Today, I go into work late.  This left me enough time this morning to finally have an opportunity to cook, which meant I could finally get this idea out of my head.  Some time back, I made kibi burgers and froze them for later use.  What is a kibi burger you might ask?  Instead of making my kibi filling loose, I made it into little patties that I pan-fried.  The spices used in the meat give one the illusion of having Greek-spiced meat, like the kibi you get at a Greek restaurant (or at the one in my area).  I needed sides for these burgers and I wanted to do something with cucumber and yogurt, but not a true tzatziki sauce.  I found a recipe for a dilled cucumber salad at Everyday Food as well as a orzo pilaf I found in the April 2010 issue I picked up a little while ago.

Leftovers were packed up into my Laptop Lunches green box that I have grown particularly fond of lately.  This is dinner and is also a prime example of why bento works so well for me.  I definitely don’t mind eating leftovers, which is a fortunate thing.  Living on my own, I tend to cook recipes that leave me with lots of leftovers.

As for the two recipes I used in this bento, I feel the need to add my comments on them.

Orzo Pilaf: This was tasty and the first time I’ve ever cooked with orzo.  As well, once all the veggies were diced it was super simple to make.  However when reading the recipe, I realized I was going to have the same problem as my the recent black bean recipe I’d tried: lack of flavor.  As frequent commenter Liz said, there aren’t enough ingredients.  The orzo pilaf originally called for just carrots and then you cook the whole thing up.  I doctored the recipe with finely diced red bell pepper and onion along with a 1/2 tsp of garlic powder while I cooked the vegetables down.  When I poured the orzo and water into the pan, I added a pinch (or so) of salt.  Once the dish was done, everything tasty pretty well, but needed another pinch of salt as well as black pepper.  These changes made this recipe work very well for me.

Yogurt Dill Sauce – I mixed the yogurt, vinegar, and dill just as the recipe called for, substituting dried dill to taste for fresh (it’s what I have on hand).  While okay, this recipe is a bit too vinegary for me.  I think I’d prefer to cut the vinegar to 1/2 tsp with a splash more rather than a full tsp.  Otherwsie, it was a nice compliment to my raw cucumbers. 

Have a great Tuesday, and be the bento everyone!

Not Exactly Bento has no affiliation with Laptop Lunchboxes or Everyday Food.  I am just a fan of each.  However, Martha if you feel the need to give me a free extension on my Everyday Food subscription, please feel free.  HA! 

Yesterday, I stuck to all of my bento goals, except for posting a picture of my lunch or dinner.  There was a good reason; I didn’t eat lunch or dinner.  Every morning, I eat a little something for breakfast: an egg sandwich, half a ham sandwich, half a peanut butter sandwich, some cereal, etc.  The only thing is that I have a love/hate relationship with peanut butter.  Sometimes it loves me; sometimes it doesn’t.  Yesterday was one of the “it doesn’t love me” days, leaving me feeling blechy and a wee bit nauseous for most of the day.  Ick.  But I’m feeling much better this morning and am having cereal with yogurt instead of any peanut product.  In fact, I’m thinking I might have to start avoiding peanuts all together, in any form.  The older I get, the more I have that particular problem.

Today, I have my next bento for the month.  I picked up a cheap, thin-cut sirloin steak from the grocery store and sliced it into thin strips.  Then, I cooked it in my skillet with a bit of olive oil, peppers, onions, and garlic.  A bit of fajita seasoning helped to give everything a bit of flavor. It is paired with one of the black bean & quinoa burritos that I froze.  A hard boiled egg, an orange, and a wee bit of chocolate complete today’s bento.

Be the bento everyone!  I hope all is going well for your challenges.  Let me know how you’re doing.

This is Day 13 of the 30-Day Bento Challenge.  Want to join?  Latecomers welcome.

