For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
Everything looks so much more elegant when you put it inside clean, minimalist circles, even mini pretzels. Bento whiz .scarlet has filled four round containers with soy yogurt, green salad, veggie chili and assorted snacks (spelt pretzels, celery with peanut butter, pepperoni, Babybel cheese). Simple but lovely. And incredibly healthy too.
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. The boxes can range from austere lacquered trays to multi-tiered Hello Kitty confections of neon pink plastic. The meals themselves are anything from rice and leftovers to elaborate themed affairs of Pikachu-shaped dumplings with sesame seed eyes and carved radish trees. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
Today's entry is definitely for the "intended to be eaten" category. Bento-maker .scarlet has filled four round stacking boxes with a green salad, apricot yogurt with apple pieces, homemade avgolemono (Greek egg and lemon soup) and popcorn with a piece of Babybell cheese. It's simple, but ever so much more visually appealing and meal-like than the same foods would be if they were wrapped up in foil and hidden in thermoses.
From The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery (1930), HJ Heinz Company
I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.
Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.
From Dainty Desserts for Dainty People (1915), Knox Gelatine
I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.
Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.
Another item in my latest organic basket was sprout mix. While I've eaten them out, I had no idea how to prepare them. Do I cook them in something? Keep them raw? Grind them? When in doubt: salad!
The sprout mix was a great addition to the classic Greek salad above. Tomatoes, cucumber, and onion were mixed up with the sprout mix, feta, lemon juice, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil. The sprouts gave a nice crunch to the salad, and made it a nice, filling meal.
But that's only one option. What would you do with a sprout mix? I've got more waiting to be eaten, and no idea what to do with them!
As a bit of a veggie fiend, I eat a lot of salads. While I rarely change up the ingredients in the salad mix, I sometimes like to change up the dressing, because the same ol' vinaigrette or caesar dressing can get old after a while. One of the best and easiest flairs that I've found for salad dressing is mustard seeds.
After toasting them on a skillet, you just grind them up, like you see above, and add them into your dressing. The ground mustard seeds give a smoky depth to the dressing and brings a great added flavor to the dish. The seeds above were used as part of a great Mustard Seed Dressing recipe that I picked out of The Big Book of Backyard Cooking, and you can check it out after the jump.
If wild, BC sockeye salmon is going to disappear, C restaurant is going to enjoy it while it lasts by adding it back to their menu.
Recipes for sandwiches on the dock: Japanese-Inspired Chicken Sandwich, Croque Madam, Beef on Baguette with Onions and Horseradish Mustard, and Portobello Mushroom Sandwich.
Restaurant Reviews: Manpuku Modern Japanese Eatery and Kenzo Ra-Men.
The Revel Room offers tastes from gingered water to Moroccan Lamb Meatballs.
The more you get into food, especially the fresh stuff, the easier it is to go a little foodie crazy and buy too much. Unfortunately, for me, it's become something of a habit. I'm a sucker for tasty, fresh vegetables, but between busyness and impromptu dinners out, I am often faced with a fridge fool of food about to go bad. But at least I'm consistent, because the fridge-cleaning meal almost always looks like the picture above.
For me, it's always a collection of vegetables, some sort of cheese, and a pesto or similar topping that really needs to be eaten. Without fail, I'll whip up a salad, some toast with topping and cheese, and pull a beer out of my beer fridge. (I realize the Mort Subite doesn't go with the meal, but it was the only bottle that was cold.)
Do you have this same problem? What does your "everything is going bad!" dinner look like?
The Topography Bowl is made to look like a round mountain range, which you then fill with soup or salad so it looks like a mountain lake or forested valley. I guess this would be a conversation starter at your next dinner party, if you can afford it. The price is $179 a pop. Over at Inventor Spot, M Dee Dubroff' constantly throws out comments on how silly this thing is, and I agree. However, if you have the money and tend to like eccentric dinnerware, the Topography Bowl may be just what you're looking for.
