Bento #47

This bento was created with frozen veggies, left-over KFC (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) and instant mashed potatoes. It was far tastier than it had any reason being, considering how quickly it was thrown together this morning.

Take a look:

Banana Muffin Recipe

Today I am going to share with you the recipe I use for banana muffins. These are simple, moist and delicious. I have made this recipe four or more times now and have always been very pleased and gotten lots of compliments.



This is another recipe I got from All Recipes. You can check out the original recipe, provided by All Recipe user Jo Jo, here.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margerine
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• at least 1 cup mashed banana
• 6 Tablespoons vanilla soy milk (or regular milk if you prefer)

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl cream together the margarine and sugar, then add eggs and mix until smooth. Stir in soy milk and mashed banana and mix well.
3. Fold in flour mixture into the liquid ingredients until combined.
4. Fill muffin cups to just below the top (for delicious muffin tops!)
   
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.

I give this recipe 5 stars!




Happy baking...

Catching Up

Well, I have two bentos to share today because yesterday's snack just didn't get posted yet. Lucky you, eh?

I present, bento #45:

• Graham crackers with peanut butter in the middle, topped with almond slices and a chocolate chip
• Some green apple slices
  
• Banana slices with poppy seeds and sesame seeds sprinkled on top; aka: "Banana Sushi"
• Marshmallow fillers

And here is bento #46:

Turkey sandwich on sourdough with turkey star

Brownies

Stay tuned for a great banana muffin recipe... :0)

Saving Face

This morning I attempted to make my sandwiches a little cuter by tacking on some nori eyes and noses. One of the noses fell off before I took the picture, and I was running too late to make a new one.


Bento #44:

• turkey sandwich on sourdough bread
  
• Fritos scoops
  
• Granny Smith apple slices
• brownie

Verdict: I wasn't very pleased with this bento, actually. There was too much bread and not enough meat for my taste in the sandwich. And the chips had gotten a little soggy... from the apples? Or from not drying the lid off thoroughly? I'm not sure.

One thing I am pleased with is this bento box of mine. It is one of a very few I have that actually can be microwaved. It has a clear lid, so I can show off my lunch without opening it. And... best of all, it was absolutely free. It came as the "doggie bag" from Claim Jumper.

My Quick and Easy Meals

In our family, it sometimes happens that Bryan and I will be sitting across the room from each other, happily diddling our time away at our separate computers, when one or the other of us notices it is dinner time. Usually it is Bryan, and our conversation goes something like this:

HIM: What should we do about dinner?
ME: We should eat it.
HIM: I agree.
(pause)
HIM: Do we know what is for dinner?
ME: Um, no. I haven't really thought about it.

At this point, I usually hit "send" on my email or "save draft" on my blog post and wander into the kitchen. What I'm looking for is a "go to" meal. Something that doesn't require me to have thought about tonight's dinner yesterday and thawed or marinated something. What do I usually find?

• Chicken tenders, grilled on the Forman Grill (straight from the freezer) with seasonings on it, and some Rice-a-roni. I cut the chicken up and add it into the rice to serve it as a one skillet meal.
• Chicken breast, again Forman Gilled, maybe with mesquite seasonings. Served with seasoned, broiled red potatoes.
• Burgers and tater-tots.
• Broiled garlic sourdough bread with just about anything. (Chicken, or soup...)
• 8 cent soup (aka: Top Ramen) - with chicken chunks added, if I'm feeling fancy
• Pizza Rolls using Pillsbury crescent rolls.

This has been my first "Works For Me Wednesday" post. If you would like to see what other women make for their last-minute meals, or link your own crowd pleasing quick meals, check out What Do I Fix? at Rocks In My Dryer.

I Propose: Lunch

Hi everyone! I have not one, but two bentos for you today. Get ready for bentos #42 and 43...

I woke up this morning, realized it was the 5th of December, and set to work making a special lunch for my hubby. Today is a special day for us, because exactly three years ago he proposed to me. Here you can see I have cut a message out of cheese for him:


It wasn't until I was actually photographing his finished bento (complete with brownies and bread with heart shapes in them)...


...that I realized the answer to a proposal is "Yes!" and not, "I do!" Oh well, it was too late to do anything about that. The clock was ticking and I still had to pack something for me to eat for lunch.


My lunch contains:

• a spaghetti cup
• lots of sourdough bread (wait, is that a piece of rye in there? no, it's...)
• little heart-shaped brownie
• heart-shaped turkey sandwich
• the last little roma tomato from my garden
• more tri-tip steak

Thanks for reading!

