Tuna pasta salad

This was actually lunch from yesterday, but it appears my phone was affected by the network blackout and wasnt sending (or receiving) emails until last night at 7pm.

I had: Tuna pasta salad with lettuce and toasted bread to go along with it. Tryint to get creative as I push back grocery shopping just a few days more...

Chicken noodle soup and 4 piece bento

Yesterday I packed some rice, tamagoyaki with cheese in the middle, the remaining coleslaw and some corn. Then right about lunch time, one of my co-workers had to leave for the day to pick up her son who had gotten sick and was starting to run a fever in school, and she had just prepared a chicken noodle soup. She asked us if we wanted it, because she wasnt going to be able to transport it and didnt want it to go to waste. I volunteered (never say no to free food), so that was my real lunch. Today, it will be yesterday's lunch. I think it worked out just fine.

Mushroom pasta

Here I go again with the whole pasta deal...

Nothing interesting here, besides some alfredo fetuccini, with mushrooms and broccoli, some carrots and tomatoes. I'm also running out of fruit to put on the side. I guess I miss the cherries on sale after all.

Rice and broccoli sides

Nothing really especial. Big delay since I've been between very very boring lunches or eating out for lunch at work (they buy us lunch, and we had two of those in 2 weeks. That had never happened before!). Last night I was working on a project from work and it took me pretty much my whole night. Yes, from 6pm until 10:20. So I left work, picked up some materials, came home, made (reheated) potato, chicken and cheddar broccoli soup and ate that. I also saved a bit and poured over rice for this lunch. Alongside, we have broccoli slaw, tomatoes and carrots and even more broccoli. Yikes. Didn't notice there was so much broccoli involved in this meal!

Mid Sept lunch

I am starting to wonder if it's really my photography vs the foods I am photographing that is sort of breaking my photos.

Anyway, this is breakfast potatoes with onion, ham and mushrooms, some broccoli/cherry tomatoes, and chicken pieces. Really yummy, and very messy looking.

I have to wonder, for whatever reason, I add cinnamon powder to my breakfast potatoes. I add salt and pepper, of course, but I also add cinnamon. Gives it a very nice flavor, I'll admit. The mushrooms were a new thing I was trying, since I had some leftover.

Oh, and by the way... 100 days left before Christmas!

Monday and Tuesday's lunches

Been busy. What can I say? This is Monday's lunch, which contains melon, some pita crisps, rice and stirfried veggies.

And this is today's lunch, made up of steamed veggies, apple chunks, shredded chicken thighs with broccoli, some rice and a itty bitty tiny cherry tomato.

Totally uncute sandwiches

Yup. I just wanted some sandwiches, and I know there was a world of possibilities to make this appealing to the eye. But I didnt.

So, there's two cheese and turkey sandwiches with a little mayo, tons of broccoli and carrots. Yum.

Pre-packed lunch

I had the right intentions this morning... but waking up super extra late didn't help them come to reality. So I am lucky I packed this last night!

It looks a bit empty, which is fine. The pasta is plenty. This is elbow pasta with mushrooms and shredded sausage (and onion and peppers), but it was super creamy, much to my delight. The divided containers have carrots and broccoli. Yum.

Lousy camera bento

And we're back to the whole I-need-a-new-camera... not just because my phone is dying (which is my camera as of right now), or that my photos are getting progressively worst (unexplainable), but that I might be doing more traveling and stuff, and I like to get photos...

I could kill two birds with one stone and get my phone upgrade that I've been planning for a while, but I definitely don't want to pay the $200 that come with it, so... I'll wait and push it out as far as possible. Or at least until the phone breaks. Until then, I'll need to borrow a replacement camera.

Anyway, this is from my parent's house: just some rice and beans with sauce, green grapes, pretzel thins and string cheese. I also added an apple (and two more in the bag, and some oranges...), but only an apple for this lunch. Yum!

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. I know I enjoyed it.

Lunch and snacks

Over the hurricane weekend, I went home early and came back with a bunch of food I've been eating as lunches- no need to repack. But yesterday was the end of such provisions, so I am back to going on my own, and here's today's lunch.

Italian sausage and sauce, carrots, broccoli and some rice on the top tier, cherries, granola cereal and yogurt on the bottom tier. I am in love with my snack tier!

Tired-of-dates-as-titles

Simple lunch. A small sandwich with deli turkey and cheese slices, some mayo, cherries and carrot/broccoli combo. I think I have one from every food group!

8/24/11

I am pretty sure I am breaking some unspoken Chinese food rule, but... I was half heartedly surprise to discover I was out of rice. I really, truly do not recall ever running out of rice. But it wasn't in the pantry, so I must have used it.

