrots, cucumber, and baby spinach too. A small piece of Dove chocolate is included for dessert.

Now for the upper tier. That Fit 'n Fresh has two large sized upper trays that I was trying to figure out what to do with. This is going to be one awesome lunch, but boy did I use alot of muffin cups in this one! I need some regular size silicone muffin cups. I hate the thought of using so many in one lunch!

The upper tier includes steamed green beans, homemade applesauce with dried cranberries and golden raisins, pistachios, and a small amount of bbq chips. A word about the applesauce: This stuff is delicious and super easy! I got the recipe for cinammon applesauce from the October 2007 issue of Everyday Cooking. I added the raisins and cranberries myself. This stuff is tasty tasty. Try it if you're looking for something fun. I used 2 gala apples and it only took about 7 minutes in the microwave to cook the apples. Fun!

Dry but Edible Chicken

Last night, I tried to bake some chicken stuffed with cheese. This did not come out so well. Mainly, I don't think I put enough cheese, AND the chicken came out really dry. But it was still edible and tasty with the herb seasoning I had. I just need a bit more water to drink to offset the dry chicken.

Our side dishes for our dry little piece of chicken are a bit of leftover edamame and baked sweet potato with salt and pepper. I also have another box with carrots and cucumber and french dressing for dipping. I didn't take a picture of that since I pictured something very similar to that a few days ago.

The smaller box is this afternoon's snack bento: peanut butter, goldfish pretzel crackers, and pistachio nuts.

I was too tired to post this last night, so I am posting it this morning. I'll probably have another post tonight about tonight and tomorrow's bento. I have enough of this dry chicken to last me a couple of meals!

Spaghetti with a Little Yoga for Flavor

I had a long day today, starting with arriving at work at 5:30AM and ending the day with a workout at my new gym and getting home for about 8:30PM. It was a long day, but a pretty satisfying and productive one.

Before I get to tomorrow's bento, I want to talk a little more about my new gym. I really like the place (which I think I've mentioned in a previous post). After my last meeting of the day, I headed off to the gym. They have great classes there, and this week, I decided to try the Svaroopa yoga class after my workout. I'm so glad I did. I've never been to such a relaxing class! I tend to carry around alot of tension, being the type A personality that I am. This class was just lovely. And I swear I walked out feeling an inch taller. We did these wonderfully gentle stretching exercises. I felt so much straighter and taller afterwards. I just can't say how nice it was! If you want to know more about Svaroopa Yoga, I found this site had a nice explanation and link to an article. Remember if it looks good to you, to consult your physician before starting any type of exercise.

Now, on to tomorrow's bento.

You've seen much of this before. I almost didn't post it but figured that was keeping with my goals. So here are several repeats thrown together.

Since I came home so late, I grabbed a small pack of meatballs out of the fridge. The leftovers with a bit of spaghetti underneath are tomorrow's lunch along with watermelon, grapes, and a salad with cucumbers, carrots, baby spinach, baby romaine, and balsamic vinaigrette on the side. No snack bentos to share since I packed the same thing as yesterday, except with sunflower seeds instead of soynuts.

Link - and - Balance

Currently, I am reading The Insulin Resistance Diet. The beginning of the book explains Insulin Resistance in layman's terms and has been one of the better explanations I have seen to date. Then the authors, a doctor and a registered dietician, go on to explain their "diet" for Insulin Resistance. It's not a diet really. Actually in alot of ways, it is similar to how diabetics eat.

The concept is that to keep one's insulin from spiking, as it does when you have insulin resistance, one should link carbs with proteins in order to balance the carb intake. This will keep insulin in a level state.

So, I've tested the concept for the last two days and it does seem to work. Using the ratio in the book, I enjoyed a few carbs at dinner tonite, which make a nice leftover for tomorrow. I must say, I'm not feeling that typical drag-me-down-to-sleep feeling like I normally do. So, we'll see how this works for me. I'm going to try the concept out until I can get an appt with a nutritionist.

On to tomorrow's bento:

First tier - Homemade mini hamburger (1 1/2) with ketchup packet and psuedo-mac 'n cheese. I call this psuedo b/c I didn't have any milk on hand. So it's made with a little margarine, shredded cheese, elbow macaroni, and ground pepper.

Second tier - Carrots & seedless cucumber with creamy french dressing for dipping. (YUM!)

Morning Snack: Granola with yogurt (blue container). Green container has about a tablespoon of soynuts to help balance out the granola/yogurt.

Afternoon Snack: Crackers & cheese.

Back to Bentos

This week has been a busy one at work. I had a day and a half of bentos as mentioned in my last post. After that, I had to eat out for work purposes (made sure to choose salads with light dressings, and such) and had light meals at home. No bentos to post until tonight.

This is leftovers from tonight's dinner. These are packed in two 380ml Lock 'n Lock containers. After consulting the Lunch in a Box website, I discovered a 600 ml box is what I'm supposed to use for lunch, according to the chart provided there. The ones I've been using have been a bit over 800ml. I'm going to keep those for when I have salads and such to bring, since they have more room.

In the meantime, I purchased two more Lock 'n Locks of the 380ml size. I'm using these as a makeshift 2-tier bento system. The combined ml of these boxes brings me close enough to the correct ml.

On to the food.....

In the "first tier" we have chicken basted with a fat free lime basil salad dressing by Maple Grove Farms of Vermont. It is tasty, but should have been marinated a bit longer. Probably could have used a little more black pepper too. But all in all, quite good. I used chicken thighs since they came out moister/more tender. I always seem to over cook chicken breasts. They come out dry and blech. To the left of the chicken is a sweet potato baked plain with a little margarine spray, salt, and black pepper added. I'm not one for too much added to a sweet potato. They are sweet enough to my taste buds without adding cinnamon and sugar.

The "second tier" includes a nice salad. This past week, I discovered baby lettuces. How tasty! This salad consists of baby romaine and spinach with baby carrots and seedless cucumber. The container has balsamic vingaigrette by the same brand that made the lime basil salad dressing. Tasty, tasty. I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow. Have to do some more cooking tomorrow so that I have some lunch for work this week!

I can't believe...

I forgot to post the snacks. Eesh!

Morning Snack:

Granola with a container of yogurt, watermelon and pistachios.

Afternoon Snack:

PB and pretzels, apple slices, 2 sesame seed candies, half a stick of cheese, and a container of soynuts.

All packed with one of my new bento belts! Fun!

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!