Comfort Bento

Today's lunch is full of comfort food. Take a look:



Bento #41 contains:

• Onigiri with spices sprinkled on top
  
• BBQ tri-tip steak (with, sadly, nothing sprinkled on top)
• Spaghetti in a muffin cup with parsley sprinkled on top
• Brownies in a muffin cup with powdered sugar sprinkled on top

I found eating the spaghetti with chopsticks fairly difficult, but worth the effort.

So you want to... Eat Christmas Cookies?

You will need a great recipe. Luckily for you, I have found a veritable trove of edible treasures at Food Blogga, where Susan is compiling a list of links to delicious Christmas cookie recipes. She is calling her event

Even if you don't think you have time to bake this season, you should stop by and take a look at the list with all the scrumptious looking photos. Maybe you'll be inspired.

Have a great recipe your dying to share? Go here to learn how to participate in this event and submit your recipe for all of us to enjoy.

Thanks to Michelle at Scribbit for her post that pointed me to this tasty holiday collection.

Chicken Noodle Soup

On a cold day like today, soup just fits the bill, doesn't it? I pretended I was "snowed in" and had to make lunch from scratch with what we had on hand. I turned to another of the recipes that has its home on a post-it note in my spice cupboard. This one contains my furious scribblings made during a phone conversation with my mom-in-law, Leslie.

I must have bugged her for her soup recipe three or four times before I finally got around to really trying it. I have included her general instructions (as I understand them) for those of my readers who may just be starting to dream that there is more to life than what comes in a can.

Ingredients:

• Onion
• Carrots and celery
• Noodles
• Chicken
• Chicken bullion (cubes or powder)
• Water
• Flour (small amount)
• Butter

You will notice that there are no exact amounts listed above. That is because there is quite a bit of flexibility there. There is also a lot of room for ingredient substitution, as I will point out during the directions. But don't panic... I will tell you what I did today, and if you want you could follow that exactly. Here goes...

We start with the onion. This, in my opinion, is what gives the base flavor for the soup. Today I had decided I was making soup long before I discovered I was lacking onion. What? No onion? Bummer. I went out to my garden and dug two pitiful little specimens out of the soil. (Now, I'm sure someone who knows something about gardening will comment and tell me this isn't the time to pick them - either I'm late or way early - but I am under the impression that onions can be eaten at any stage in their growth, and I needed it today.)

Now, I knew that this wasn't as much onion as is called for. Leslie's original instructions called for a whole onion, and I usually use half of one of those large yellow ones. But I didn't feel like adding minced onion from my cupboard. So I improvised. You can too. Just fill in the gaps with what you have. In this case, I used garlic, since I knew that it was the same type of ingredient - an aromatic. I figured garlic never hurt anything, so I chopped up three big cloves and called it good.

Next I chopped up some veggies that I had in my fridge. I chose to use one carrot (that was all I had) and two celery sticks. You can use whatever vegetables you think will be tasty in your soup. If you have a bag of frozen vegetables, great - you won't even have to chop anything. Just throw it all in the pot with your onion.

Now is where my directions call for butter. Because I have a milk allergy, I routinely make substitutions for butter. And I have made this before with margarine, it works fine. But extra virgin olive oil is supposed to be healthier, so I went that route today. If you're out of butter - don't stress it. Just reach for a fat. All we really want here is to add a little flavor while we keep the vegetables from sticking to the pan and the onion from burning. Spray them with Pam, or chuck a dollop of Crisco in there - whatever you have to do - just add a little fat.

Sauté the vegetables (this means you've added the fat, and you are stirring it) until they are soft. But don't worry about the carrots getting soft. That would take too long. Now we are going to make a roux (Oooh... more french! We're getting fancy, aren't we?). Well, actually we are going to take the lazy way out. We are going to add 2 teaspoons of flour and it will mix with the fat that is already on the vegetables. (This flour will help thicken our broth.) Put a Tablespoon of water in there at the same time and stir. When it is mixed in, then add a couple cups of water.

Now we need to cook the noodles. Do this in a separate pot. Bring the water to a boil, add a pinch of salt if you feel like it, and two handfuls of egg noodles. The kind that I use are called "Country Pasta" and can be bought at Costco (see pic). They come in a big plastic bag.

If you prefer chicken soup with rice rather than noodles, you should go ahead and use a box of wild rice instead. I've not tried that yet, but I assume you would cook it separately the same way you do with the noodles. (Comments anyone?)

Anyway, drain your noodles once they've cooked, and add it to the pot with your veggies in it. At this point, add 4 or 5 cubes of chicken bullion to give it a lot of flavor. Let it continue to simmer.

Finally, the chicken. This is chicken noodle soup, after all, isn't it? If you have chicken breast left-over from last night's dinner, chop it up and add it. Or do you have pre-cooked chicken strips (like you might use for salad) in your freezer? Same thing. I didn't have anything ready, so I put two frozen chicken tenders on the Forman Grill and cooked them up right then.