Either way, dinner was good. I had bought a while back some sweet and sour sauce, and I had some chicken tenders, so guess what? Sweet and sour chicken! With peppers and broccoli. Yummy. And mashed potatoes... yeah. No rice. And the cherries are back! Wee. I still love this box a lot.

8/11/11

For today's lunch we have some leftover rice with the last of the ground turkey (or so I hope!), carrots and cherries.

But I am guessing I'm getting slightly spoiled with eating so much fruit recently, that I packed a snack bento with orange slices and more cherries. Yum. (Also, I was hungry by 4 yesterday...)

8/10/11

Slightly (VERY) tired today, so my lunch isn't much of a sight. I wasn't even going to photograph it, but then I thought, you know... I'm trying to log the lunches I pack. They wont always be pretty, they wont always be balanced, but they will be lunch. So there will be good, bad and uglies. I think this one falls between the last two portions. It is still yummy and light, which I wanted. Yes, I need to hunt down veggies ASAP. Nothing is on sale around here for weeks (no veggies anyway), which is kind of disappointing for it being summer...

So today I have 1 boiled egg, some boiled plantains and more cherries. These cherries seem like they will last until the end of the summer, at this rate.

8/9/11

I must say I like this new box, mainly because of the divisions. Though I am filling them with fruit right now (not that I'm complaining! I was missing having fruit IN the lunch box rather than on the side), it makes it visually appealing and easy to sort/serve.

On today's lunch, we have some rice and ground turkey with peppers, then some cherries, cut up oranges and some pepper/carrot mix.

I did find the box is very deep, so I put only a bit of rice in the bottom. Still, I very much like it.

8/8/11

Sorry, I have been terribly unresponsive. I was on vacation the last week of July (15hr road trip each way plus a convention on the weekend) and that barely allowed time for food, let alone, packed food. I'll plan a lot better next time, because stops along the way are only fun if you're going to somewhere scenic... Or an actual destination.

Anyway! Last week I was dead busy with the whole return to work, and although this week is already showing a LOT of promise of being one of the worst in my career, I still have to eat, so here's what I packed today in my new Lock & Lock box:

Spaguetti, watermelon, cantalope and oranges. Not very creative or very pretty, but I will get to that soon... Hope everyone's doing great and can't wait for fall! I, for one, I'm tired of this heat. :)

Especial thanks to Silverwing at Scrumptious Bento for sharing the coupon for Lock&Lock. They had such cute selections it was hard to pick, but I'm glad I did.

7/15/11

Ok, so this lunch has not a whole lot of prettyness to it. It's rice with turkey sausage and peppers with carrot details (top) and carrot cake with apple slices (bottom). I had the funniest sugar rush after trying that carrot cake, I knew I had to get some to get me through a Friday workday. It's store bought (sorry, I'm a coward and wont make my own carrot cake yet), but it was super yummy. And melty (I blame the weather!). That's why it looks rather... smooshed in the photo.

Happy weekend, everybody!

PS: I'll be going on a road trip the last week of July, so I probably won't be posting... or maybe I will! But definitely not of food. I know (not really) it's against food-blogger policy to not pack your own meal during a planned trip... but I want to experience some of the local foods, so that's what I'm going for.

7/14/11

You know those days when you're wondering which god is after you this time? Because I refuse to believe that a single God would taunt and go after a single person so often and not get bored and move along. Yeah, that's me yesterday+today. Already. And it's barely early enough for coffee!

Anyway, this lunch would appear to be very familiar to you... if my camera had worked on Tuesday. Which it didn't. So here it is, anew: rotini with some cut deli ham and tomatoes, a side of broccoli with a bit of butter, baby carrots and a boiled egg. Yum yum. Happy Friday-Eve!

7/8/11 - Leftover day!

Die, blindingly bright phone flash camera! *cough* Oh, there you are. Sorry. In today's lunch, I packed the rest of the ground turkey with some rice, broccoli and carrots. Yum, simple, and got rid of some leftovers for me. Have a great weekend, everybody.

77/11 - Ground turkey

And for today, we have ripe boiled plantains, a few carrots, and ground turkey meat. I have never cooked ground turkey. And besides extremely salty, it was very yummy.

I had to go out and buy meat seasoning recently, and I think that finding out that the Goya (typical Hispanic meat seasoning) was the "With salt" edition AFTER cooking was not the best idea. But yes, it does contain salt. A lot of it, it seems. But it was good nonetheless, no complains! Best of all, the turkey meat was all natural, no preservatives, and under manager's special, so it only was $1.50 for a rather large pack. Win win. :) I might like playing around with the meat section now...



