Tuesday, July 29, 2008

July 29th Bento Lunch

100th post!!

Now that I'm not working, I can post earlier in the day, which is nice.

I found some great foods last week during a trip to the asian grocery store. My best find was frozen banana leaves! I'm too excited to have these back again because I haven't been able to find them since that one time my local grocery store carried them. They were dirt cheap too. I got 1 lb (about 20 sheets, 1 square foot each) for $1.65. Love it!

We made coconut banana rice (Chuoi Nuong) again last night - check out this blog post for how it's made. BF said "Remind me again why we don't eat this every day?" Well, now we can! I made two extra stuffed leaves for the bentos this morning. The meat in the bento lunches today is leftover from last night as well. It's a premade cut from the butcher, a pork loin stuffed with herbs, veggies and cheese with a strip of bacon wrapped around it that we barbecued.

I included a few lentil bites as well for extra carbs. For veggies, there are some strips of green pepper sauteed in a bit of oil and salted, a couple of pieces of yellow zucchini, some asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps (all steamed), and some awesome beet hearts.

Now I can hear my seven-year old self cringing as I call beets awesome, but oh man, these are gorgeous. The inside of the beet is alternating red and white rings and each beet is tiny, the perfect size for bento. I was able to get six heart slices from one beet which is exactly enough for two bento lunches in my opinion.

For fruit there are a couple of fresh lychees, some pluot bites (BF tells me that a pluot is a cross between a plum and an apricot), raspberries, blueberries and strawberry slices.

2 comments:

Dominique said...

Ah, sigh. It's so nice to see your bentos again! Now I'm going to have to hunt down some frozen banana leaves! I'm glad you're feeling better.

Jacki said...

lol, if you can find them, you will love them! I found some frozen lime leaves in the same freezer case (at the asian grocery store around here) but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with them yet.