Your soup might look something like the picture above now. I tossed in some Italian Seasoning and a dash of pepper at this point and removed it from the heat so it would cool down a bit so I could eat it.

Congratulations! You've made soup.

Recap of directions:

Cut up one medium onion, put it in a pot

Cut up veggies, add them to the pot

Put a Tablespoon or so of butter in and saute over medium heat until veggies are soft

Add 2 teaspoons of floor, and a Tablespoon of water, stir

Add 2 or 3 cups of water

Boil noodles in a separate pot; drain and add to veggies

Plop in 4 or 5 chicken bullion cubes (or the equivalent amount of bullion powder)

Let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes

Meanwhile, nuke or grill your chicken and cut into cubes

Toss in some seasonings. Italian is usually a good bet. And maybe a dash of pepper.

Cinnamon Rolls

Last night I got the urge to bake. So I visited All Recipes and did a quick search for cinnamon roll recipes. I ordered them by their ranking, and printed off the first 5 star recipe I found that didn't call for cream-cheese frosting. The recipe was submitted by Julie Sterchi and can be found here.

I put on my apron, rolled up my sleeves, put the first two ingredients in the bowl and then... ran out to buy yeast. Mine was way past its expiration date, and wouldn't proof.

When I got home, new jar of rapid rise yeast in hand, I made up the dough. It was very sticky (there isn't a picture of that, because my hands were completely covered). I am not sure why it was that way, but I did not enjoy kneading it and kept adding flour.

Below is a picture of the dough before its first rise. In the background, Dioji looks a bit bored.

I covered it with cling wrap and put it into the oven. I had heated it to the lowest setting, and then turned it off. I just wanted the dough to have a warm place to rise, so that it would go more quickly. (That trip to the store really put my start time back!)

After the rise:

Rolling out the dough, on the nice mat that my Nana gave me. It actually has inches marked off so I could have rolled it into a 14 in by 10 in rectangle as directed. But it got a little out of hand.

Adding the goodies. For half of the batch I did white sugar, for the second half I used brown sugar like you see below. (The recipe didn't specify.) I followed the suggestions of those who had commented that there should be more cinnamon. I applied it liberally without measuring.

Here it is all rolled up and ready to cut. If you notice by the (empty!) cinnamon container, there is a dental floss. I use this to cut off the individual rolls. You just slide the floss beneath the dough and then pull the two ends together above the dough where you want it cut, and cross them as you slice through the roll with the floss.

Here are the rolls ready for their second rise.

When they came out of the oven:

Here they are with frosting drizzled on top:

So what did I think of this recipe? I thought that they tasted more like doughnuts than cinnamon rolls, which is probably due to the cake mix in the recipe. They are good, and I'm glad I made them, but they weren't my favorite cinnamon rolls ever.

So... who out there has a recipe for cinnamon rolls that they really like? I'm looking to try another one. Leave me a comment with the recipe or a link, k?

Hearty Spaghetti Sauce

You may have noticed from yesterday's bento that my spaghetti looked more like a Sloppy Joe on noodles. That is the way we like it around here, and in case you're a meat-lover too, I thought I would share how we make our sauce. There is nothing from scratch about it... but it sure is good!

1. Brown 1 lb lean ground beef in a pot; drain off fat
2. Add a 16 ounce can of tomato sauce & half a can of water
3. Stir in a packet of Lawry's original style spaghetti sauce spices and seasonings
4. Add sliced black olives, if desired, and heat it till it just starts bubbling
5. Reduce heat to low and let it simmer for a bit
6. Serve over pasta

Incidentally, these are the types of "recipes" I looked for most when I first started cooking. No one uses a recipe for spaghetti sauce, baked potatoes or boiled eggs. "But how hot is the oven?" or "How long do I boil them?" I wondered. Thank goodness for the internet.

Speedy Bento

Bento #40 is a speed bento using left-overs from last night's dinner. I spent a grand total of 4 minutes this morning on it! (I had portioned off the spaghetti last night after dinner.)

It contains:

• Spaghetti
• Sour dough bread (acting as a divider)
• Honey Crisp apple slices

This bento was packed in a Gladware container so that I can remove the apples and heat up my spaghetti. Should be tasty!

The bento formally known as frozen

Bento #39 was hot! (By which I mean I microwaved it right before eating.) And a good thing, too... because it has been really cold in the cafeteria lately at the middle school I work at.

