Cheesy Couscous

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Couscous with corn, green onion and pecorino romano. This is the last dinner I made before leaving. Couscous really comes to handy when there is nothing to cook. And it tastes good with the salty cheese. The pan I cooked with is the new cast iron pan I got the same night. It becomes my new favorite.

11/16/2010

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Last bit of food in the fridge before I leave. In the bento: soba with stir-fried cabbage, egg with corns, pan fried salmon, tofu, cauliflower.

11/12/2010

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soba with cabbage, butternut squash with soybean salad, meatballs, boiled egg, cauliflower, pan-fried tofu.

11/11/2010

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Tier on the left, leftover carbonara with peas from Cheesecake Factory. Tier on the right, meatballs, cauliflower, butternut squash and soybean salad, stir-fried cabbage.

Apple Maple Upside-down Yogurt Cake

When I was baking this cake, the house smells like heaven. In a crispy cold autumn day, the warm sweet smell of maple and apple is simply comforting. Did I tell you I LOVE maple syrup? I didn't grow up in a country where it is popular, but after the first time I tasted it, nothing can pull me away from it. It is beyond amazing!
The cake is the combination of two recipes. One for the cake part I already used days ago to bake the cranberry yogurt cake. The other part is for the maple syrup apple on the top. This time I cut the cake measurement into half and didn't over bake it. It came out moisture and tender, perfectly match the apple slices soaked in maple syrup on the top. Although I don't care dessert with cooked apple, this is a winner. I will definitely make it again.

11/10/2010

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Soba noodle, teriyaki meatballs, pan-fried tofu with tomato sauce cauliflower, stir fried cabbage, butternut squash, sliced egg.

Millet Porridge with Squash

My stomach feels sick again today. It is a genetic issue from my mom's side that most of her brothers have weak stomachs, and I seems to get it too. Although not that bad like others, it tortures me from time to time. The annoying thing is that it never gives me a sign when it is not happy, when it comes, it comes.

One day I learned that winter squash seems to be very good for stomach. The pectin it contains will form a nature protection for the stomach wall. And the millet is mild enough to eat together. Now this porridge becomes a good friend of mine. Especially now is the season for those beautiful squashes.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 cup of millet

- 4 cups of water

- pinch of salt

- pureed squash (butternut of other kinds you like)

I am not very strict when comes to cooking. Most time I cook from scratch. This one is the same. The amount of squash added depends on personal taste. Boil water together with millet, lower the heat and simmer until the water reduced to half. Stir in squash puree and cook for another 15 minutes. Season with salt.

11/09/2010

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The same content as yesterday's lunch. Only substitute quinoa for the rice.

11/08/2010

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In this bento: meatballs, cauliflower, corn pudding, cabbage, butternut squash, black bean brown rice, and pumpkin pie.
Yes, there is a small piece of pumpkin pie here. It's not rare to have dessert in bento boxes, but I hardly do this. Because this week I didn't prepare the rice, the leftover is not enough to fulfill the tier either. So slipped in a piece of pie into my lunch ^,^

Japanese Style Scotch Egg

For the group meeting tonight, I made scotch eggs. The first time when I made those, I forgot to take pictures. So the top one the the left was those eggs before going into the oven. The bottom one is how they look like when cooked. The Scotch egg is very bento friendly. I can make bunch of them and freeze for later use.

Ingredients:
- ground pork
- hard boiled eggs
- Rosemary, green onion (or any herbs you like)
- garlic
- ginger
- salt & pepper
- BBQ sauce (depends on your taste)

Basically, there is no set ingredient to flavor the ground pork, really. Depends on what I have at the moment, I would add pureed squash, or egg, or mushroom or etc to the meat part. Once the meat is seasoned and the eggs are boiled, take the egg shell off and wrap the meat evenly around it. Bake the wrapped egg in the 375 F oven for about 20 minutes.

11/5/2010

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Nori tamagoyaki, meatballs, cauliflower, tomatoes, butternut squash, brown rice with black bean.

Cranberry and Pineapple Yogurt Cake

This was supposed to be a Pear Yogurt Cake based on the recipe. But I like to make changes depends on what ingredients I have. So my version became  Cranberry and Pineapple Yogurt Cake, since I still have some cranberry and pineapple left from baking other stuff. I have never baked any cake using just yogurt in my life, so I was a bit surprised to see that only yogurt was used here. I have some "year-long" yogurt in the fridge (it's sitting there and I completely forgot it) so it's a perfect recipe to use it up. The cake rose up surprisingly high, almost flow out the pan. The result was that the center of the cake was completely raw after 30 minutes baking. I extended 10 more minutes to let the cake set in the oven. the top was brown though it still came out a bit runny in the middle. The texture was spongy like but slightly dry, guess I let it sit in the oven too long. However, the taste was pretty good. I love the tart and sweet combination from the fruit topping.

11/4/2010

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This is almost an identical bento to today's lunch. The only difference is that I added tamagoyaki into this one. For the same bento box, I got hungy not long after lunch today, very hungry. Soon it started to distract me from work. It was annoying. I figured out there wasn't enough protein in my today's box so more protein was packed in this twin. And it amazed me how much stuff can be packed into such a small space.

11/3/2010

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Black bean brown rice, cauliflower, terriyaki meatballs, tomato, ginger butternut squash, stir-fried corn with bell pepper.