You wrote "I love you". I wrote "me too".
Sep. 22nd, 2011 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaI pondered long and hard what to put in today's bento. Worryingly, I was thinking along the lines of appearance.
Now, if you go a-googling for pictures of bento boxes, you will mostly find the rather alarming charaben, the character bento. These are the cutesy, accessorised bentos that seem to be increasinably popular. This page has all its text in Japanese, but the pictures are amazing. Some of them are such works of art that (a) I don't believe any right-thinking idividual would make them before work and (b) I'm not sure I could bear to eat them. (I'm not a hypocrite. Since I eat animals, I'm not queasy about eating onigiri that look like penguins. I just don't think it adds to the appeal, and I'm not sure why making food look like cartoon characters makes kids want to eat it.)
But, apparently, mothers everywhere are willing to make these kinds of lunches of staggering complexity for their children. It can be very competitive, I understand. I suppose it makes sense if you're trying to trick a picky eater into having vegetables, or to tempt a poorly child. Maybe occasionally if packing a lunch for a grown-up you wanted to make smile at lunchtime. But everyday? And for yourself? Nope.
One of the things I like about Bento Lady's bento suggestions are that they're much more practical. She occasionally mentions oddments of information about prettifying, and has a scary, scary page about how to dye foodstuffs using other foodstuffs. Mostly, though, she's all about getting something tasty and reasonably nutritious in the box with a minimum of fuss.
However, she does frequently mention how your lunch ought to be colourful and contrasting. Everything I thought of seemed to be green. What coloured vegetables are there? Carrots? I'd had carrots two days running, and they're not a favourite with me. Peppers, well, there were already going to be some in there. Tomatoes? Don't tessellate well. Radishes? Surely that can't be it, there must be other things...
The main component (being both protein and carbs) was going to be... er, a thing which wasn't sure if it was a tortilla or a frittata. A fritillary, maybe. It was filled with cold leftover new potatoes, and our old friend the pepper and onion confit[*].
I made the fritillary in a saucepan (I don't have a small enough frying pan) and, in defiance of expectation, got it out in one piece. Chopped up into quarters it actually took up way more of the box than expected. At least that was less space to fill creatively and colourfully...
In the end I decided that I'd aim for rotational symmetry instead of contrast, popping two green vegetably things in the opposing corners, and letting a cherry tomato be the origin. (A single cherry tomato? Er, yes. Oh dear. I feel it's a slippery slope... I'll be dying ham blue to make the genie from Aladdin in a minute.)
The vegetably things are julienned courgette[**] cooked with ginger, and blanched spinach dressed with mirin, soy sauce and sesame seeds. I splashed a tiny bit of mirin in with the courgettes as well in case it tried to stick, but other than that I just stirred them about in the pan until they stopped being so wet and floppity.
This bento was described by ChrisC, passing through the kitchen, as the "least Japanese-looking one".
And do you know what? It was actually really nice. Cold fritillary worked well, though it was perhaps a little damper than ideal. For a made-up-on-the-spot thing, the courgettes were lovely, almost like spaghetti and tasting lightly of fresh ginger. And I can eat spinach till it comes out of my ears. Also the only added salt in this box was the teaspoon of soy sauce on the spinach (I ommitted the actual salt the recipe reckons also goes in the dressing); I've been extremely thirsty all week and I'm wondering if I've been eating more salt than I ought.
Interestingly, as I finished eating I thought hmm, well, that wasn't quite enough food. When I get up in a minute to go to that meeting I'll grab a supplement from the biscuit tin. By the time I got up to go to that meeting, about 5 minutes later, I realised I wasn't at all hungry and was actually quite full.
Conclusion from this week of bento-ing: win!
[*] I made a large batch of this confit, and froze it into portion-sized lumps. The easiest way to do this seems to be using a silicon muffin tin as if it were a giant ice cube tray. Once frozen, I popped the confit-cubes out and put them all in a bag.
[**] I have a thing which looks like a potato peeler, which peels off julienned strips. It's a mild pain to use, but it's massively, hugely simpler and quicker than cutting thin strips any other way. I now know that it doesn't work on something as fibrous as ginger.
No box tomorrow, because I shall be adjourning to the pub for lunch.
Now, if you go a-googling for pictures of bento boxes, you will mostly find the rather alarming charaben, the character bento. These are the cutesy, accessorised bentos that seem to be increasinably popular. This page has all its text in Japanese, but the pictures are amazing. Some of them are such works of art that (a) I don't believe any right-thinking idividual would make them before work and (b) I'm not sure I could bear to eat them. (I'm not a hypocrite. Since I eat animals, I'm not queasy about eating onigiri that look like penguins. I just don't think it adds to the appeal, and I'm not sure why making food look like cartoon characters makes kids want to eat it.)
But, apparently, mothers everywhere are willing to make these kinds of lunches of staggering complexity for their children. It can be very competitive, I understand. I suppose it makes sense if you're trying to trick a picky eater into having vegetables, or to tempt a poorly child. Maybe occasionally if packing a lunch for a grown-up you wanted to make smile at lunchtime. But everyday? And for yourself? Nope.
One of the things I like about Bento Lady's bento suggestions are that they're much more practical. She occasionally mentions oddments of information about prettifying, and has a scary, scary page about how to dye foodstuffs using other foodstuffs. Mostly, though, she's all about getting something tasty and reasonably nutritious in the box with a minimum of fuss.