This bento contains:

• 5 fresh tomatoes picked from my garden this morning (Can I just say again how astonished I am to be picking tomatoes in the morning, and watching it snow in the evening! What a crazy November this is.)
• A frozen Boca pattie with carrot peelings on top for decoration
• frozen corn
• frozen stir-fry vegetables
• maple chipotle grille sauce (hidden beneath the Boca burger)

I was thinking to myself as I ate my lunch today, that I had packed a bento even my vegan friends could enjoy. Being something of a carnivore myself, I found this worthy of comment.

Thanks for reading!

Bunny Bento

"What is that?" one of the boys from the table next to me in the cafeteria asked, watching, with furrowed brows as I raised the chopsticks to my mouth.

"What?" I glanced up to see a handful of pre-teen boys looking at me.

"That purple stuff... what is it?"

"Garlic mashed potatoes." I answered, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be eating potatoes the hue of my utensils in the center of a middle school cafeteria.


I'm beginning to think that I may be developing an unhealthy bento obsession. I was almost late today because I felt I should add whiskers to my lunch bunny. I literally looked at the clock and thought, "It would be okay to be a little late... Wait, what am I thinking? I can make another bunny (with whiskers) some other day; I better get going!"

So here is a close-up of my bunny, sans whiskers:

Contents of bento #38:

• 3 rice onigiri hand formed into head and two ears.
• Nori eyes and nose
• "Hot Shot" seasoning mouth
• Garlic mashed potatoes tinted purple
• carrot made of, um... carrot
• carrot stem made of broccoli
• 3 ham slices, skewered on a toothpick

I have entered this bento in Feisty Bento's contest: Does this make my lunch look phat?

Easy as pie?

My husband loves desserts. Specifically, he really loves chocolate cream pies. This Thanksgiving, he talked me into attempting to make one without milk (since I had never tried one before developing my milk alergy - and he felt I was really missing out).

I wasn't at all sure that it would work, so I made him agree to make the pie with me. He was game. So I first Googled cooking with soy, and found that a certain site suggested that I add 1/4 cup corn starch to my pudding filling so that it would set up. (Those of you cooks reading this, are probably already guessing this didn't work too well... but let me tell the story anyway...)


First we started by making a home-made graham-cracker crust. It was easy and fun. We took a package and a half out of our box of Honey Maid graham crackers and put them in a zip-lock bag for the karate chop. (Then we finished the job with a rolling pin.) I was afraid it might have been crushed too much - it looked like graham dust - but it worked just fine. Then we added the crumbles to about a stick of melted margerine in a bowl. I sprinkled in somewhere between a 1/3 and 1/2 cup of white sugar into the mixture. Then we pressed it with a spatula into the pie pan and put it in the fridge.


The next day, we cooked the pudding with soy milk. But instead of the 3 cups that were called for, we only used about 2 - because the website we'd looked at told us to "reduce the liquid" when using soy. And in went 1/4 cup of corn starch to make sure it would thicken. Boy did it ever! The stuff was like taffy before we could even get it to boil.



We were a bit concerned at the consistency, and added maybe another 1/4 cup of soy. We stirred it in and removed the globby mixture from the heat. We pressed it into the pan on top of the crust, using cling wrap on to so we could knead it into where it was supposed to go. We hoped it would relax, but there were still "peaks" on top when I pulled it out of the fridge the next morning to add the Cool Whip.


The pie looked fine, and we took it anyway. Though there was tremendous laughter from our friends when we explained what had happened, and they saw the chocolate pie standing up on its own and being so firm, everyone agreed it tasted just fine. There was none left when we returned home.

However, for next time, we will know to use the called for amount of (soy) milk and after it has boiled to add a small amount of corn starch. (Like maybe a Tablespoon.)

Monday Bento

Bento #37 lacks color, but was very tasty.


On the left is the insides of my left-over chicken wrap from Red Robin. It has chicken, lettus and tortilla strips in it. On the right I made little finger sandwiches out of tasty sourdough bread and turkey. In the right-hand corner we have dessert: three tiny squares of Rice Krispie treats and a few semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Visiteurs bienvenus ! (Translation Available)

I noticed that French Bento has added me to their blog roll. (Thanks again, by the way.) Since this blog is originally written in French, I decided to add the option for translation to my own blog for any visitors who happen by using her link.

Hopefully this automated translation will suffice, as I speak absolutely no French.

Appréciez !

Turkey Bento

Ironically, bento #36 does not contain any turkey meat.


On the left I have pot roast forming the turkey's neck and head. Coriander is his eye. Nori is used for his little pilgrim hat and the letters. Tomato for the gobbler, and carrot for the beak. On the right I have pork chop skewers with pineapple and apple.

Happy Thanksgiving! (I'm celebrating a bit early since this will be my last packed lunch before then.)