Cheesy Tamagoyaki

Had a rush/harsh morning yesterday, so besides having what should be considered the worst of nightmares for a hydrophobic and being super late (I was getting dressed at the time I should've been leaving the door), I grabbed what I thought would be my container with fried rice. Nope. I grabbed the wrong one and didnt even check it, so come lunch time (I had been starving since Tuesday for no apparent reason), all I had was unseasoned, white rice. And crackers. I take my 'lunch' break at 3PM, but I normally eat lunch at my desk between 12 and 1, depending how hungry/unbusy I am. I was too hungry, but was not gonna eat white rice, so I got some crackers, a piece of candy from upstairs and held off until 3pm. My stomach was calling me names all afternoon. And morning. Mean names.

Anyway, at 3, I went for pizza at the local pizzeria. That pizza is awesome, especially their veggie Chicago style pizza... have you ever had Chicago style pizza? It's like a regular pizza covered by another layer of dough and sealed. I might experiment with Chicago style pizza next time I make the dough... I've been thinking about it, but havent got around to it.

Now, here's today's lunch: some dirty rice, tamagoyaki and carrots. The tamagoyaki has some melted cheese in the middle. Yum. I still havent conquered the round shape... mine seem to plop down. Maybe I need a bigger pan?

On other news, one of the orders for bento supplies got delayed YET again. :( First two times, they were out of certain items. Wish they had checked them all at once! Then there was some issue with my card... the card I use whenever I do have to pay for something that is not cash. So I gave them another card. Hopefully by now, nothing else will be out of stock and they can ship the order! I shall keep you updated. Till then!

Stew and dirty rice

Well. Lunch for Monday was sancocho (a type of Dominican thick soup/stew) and rice. Super yummy. Oh, and stole some yogurt as snack. Was at my parent's house over the weekend. No way I'd have the patience to cook that... takes ages to be done.

Up next, we have today's lunch. It was blindingly sunny outside, as you can tell. We have red peppers, strawberries and broccoli above, fried rice with grape tomatoes. Messy messy, I know. The rice was a big mess... it had a ton of carrots (made into matchsticks), sliced onions, peppers, asparragus, broccoli, green onions... and I forget what else. Cabbage and something else. Yes, that is more than enough for my 5 servings of veggies, thank you very much! I can't call it fried rice because it was more of a "let's clean the fridge!" rice.

Hearts and pasta

On this lunch: Whole wheat pasta with tons of veggies, broccoli, carrots and tomatoes.

This was another attempt. The would've-been theme for this bento was hearts (hence the tomato halves). The heart is because I'm missing/am sad because a friend of mine went through surgery to repair a broken arm from Wednesday. So he was out last night, and I suppose he'll be out most of today. :(  The fracture also looked rather severe (and painful!), so I'll just worry about his recovery for a bit.

I actually like whole wheat pasta a whole lot more than I thought I would. Though the sauce for this one didnt came out quite as good, the pasta was pretty good. I was running out of time too, so... I think I'm going to start giving myself a full half hour to get lunch ready instead of my usual 15min.

Carrot fields and extra containers

Here we have scrambled eggs (with cabbage, onions, red pepper and paprika) and two more potato croquettes. Despite me hating on them, they are actually quite decent. On the lower tier, we have red peppers, broccoli and too many carrots. I got lazy. The white stuff behind broccoli is just dressing.

Next to them is a chopped apple covered in yogurt, granola on one of the smaller containers. Yesterday I just threw it all together, and although the granola was good, it was mushy. So I am separating it today for a bit of crunch. The other small container has ketchup for the eggs and potatoes. Not that they are bland or anything, but I like ketchup. :p

Cant wait for my 1-tier bento box! I am getting jealous BIG time about how people set their 1-tier bento boxes... they look like they hold so much food. And that it can be arranged a lot better than my experience to two tiers so far. We shall see. :)

Potato Croquette Attempt 1

In the box: grape tomatoes, broccoli and red peppers with dressing for dipping on the side. Below, we have potato croquettes, boiled egg and more broccoli. Not in the photo, diced apple with yogurt and granola.

Well, there are two things to be learned from yesterday's meal attempt: First, have a plan! Second, have a plan! This whole week (it's only Tuesday, though...) has been a disaster thanks to the lack of planning. Didn't buy the right foods, if any. Didn't know what I would eat at any given night. In comparison, three weeks ago I made the first full meal plan for the week, and I liked it quite a bit. I need to repeat that again... though it takes time I apparently cant spare. :(

Anyway... I bought parsley just to make these croquettes from a recipe I had seen. I didn't even use them! I forgot about it. At least I did use green onions... I had *glanced* at several potato croquette recipes, so I had the gist; potato, eggs, panko, cheese. And flour. Well, let's just say that they were a mess that ate up about 2.5hrs of my time on that single dish! (Well... I did prep some peppers and cut broccoli florets, but still!). The result was not a croquette. It was fried mashed potatoes. With panko. Sooo not pleased. I didn't even write down the recipe, so I am not even sure it came out right. I was sure that flour had to be mixed in with the potatoes, but it didn't occur to me at the time. Yeah... On the flip side, I got to use the leaf picks! So cute. So yeah, happy Tuesday, everybody!

Getting creative with rice, Pt. 1

This was yesterday's meal: rice, broccoli, boiled egg, strawberries and carrots. I also included some granola with cinnamon and raisins as snack/sweets.

In this lunch: Rice with pasta sauce*, carrots, broccoli and dipping sauce in the container. I also added some strawberries.

This is today's. I know it was going to have rice, but I've been tiring of white rice... so I noticed yesterday, while reheating some ravioli, that I had made WAY too much sauce. It was yummy savory sauce too. So I saved it and mixed the rice with it this morning, and ended up like some sort of risotto. No doubt it will taste awesome, and I kind of like the addition to that. That, plus I didn't want to cook anything new yesterday. Today, I might have two goals; potato croquettes and mini empanadas. Or cheese sticks of sorts. It'll be fun what I try and do just so it fits in the smaller bento boxes, haha.

Am I the only one that has issues closing a bento box after preparing it to find that things do not fit right?
(And yeah, I promise I'm working on getting a camera...)

Fruit cup!

Sort of. Sorry for the barely there bento. I was late this morning. I am also done with two things; banning leftover from lunches and shopping only once every 2 weeks. It's impossible (or very very hard) to keep fresh veggies for two weeks, or to keep a good stock of food, even for 1 person, while only buying once every two weeks. So you'll see some better attempts at food next week on. I've missed my broccoli...

On this lunch: Fruit salad*, rice, edamame (extra on the cover, plus cheese) and a boiled egg I didnt even have time to peel. (*about the fruit salad, this was the VERY CHERRY from El Monte. As you can see, there are two halves of cherries in this half cup. Sad. I also rinsed the fruit salad to get rid of the syrupy thing.)

A confession: I still havent bought my bento supplies. I've casually looked and re-looked on FITJP and Allthingsforsale.com, but haven't committed to much yet. I said I'd told you why I was abstaining from buying supplies before 'the goal' was met. The goal was to go to the gym for 30 days. You'd think that'd be crazy easy during the winter, where it is too cold to exercise outside. But between undrivable roads, slush, and near misses, driving was the last thing I wanted to do. Either way, I met the goal on 3/5/11. I will try to buy the bento supplies over the weekend... since most will not get here for another 2+ weeks, anyway.

Hope everyone had a good week!