However, she does frequently mention how your lunch ought to be colourful and contrasting. Everything I thought of seemed to be green. What coloured vegetables are there? Carrots? I'd had carrots two days running, and they're not a favourite with me. Peppers, well, there were already going to be some in there. Tomatoes? Don't tessellate well. Radishes? Surely that can't be it, there must be other things...
The main component (being both protein and carbs) was going to be... er, a thing which wasn't sure if it was a tortilla or a frittata. A fritillary, maybe. It was filled with cold leftover new potatoes, and our old friend the pepper and onion confit[*].
I made the fritillary in a saucepan (I don't have a small enough frying pan) and, in defiance of expectation, got it out in one piece. Chopped up into quarters it actually took up way more of the box than expected. At least that was less space to fill creatively and colourfully...
In the end I decided that I'd aim for rotational symmetry instead of contrast, popping two green vegetably things in the opposing corners, and letting a cherry tomato be the origin. (A single cherry tomato? Er, yes. Oh dear. I feel it's a slippery slope... I'll be dying ham blue to make the genie from Aladdin in a minute.)
The vegetably things are julienned courgette[**] cooked with ginger, and blanched spinach dressed with mirin, soy sauce and sesame seeds. I splashed a tiny bit of mirin in with the courgettes as well in case it tried to stick, but other than that I just stirred them about in the pan until they stopped being so wet and floppity.
This bento was described by ChrisC, passing through the kitchen, as the "least Japanese-looking one".
And do you know what? It was actually really nice. Cold fritillary worked well, though it was perhaps a little damper than ideal. For a made-up-on-the-spot thing, the courgettes were lovely, almost like spaghetti and tasting lightly of fresh ginger. And I can eat spinach till it comes out of my ears. Also the only added salt in this box was the teaspoon of soy sauce on the spinach (I ommitted the actual salt the recipe reckons also goes in the dressing); I've been extremely thirsty all week and I'm wondering if I've been eating more salt than I ought.
Interestingly, as I finished eating I thought hmm, well, that wasn't quite enough food. When I get up in a minute to go to that meeting I'll grab a supplement from the biscuit tin. By the time I got up to go to that meeting, about 5 minutes later, I realised I wasn't at all hungry and was actually quite full.
Conclusion from this week of bento-ing: win!
[*] I made a large batch of this confit, and froze it into portion-sized lumps. The easiest way to do this seems to be using a silicon muffin tin as if it were a giant ice cube tray. Once frozen, I popped the confit-cubes out and put them all in a bag.
[**] I have a thing which looks like a potato peeler, which peels off julienned strips. It's a mild pain to use, but it's massively, hugely simpler and quicker than cutting thin strips any other way. I now know that it doesn't work on something as fibrous as ginger.
No box tomorrow, because I shall be adjourning to the pub for lunch.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 09:30 pm (UTC)Carrot sticks, bah. I only like carrots if they taste of something else. If they're neat they absolutely have to be cooked.
Fruits is an area I haven't explored much yet (in this context :)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 10:25 pm (UTC)argh, earworm for the rest of the night
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:42 am (UTC)We listened to the poorly-named Best of the Vapors last night. We were up to track 16 when we turned it off to watch last week's Doctor Who.
16+ songs. Who knew? Some of them were even decent :)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:44 am (UTC)Heated up the cold pepper and onion confit with a smidge of sunflower oil, added sliced cold potato, shuffled it down to make it as "flat" as possible, poured in two beaten eggs, cooked gently, then shoved it under the grill to make sure the top was properly cooked too. Pried it out of the saucepan with a spatula, and left it to cool on a plate.
I've made leftovers-omelette by approximately this method many times, but I don't I've ever left it to get cold before.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 08:55 am (UTC)I've never been so audacious as to attempt the flip!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 09:23 am (UTC)I find the grill thing works really well, though, if you don't mind turning the grill on as well as the hob.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 05:04 pm (UTC)Courgettes look lovely, I must try that if I get one again.
I tend to use silicon cup-cake cases to segregate veg, but that's because I have them anyway for baking fairy cakes. The ones I have are about the same height as a take-away container, so work reasonably well for me.
Oh, and I don't do the cutesy boxes, but J assures me that girls like car-shaped eggs, and she's a girl, she'd like her egg shaped like a car. I do that sometimes.
I think the colour thing is because different coloured foods tend to have different vitamins in, so I'm not sure why dying helps. Today B had pasta salad, with chicken, red pepper, carrot, cucumber, sweetcorn and ranch dressing, and a fortune cookie and some yoghurt coated raspberries. I think that's 5 colours, but I'm not good at thinking atm. That's better than he's had for ages, he's had at least a week of cheese sandwich with a tomato or apple and a packet of crisps, maybe raisins if I remember.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 05:31 pm (UTC)I'm never sure if the idea that different coloured foods have different vitamins in is actually true - I mean, I'm sure it sometimes is true, I just don't know whether it is A Provable Scientific Fact. Certainly it makes dinner look more cheerful and appetising, so is a good thing. I don't think we should infer anything from the crazy people who want to dye ham blue :)
The pasta salad lunch sounds pretty good. I'm working up to a pasta bento at the end of the week.
(I take it Judith is fairly small :) Nice name - and quite unusual for a tiny at present, as far as I know.)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-27 07:35 am (UTC)Judith is nearly 3. Thankyou, and yes, there were 12 born in England and Wales in 2008 (her year of birth).