Today is Good Friday, and in South Louisiana, Easter weekend often means seafood for many families.  And today, I’m looking forward to enjoying boiled shrimp and crabs (OH MY!) at my parents house.  Then, I’m going to come home.  And no matter how much I’ve gorged on seafood, in a few hours, I’ll be hungry again.  Because boiled seafood, for me at least, just doesn’t keep me full forever.  In comes an easy bento for dinner.  I have today off since my workplace is closed on Good Friday.  A package of loose groundmeat spaghetti came out of the freezer.  Elbow macaroni was boiled (since that’s what I had).  In the bowl is a layer of macaroni, a layer of mozzarella, and a layer of spaghetti sauce.

To accompany the spaghetti, I have another small box of food.  Roasted cabbbage is my vegetable for this meal with a little smiley container of lemon juice.  For dessert, sliced oranges and 3 dark chocolate bites are included.  This should all make for a simple dinner, leaving me plenty of time to pack and get ready for tomorrow’s bento.  I work tomorrow, which means I’m supposed to have a food picture of my eat-at-home lunch.  YAY!

Have a lovely Friday everyone, and a great weekend.

This week, I took a few days off of work.  I have 3 days to spend at home and do what I please.  What I please is to get my home life back into some semblance of order.  As usual, I’ve ignored the homemaking side of things lately.  So, I’m cleaning house, doing loads of laundry, and cooking.  Or I have plans to cook.

Last night, I pulled a pack of meaty saucy stuff out of my freezer.  I thought it was chili.  I wanted chili.  I was excited about chili.  But,  it wasn’t chili.  It was spaghetti sauce.  Weird.  I normally label my packages in the freezer.  Must have forgotten to that day.  I placed the defrosted spaghetti sauce into the fridge last night planning to use it today.

Today, I made baked spaghetti.  It is something I often make with leftover spaghetti sauce.  It’s nothing fancy, but totally tasty.  A layer of cooked elbow macaroni, a layer of meaty spaghetti sauce, a layer of mozzarella cheese.  I normally do two to three layers, depending on the depth of my baking dish.  Into the oven it goes at 400 degrees until the cheese gets nice and melty and the tomato sauce starts to bubble.  Once that happens, I turn the oven to broil just to crisp up the cheese on the top.

OMGoodness!  So good.  So very good.

Be the bento everyone!  I have plans to share a new-to-me recipe and more food in the coming days.

Today on NEBPhotos: Kiwi in Black & White

I mentioned last friday that I purchased the food grinder attachment for my KA stand mixer.  I knew the first thing I was going to do was grind up meat to make my own hamburger meat.  I must say that prepping for this first grind left me a bit confused.  I didn’t find all that much information on the internet to help me in my journey.  Or at least not a good pictorial like I wanted.  There was a decent one at instructables, but it had information different from other websites I visited.  After much thought, I purchased a huge pack of chuck roast at Sam’s Club, attached the grinder to the KA and prepared for the first grind.  Seriously, why  not just dive in feet first?  I don’t often do that.  It was time.

Step 1: I trimmed the chuck roast of as much fat as possible. Next time, I’m definitely purchasing a leaner cut of meat. Then, the roast was cut into small cubes or strips. After everything was trimmed, cut, and cubed, I placed the meat (covered with aluminum foil) into the freezer for 40 minutes. I didn’t want the meat to freeze. The purpose is to firm the meat so that it goes through the grinder easier. Or so I read. And trust me, I found out this was ESSENTIAL.

Be sure to check your meat in the freezer in 10 – 15 minute increments. 40 minutes might be too long for you or not enough. Oh, and in case you are wondering, the 5 and 1/3 pounds of chuck roast I purchased made about 4 lbs of ground meat after trimming.

Step 2: Once the meat is nicely firmed, it’s time to begin the grind. For hamburger meat, use the coarse blade of the KA food grinder. Place strips of meat in the tube of the food grinder. Turn on the KA.

Step 3: Using the plastic food stomper (or at least I think that is the term), push the meat down the tube towards the grinding, twisted metal at the bottom. This is what will churn up the food (or so I think).