Watermelon salad with mint and feta cheese was one of those things that I wanted to hate when I first heard about it five or six years ago. I couldn't imagine that the saltiness of feta cheese would go well the watery sweetness of watermelon. However, with so many things in life, as soon as I gave it a try, I was proven happily wrong. It's a magical combination and one that you should try out if you haven't yet had a chance.
Last week, I ran home from work to make some lunch and ended up standing in front of the fridge, struggling to creating a meal from the hodgepodge of leftovers and aging veggies. I had some sad radishes, two romaine hearts that were decidedly past their prime, a handful of meatballs, the end chunk of a seedless cucumber and half of a ciabatta roll that was so hard that it could have been used as a weapon.
Hungry and pressed for time, I started to assemble a salad, although without much enthusiasm. I peeled the outer leaves off the romaine and gave it a rough chop. I crumbled the meatballs into bits and sawed the roll into chunks. Tossing all the everything together, I doused the salad with the homemade balsamic vinaigrette I typically have in the fridge and let it sit for a minute while I made some tea.
When I turned back to the salad, the chunks of bread has softened into tasty bits of balsamic flavor. The meatballs had lost their refrigerator chill and the veggies were surprisingly crisp. What had started out as a meal of obligation (must use up food before it goes bad) had turned into a delightful and tasty lunch.
They say that the greatest form of flattery is imitation, but what do you call an outright swipe? I guess that would be stealing. I have to admit right off the bat that I swiped this right off of Smitten Kitchen. I came across it one day, and it was so beautiful that I knew I had to include it on this menu idea list. Instructions are on the blog.
Wouldn't mom absolutely love this salad? It would be a colorful, flavorful, and seasonal addition to any brunch menu. I generally think of brunch as more breakfast-y, but (a) lot of people include lunch or dinner items in brunch and (b) who wouldn't want something as beautiful as this salad at breakfast? Anyway, it's just a suggestion, but one I know I wouldn't want to pass up!
Years ago, my friend showed me pictures of her tasty speared caprese salad appetizers -- a mainstay at her cocktail parties. Now, whenever it comes time to think about funky salads or tasty appetizers, I think back to her skewers and wonder how I can change them up into something new. What follows is one way that is absolutely perfect for kids.
Miniature Speared Caprese Salad Bites
Ingredients:
Miniature balls of bocconcini Cherry tomatoes Fresh basil Sea salt Freshly cracked black pepper Extra-virgin olive oil Vinegar (optional)
Plus: plastic cocktail swords
Assembly:
All the kids need to do is grab a cocktail sword, and alternate between the ingredients until its full. The easiest way would be to either do a cheese-basil-tomato-cheese configuration, or a tomato-basil-cheese-basil-tomato configuration. How much will fit on each sword depends on the size of the tomatoes, and the cheese. If size becomes an issue -- cut the bocconcini and tomatoes in half before skewering.
If your kids are allowed to use knives, they can slice the tomatoes in half first, or keep them whole. If you're not able to get fresh basil, substitute a sprinkling of the dried variety. It's not quite the same, but it will do in a pinch.
After they're assembled on a plate/tray, drizzle lightly with your evoo (and vinegar if it's being used) and then sprinkle the top with some salt and pepper.
What results is a fun appetizer or finger food start to the dinner, and it's one that your kids can have fun both making and playing with after -- once the mini salads have been eaten.
P-tooey! Watermelon would be perfect if not for those pesky seeds.
Luckily, Instructables provides a great tutorial on how to remove most (key word: most) of the seeds from your average watermelon. It's easy and quick, with no fancy tools needed.
Or, if you're feeling ca-razy, you could inject your watermelon with a pre-mixed martini (yes, you'll need a syringe - it's a little creepy, but worth it), let it chill for an hour, and indulge in some alcoholic fruit. Just keep it away from the kids.
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