7/1/11 - Triangle sandwiches

This is a lunch I'll keep tagged to remake later. I was running out of time, and I really had nothing to place as main dish for today. So I made some triangle sandwiches with mayo and cheese, added some carrots, broccoli and red peppers and I am calling it a meal. If I had more time this morning, I would had made it a lot differently. But yeah. That is that.

Have a great weekend holiday, everyone!

6/29/11 - Tiered boiled eggs

This lunch is pretty simple, but so comforting. Half-ripe boiled plantains (and some butter) with two boiled eggs, sliced and tiered down with some broccoli.

Mainly, I'm trying to stay away from lunches like yesterday (a whole plate of carbs!) and trying to implement more items into my lunch. I discovered I can do shapes with the plantains, after I slice them like that... so I might do something with it in the near future.

6/28/11 - Pasta circles

Talk about blurry photos! This bento contains linguini pasta in Alfredo sauce with chicken pieces, some carrots and pepper petals. I tried to roll the pasta so it'd look nice and neat, but that shape didnt stay still long enough to take the photo this morning. Sigh. Yummy pasta, though!

6/27/11 - Sunday leftovers

Over the weekend, we cooked ribs at my parent's house. Along with more plantains, yucca root and some other legume I am not sure what the translated name is. It's like a sweet potato/yam, but not really. It actually looks greenish when cooked, but it is so good. So for lunch, I have some of that plus yucca, and some rib meat. The broccoli was slightly frozen, hence the funky white'ish color. I added some peppers for color. Happy Monday, everybody!

6/21/11 - Plantains

Ok, bear with me for a bit. But I love plantains. Back home, they are our version of potatoes. They are versatile, can be made into so many dishes, tastes so good, is not horribly bad for you... but they are expensive in the US, overall. But I saw them yesterday on 'sale' (about 10% cheaper than their usual expensive price) and had to buy two, just because. I miss them being so available and affordable.

These ones were halfway ripe, so I made mashed plantains with chicken in tomato sauce with peppers, and adorned with some lettuce and broccoli. I think I'll have to buy more plantains soon... Comfort food, anyone?

6/17/11 - Star rice

This morning, it feels like I'll go over my lunch just to get it over with, heh. It might seem REALLY familiar with the previous two lunches... but I'm all out of (fresh) veggies. :(

Star-shaped rice, scrambled eggs and the remaining stirfried ham/veggies.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

6/16/11 - Rice and stirfry

I have to admit I like how this one looks, compared to how simple it is. What's in it: rice, ham stirfry and a babybell cheese round. I've gotten quite attached to these little cheese rounds, though their price will definitely keep them laying low for a while. I ran out of yogurt though. :( No snacks for now... actually, I've ran out of pretty much everything (including veggies!), so it is sounding like grocery shopping time.

Oh, also, head over to Scrumptious Bento and check out her awesome lunches. They're wonderful, very doable, and look great. After you're done checking the photos and funny stories, check her latest post and her giveaway! Awesome egg molds, picks and rice molds. Good stuff. Don't miss it!

6/15/11 - Breakfast type bento

Well, I've been wanting to try something very simple for once. And I had two eggs and one hamburger bun left. So scrambled egg would-be sandwich came to be. It looks pretty, even if the flash of my camera doesn't show this... The stripes are carrot stripes on the top, because I didn't know what else to do with the bun top.

On the top tier we have a random romaine/tomato/feta cheese salad with oil/vinegar dressing. Yum.

6/14/11 - Lunches for Fri and Tue

Today: Bowtie and spirals pasta with sauce, garlic stirfried broccoli and red pepper, and some carrot sticks.

Last Friday: I know this is a bit too heavy for a lunch, but this was all that my parents had available at their house. I stayed over on Thursday night because I had an appointment closer to their house than mine (by 2 hours). This is rice, chicken and beans. A typical dinner back home. I added some diced peaches and melon. Yummy.

6/7/11 - Rice with Ham & 6/8/11 - Salad

I could've sworn I posted this yesterday, but maybe I didn't. I decided to buy some ham, and stirfry it with a bunch of vegetables. The result: the veggies were awesome. The meat had this horrible taste which tasted like chemical. Was that my welcome back to eating meats? Pleh. I still have a lot of the ham left, so I'll make sure to try to pinpoint where that horrible taste is coming from...

The rest is just white rice with carrot flower/butterflies. Yum.