Step 4: Marvel at the fact that you’re grinding your own hamburger meat (or whatever it is you choose to grind up).

Step 5: Continue to place food in the food grinder and push it down with the stomper to grind up all the meat until none is left.

Step 6: HA! Look at that, you’ve finished grinding everything. But you’re not finished yet.

Step 7: Season your meat however you wish. Mix it well into the ground meat. Then, place it all back into the freezer to firm back up (after the next step). Grinding the meat will warm it up enought to where it is no longer firm enough to do the second grind. The second grind is needed to help distribute the fat better through the meat as well as to tenderize the meat more. It has the added benefit of distributing seasoning throughout the meat well too.

Step 7 continued: Place your ground meat onto freezer paper, roll the freezer paper around it and press all along the meat well.

Step 7 continued, again: This will roll your meat into a nice log shape, making it easier to cut into segments, once firmed in the freezer, to place down the food grinder tube. Be sure to go back after the first grind and firm the meat up by placing it in the freezer for a bit before regrinding it. I didn’t think to do this with my first batch and it gunked up the grinder. I firmed up the rest, and the grind was much easier.

As well, you can do this butcher paper trick to shape the meat for permanent freezing.

Step 8: Once the meat is firmed up again, place it all back through the grinder. Since there is a bit of a time delay between the two grinds (30 – 40 minutes) I washed my food grinder well so that the dirty food grinder didn’t just sit there, exposed to the elements. As my second grind completed, I segmented the meat into 1 pound batches. The batches became kibi burgers (yet to be shown) and meatloaf.

If anyone reading out there has suggestions, tips, or sees that I did something really wrong, please let me know.  This was my first attempt and by no means an expert tutorial.

Woohoo! My week is complete, and I’ve brought a bento to work each day…that I did work. It’s only 3 days so far, but so glad to be back into a routine again. Whew. Anyhow…

Today’s bento is very similar to yesterday’s in content. The only real difference is changing out steamed green beans for steamd carrots. I wasn’t so happy with how I packed everything into yesterday’s bento. This was only because I couldn’t figure out at first how to layout the mini meatloaf with the lentil burgers. Today, I figured it out, making it all a bit more visually appealing to my eye. I also snuck in a third vegetarian wonton beloww the crabmeat au gratin. Hehehehehehe, I love those things. I plan on having a wonton making marathon this weekend.

Today’s bento includes:
Crabmeat au gratin (in green silicone cup)
Vegetarian Wontons (recipe here)
Mini Meatloaf (recipe here, I left out the peppers & cheese this time and added in 1/2 cup ketchup)
Lentil cake (recipe/process here)
Steamed Carrots

Be the bento everyone! And thanks for reading along with me this week.

P.S. Can I say how thrilled I am that I’m able to offer three recipes along with this post?  How far I’ve come in 2+ years still amazes me.

Last week, my father celebrated his birthday.  (Happy Birthday again Dad!)  This past weekend, my mom invited us all over for grilled steaks.  The steaks were gargantuan, and I couldn’t finish mine.  I brought the leftovers home for my bento today.

Today’s bento includes:

Left: Sliced grilled smoked sausage and cut-up chunks of steak, black beans and corn, and steamed sweet potato.
Right: Skewers of blueberries and oranges (aren’t they pretty?), and carrot sticks.

Before I close today’s post, I want to give everyone a bit of forewarning.  In 12 days or thereabouts, I’m going to hit bento number 200.  WHEEEE!  To celebrate the event, there will be a small giveaway.  I recently made an order from Ichiban Kan with a few people I know.  When I ordered, I thought of everyone here and figured a giveaway was in order soon.  In fact, I’m probably going to roll over to 20,000 hits as well (which is way off since I had my counter inadvertently turned off for about a month or so), but anyhow….  A celebration is in order, don’t you think?

Be the bento everyone!  Hope you survive your various Monday start to the week.

