Oh, Bento!

I'm pretty set for food this week, but next week I should try making this.

This is a very simple recipe, but I really like it and I made it on the fly, so I'm writing it down here!

( Turkey Enchiladas )

First made on April 2nd, 2008.

This recipe is being lifted from the Mod Mex cook book. Essentially, the original version involved a whole lot of swapping pans, cooking and re-cooking - which I'm sure does enhance the flavor, but for someone with limited space and pots it's a little tricky. I also had to ask myself- anything can go in a tamale, right? Plain meat is fine too, so while this is their version of flavoring the meat and getting a great sauce, I don't have to adhere to it too religiously.

To simplify my life, I'll be cooking the pork separately in a crockpot while I make the green chile. It's 2 pounds of pork with a basic rub on it, and I'll be cooking it for about 6 hours.

( Salsa Verde )

( Tamale Dough (Masa) )

( Pork Tamales )

First made on March 2nd, 2008.

This was created entirely through experimentation. It's quite general (sort of a "kitchen sink" version) but I was very happy with it. Serves one as a meal, or two or three as a soup course.

( Hot and Sour Soup )

First made on August 1st, 2007.

Mm, so apparently I am very bad at taking the time to edit photos o/ I do hope to get back into this eventually, although it will involve massive backdating. For the moment, I think I am going to use this journal as a repository for a few recipes. I cook for one and tend not to have a fully stocked kitchen, so I frequently mess around with instructions/ingredients, and it'd be nice to have a place to track my alterations.

Besides, this recipe wound up stuck in a locked post in an RP journal, and that's just not on.

I browsed through a number of recipes looking for something that both sounded like the gumbo mother makes and could accommodate the ingredients I had on hand. I didn't find anything, but I did manage to combine two or three recipes into something acceptable to me. Unfortunately I no longer remember which recipes they were, but this is a good general reference.

I have a 3-QUART STOCK POT, which is small for a soup. I cut the larger of these recipes: 1/2 to 3/4ths sounded about right... I went with 1/2, because I knew I was putting a lot of other things in this pot. The other recipe already called for only 2 quarts, so I did not have to edit their measurements.

Below is the recipe combination. My notes to myself are in [tags].

( Gumbo (Chicken, Sausage, and Greens) )

First made on October 13, 2007. Success! But a little too thin and greasy for my tastes. I'm thinking next time I'll cook the sausage first and use its grease to at least help cook the veggies. Some tomato paste might not go amiss either.

Aah, I'm so behind in putting these up. Fortunately I wasn't very inspired this past week, so I can catch up easily enough. This bento was actually eaten last week, though. I like to think of it as "classy," since it certainly isn't cute.



( lookit the adult food... )

And I can't believe I made this... I have no clue where the idea came from- maybe I glanced over at the DVD rack one too many times this weekend. My roommate came home an squeaked 'is that-?! o_O' at the sight of this one. Apparently that's how over the top making a themed bento for no reason is.

I don't know how many people know of Princess Tutu. It's an adorable anime about a duck who turns into a girl who turns into a magical girl- and under this rather confusing premise is a Revolutionary Girl Utena-esque fractured fairy tale capable of making your head spin.



( the bento is... not that deep )

Ooops. Behind already =_= This was my bento on Wednesday last (I got taken out to lunch on Thursday, so it was my only other bento of the week...) I meant to make a post on my lunch break, but then I found that I'd forgotten to upload a photo, and didn't actually remember again until I was loading pics for bento #3.



( space is not a void )

This isn't actually my first bento. I don't even have any pictures of the original two or three. Which is unfortunate, because I think they were better than the next seven or eight, which I did photograph and will probably backdate to this new livejournal, eventually. But. This is the first bento I've felt good enough about to want it posted in bentolunch, so here begins my journey!



( hearts and flowers, contents and pictures )

At this point I have over a year's worth of bento, some good, some bad, some downright cute. I've faithfully taken photos of my lunch evey day... and yet, somehow I never upload them! I'm at the point where I just know that I will never put up individual entries for ALL these goodies. So the new plan is to backdate and post, either by month (in the early months I only made bento a few times a week) or by fortnight/week (as things picked up.

Here is the first post, for both May and June.



( seven more lunches under the cut )