Today I have some romaine lettuce, oil/vinegar dressing, some parm cheese (lower tier) and tomatoes with feta cheese, broccoli and carrot sticks with a babybell cheese round.

It's the first time I've packed/bought babybell cheeses, so kind of interested to see how it works out. I like cheese anyway, so how wrong can it go? Also... I have 3 different types of cheeses in this lunch. That should vouch for me liking cheese...

6/3/11 - More pasta!

I swear this one started out as looking a lot prettier.
No theme, but I liked the dough so much, that I made tortilla slices(?) to eat with marinara pasta. I also added a bit of garlic, olive oil and butter to them, so they had this awesome flavor. I originally wanted to make smaller strips, but ended up with one big tortilla instead, which I made into many triangles.

This bento features some pasta shells with tomato sauce, broccoli (with carrots underneath, didnt want to overwhelm this bento in orange stuff), and some of the garlic tortilla. Yum. Might be a bit too heavy of a lunch, but I was *really* hungry last night. And since today it will be a very long day/night for me prior to dinner time... trying to make up for it. :)

6/2/11 - Quesadillas and bunnies

That title pretty much covers this lunch. There's veggie quesadillas with home made dough, broccoli, green pepper, tomatoes, sweet and green onions as filling, with a mix of pepper-jack and cheddar cheeses. Then we have the leftover cheese cubes in bunny picks. Also a boiled egg and some carrots and broccoli, as usual. Gosh, they never run out!

I love making my own dough. Even if it's somewhat time consuming, I made this one on the fly, no recipes (a first!), no measuring, and it came beautifully elastic. It might've been a bit too elastic, but I was amazed at how nice it was. Not to mention tasty. It was really tasty. If I had planned to use more time, I would've left the tortillas be a bit thicker, but I was hungry and had to run out the door for something else. A success nonetheless!

5/26/11 - Chinese Takeout

I was much too lazy last night to cook. So I opted to try this Chinese food place near work. Very reasonable prices, and rather yummy food. So that made its way to my lunch today; white rice, pork and broccoli and two fried wontons.

Two things about this lunch: 1. I know it's not overly healthy. But it's food! 2. There's meat in it. Yeah... it was fun going vegetarian for a while, but the whole reason I made the switch is starting to fail. In my own kind of twisted logic, I went vegetarian so I could actually meet my calorie levels, which were about half of what they needed to be (my apetite is not one of my strongest points). And this little mental ploy worked rather well. But it's not working anymore, try as I may, and I am getting a bit restless of my meal options, so I might start featuring meat more often in my lunches. Yay.

5/25/11 - Stirfry and cheese cubes

This bento contains cabbage, carrot and broccoli stirfried, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and alternating blocks of pepperjack and cheddar cheeses. Yum. I actually woke up very early and cooked the stirfry in the morning, together with the eggs, and I've been wanting cheese cubes for a while (strange craving, eh?), so this bento came to be. Nothing especial or pretty, sorry.

5/18/11 - Tuna salad

Well, the lighting on this one is completely off...

But the contents of this bento are rice onigiri, boiled egg and tuna pasta salad. Normally done with elbow pasta, I ran out of it, so in comes the mini shells. Handy, eh?

Also, have I mentioned that about 90% of my lunches include a side of yogurt with granola or an apple (or other fruits), or both? I just cant fit them on the specific boxes, so I rarely photograph them together. They normally go as my 4pm snack, or if I'm specially hungry (like yesterday), as a dessert for lunch.

5/17/11 - Pre-vacation lunches

Oh yikes, have I really been that busy?

I am going on vacation starting Thursday through Monday (so no lunch for those days, at least not in bento form), and have to get a lot of stuff done at work... a lot. I have been sending photos to my blogger, but I just realized I hadnt written anything about them. Oops. Sorry!

But let's get right to it. This is today's lunch. This is what i call an "I have no clue what I was thinking" lunch. It contains salsa, carrots, broccoli, cheese (pepperjack and mild cheddar), rice and coleslaw. Yeah. I still am not sure what was going on with me this morning. Been in one of them moods... but I am happy to comment that the salsa did not spill all over the place.

Can't find a photo for yesterday, but it contained pasta with veggie stirfry.

On Friday, I had rice, tomatoes and some scrambled eggs with onion and tomatoes, as well as a salad on the lower end made of romaine, tomatoes, feta cheese, and some olive oil/vinegar dressing:

For Thursday, I had bowtie pasta, scrambled eggs, peppers and carrots:

5/11/11 - Sleeping Cat

Not really proud of how this one came out, but I tried!