It deeply pains me to show you the picture of this bento.  It is such a blah picture.  I should have picked a different background.  I should have picked a different color box.  I should have put the green beans where the sweet potatoes are and vice versa.  It would have all looked much more appealing then, instead of quite so blah.  But what you don’t know is what is hidden underneath those little meatball looking things.  What’s hidden underneath makes all the difference.  It is sweet, tasty, exciting…..would you like to know?

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Now this picture, I don’t mind showing you at all.  It is a red pepper bite, or so I’ve dubbed it.  Some of my recent meatball mixture ontop of a nugget of sweet red pepper and topped with cheddar cheese.  YUM!  I’m going to talk more about my the recent meatballs and these little bad boys in an upcoming post.  But for the time being just enjoy the photo.

Have a great Friday everyone and be the bento!

Well, I’m feeling pretty darn good this morning, even if a bit tired.  I went to the gym again last night and didn’t beat myself up for the fact I’m not quite ready to start back on the strength training.  Plus, I got there a bit late and was worried if I’d have time to do the whole routine (cardio +  strength) before closing time.  Instead, I spent about 35 minutes between hard labor on the elliptical and the bike.  I’m still sleepy this morning, my legs still feel a wee bit like mush, but overall it’s still going to be a good day.  I’m just not as perky as normal this morning.  I must say I slept REALLY well last night.

Now that I’ve bored you with my workout woes, here’s today’s bento.  They contain the last of the meatballs.  No sesame-crusted chicken this morning since the last of that was dinner last night.   BTW, that’s 5 little mini meatballs that are cut up and put in there.  Steamed broccoli, green beans, and carrots accompany it all with some baked apples.  I’m telling you those baked apples are just delish to me.

So now I’m all out of stuff for bento and must cook tonight.  I have another package of groundmeat that I pulled out the freezer last night and put in the refrigerator.  I think I might pull out a package of chicken too.  I’ll probably cook two things tonight that will last me through the weekend.  It will be time to hit the books tonight and try to figure out what I’m going to make.  Though I have an idea with that groundmeat.

Have a great day everyone!  Be the bento.

For today’s bento, I pulled back out my Baby Zoo box and at 550 ml, it’s just the ticket to help keep me full.  Today’s bento includes: 3 meatballs coated in sauce cut in halves, steamed green beans and carrots, 4 pieces of sesame-crusted chicken with a soy sauce fish, 2 pieces of steamed broccoli, and a bit of baked apple goodness.

There are a few things I’m very happy with when it comes to this bento I feel the need to point out.  First, look how wonderfully full and varied it is.  Quite the departure for me.  Second, soy sauce fish is awesome.  Thanks to Feisty Foodie for sending me some of those little fishies.  Finally, the broccoli is the last thing.  I’ve made the decision I’m going to like broccoli dammit!  I’ve managed to develop my taste for it raw.  This year, I’m working on the whole slightly steamed thing.  We’ll see how that works out for me.  That’s why there are only 2 pieces in there.  Slow, tiny, baby steps.

I also pulled out my gym shoes this weekend and made a visit to the place.  I started out with 35 minutes on the elliptical and was quite pleased with myself.  Considering I haven’t been in more months than I’m going to admit here at this very time (most likely about 6 months), I’m not balking at myself for not doing weight exercises as well.  I’ll get back on the strength training tomorrow.  I allowed work and other things to get in the way of the gym.  Bah!  No more I tell you!  I feel better physically and mentally when I go.  So back I go!

I’m not into alot of self-denial when it comes to some things.  Now moderation is one thing, but telling myself “absolutely no fat, no sweets, no anything good” is just out of the realm of possibility for me.  Honestly people, I have no willpower.  So instead, I go to the gym.  I prefer that option.  It works for me.  So here’s to the 550 ml bento box, the gym, and a really good lunch tomorrow!

Be the bento everyone.  I’ll see you soon!