Below is bowtie pasta with tomatoes, and above is a sleeping cat cut out from mild cheddar cheese and pepper jack cheeses with cucumber detailing.

This morning I was laying in bed thinking about switching the time on my alarm clock again because I think it’s getting me up too early. I actually ended up just laying on the bed for about half hour more because I didn't want to get up. I thought about a nap, and so came the napping cat.

This was hugely impromptu. I had the image in my mind of a yellow cat with a white tail and white ears sleeping soundly. So I cut up some cheese. If I had more time, I probably would’ve made it more presentable, but all in all, this took a good half hour to prepare (including making breakfast). Maybe I’ll retry it again later when I feel more confident.

Thanks for the get-well wishes!

5/10/11 - Potato Medley

I'm still alive! Wow, I had never been that sick in my life, or for that long, so that absolutely threw way too many things off the window. I was in a cooking ban for a rather longer time than I'd like to admit, but I am hoping that's now in the past. It's so hard to get back into a routine when it has been shaken upside down.

Yesterday it was a no-cook day, as I only ate empanadas I had made a few weeks prior. Those things are so forgiving, and they last so much. Either as dough or as finished product, they can sit for a good week and still be perfectly good.

As for lunch today, I still havent finished inspecting the damage of the two weeks being sick (bye bye rice, again!), nor finished making a complete grocery shopping run, so I have carrots and broccoli with a potato vegetable medley microwavable side.

4/27/11 - Week/end recap

Trying to figure out when to start. Last Wednesday I wasnt feeling well. Also, we got lunch at work, so I didnt pack anything. In addition, I didnt eat dinner either. Thursday, same thing. Bought some pizza at the local pizzeria and called it quits. Got home, fell asleep, skipped dinner.
Friday, we didnt work, so I tried to make breakfast (pancakes), called it quits and went to my parents' house. Worked Saturday, zombie'd around on Sunday, and Monday, I packed a sandwich at my parents' house before heading in to work.

Tuesday, I THOUGHT we were back to regular schedule. I made lunch. I made dinner. It wasnt the best, but it was edible.

Lunch included pasta noodles with veggies, and some more veggies on the side:

Then today for lunch, we have potatoes, boiled eggs, and some broccoli to fill in the gaps:

I am feeling majorly like poop. I took a nap yesterday, woke up totally wiped out, went back to sleep a few hours later, and spent about 3 hours in the AM awake tossing and turning with a sore throat, a fever and a headache. Fell asleep at about... 3:30am. Lucky me. So yeah, right now I am in survival mode. I want to make my lunches filling. I'll worry about making them presentable some other time...

4/20/11 - Green snacks

I just noticed just how much green was inolved in this bento...

This is actually just a snack/pre-lunch bento, since we're getting lunch at the office. It has juicy pears, carrots, cucumbers and broccoli. I added yogurt for the pears and ranch for the veggies in separate containers.

4/19/11 - Cheesy Potatoes & Eggs

Nothing fancy, again. :/

Potatoes with cheesy sauce, two boiled eggs, mixed greens salad with egg bits. It was more of a I-need-to-buy-food lunch.

I've found it is hard to make messy food look good... or any sort of potatoes.

4/15/11 - Carbs

Pretty simple lunch; pasta salad and roasted potatoes with broccoli. Can you say, carb overload?

I am really liking these one-tier boxes. They're a lot easier to organize and look more put together. I packed this meal yesterday just as I finished dinner, because I think that the warm weather is messing up with my sleeping schedule and I end up hitting the snooze button too many times before rolling out of bed.

I think that what I am needing is a bit of guidance... so I might go bento-book shopping soon. Before I started playing with bentos, lunches would be straight from leftovers (like this one). So the thought of cooking two different meals for, well, two different parts of the day is sinking in, but very slowly.

Anyone got any recommendations? I know slovakiasteph has been checking out Yum Yum Bento Box, and that's definitely on my list.

Rice stars and coleslaw

Kind of funky looking photo, but I also took one with a real camera and will probably upload it tomorrow or tonight. This lunch contains a boiled egg, cheese fence sticks covering the eggs, two rice stars topped with cheese flowers, coleslaw, and broccoli to secure everything in place.

I have been really craving coleslaw, so I went ahead and made some with the last of my cabbage. I ended up with too much shredded carrot (not that it is a bad thing), but it doesnt look like the typical coleslaw. It also doesnt have the same sauce, as most recipes I found had either too many ingredients, or different ingredients throughout the different recipes. So I stuck with the most prevalent ingredients, didnt measure (as usual) and it came out interesting. It was a little tangy from the vinegar and chopped onion, but overall, pretty good.