More fabulous food pics from the last 6 months

Turns out I have a LOT of old food pics.  And I like flooding the inboxes of my few followers. :-)  Don't you all feel special?

Fall Bento: Carrots, Celery, Dip, and snack mix of Teddy Grahams,
Rainbow Goldfish, and Harvest Mix candy corn

Spice cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and cinnamon chocolate leaves.

Spa-Day Breakfast: Chicken Sausage and sauteed peppers
with garlic cream sauce and fresh biscuits (I think...)

(Dante decided that I was too stressed out and planned a
spa-day for me.  It was quite awesome.  Love you, Dante!)

Spa-day dessert (by special request)

Chocolate raspberry pastries.  Puff pastry with sauce
made from fresh berries and dark chocolate.  Mmmmmm.

Honey pork heaven: Pork loin (I think) with honey mustard,

Prosciutto, and bacon. with pepper and parmesan pasta.

Homemade pasta (made with the Kitchen Aid pasta roller set
Dante got me for Christmas), Tilapia, and roasted asparagus with a
fried egg and low-fat hollandaise.

Fall Food Festival!

Also known as... I just found pics on my SD card from NOVEMBER!  yikes!  So, just to showcase the awesomeness, here goes!  Back to more detailed posts soon, I promise.  Playing MAJOR Catch-up right now.

#1: Gruyere potatoes with cream sauce and green onions

#2: Brunch, inspired by Geoffrey Zakarian's "Ballpark Brunch" on Next Iron Chef

Includes tomato and fresh mozzarella toast, Creamy avocado with egg yolk, and shrimp

#3: Sandwiches: Tomato, garlic, basil, and ham with fresh mozzarella on french rolls

#4: Pumpkin Apple Soup.  DELICIOUS. Not sure of the link,

but I can look it up if anyone wants the recipe.

...and we had just a little pumpkin to use up... I think there were 12 of these initially, though as I strained some of the water out, I think i cut it down to about half that.

So there are the lost food files from November.  Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for more, because it's been a DELICIOUS week here, and I'm not even kidding...

Happy cooking!

Bentos #13 and 14- Waffles and baked potatoes

Ok, so... between being sick Tues and Weds, Super busy Thurs, and heading home Friday, I packed a grand total of three bentos last week, all for Monday!  Oh well.  Hope to do better this week...

Breakfast bento: I actually packed two of these, one for Dante and one for myself.  Homemade waffles (leftover from Easter and frozen), Maple syrup (Sugar-free Praline flavored syrup for Dante, regular for me), ham, and underripe mango (tart, but still good).

Lunch bento: baked potato slices with ham and cheese, hard-boiled egg, kumato tomato, mini cake, and salt in the cute little carrot at the bottom. :-)

Anywho... that pretty much sums up last week!  lol.  BUT... I did get some cute bento accessories from Mom for Easter.  Look for those to show up in this week's bentos!!

-Rowan

Happy (Late) Easter!

ok, so catching up on the last week....  speed posting!

Happy late Easter!

We colored eggs.  See?  There was one fatality... tasted good tho!

We also had an awesome breakfast of homemade waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and an awesome dinner of ham (grilled on the George Foreman), baked mini potatoes, asparagus with an almond/garlic cream sauce, and salad.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!!

-Rowan

Bentos #5 and 6: Eggs and chaos tots!

(So... in case anyone's confused by the numbering, if I pack the same thing for Dante and I, I call it one bento.  If I pack different things, I count it as two.)

So today was bento #5 and the end of a FULL WEEK OF BENTO AWESOMENESS!!!

Dante's bento: Top Layer: Hard boiled egg and egg salad sandwich on Pepperidge Farm Italian bread, which fit amazingly well in his box.  I was very surprised!  Bottom layer: Apple slices, tomato slices, tater tots, and ketchup.  If you look closely, you can see one of the carrot sauce bottles hiding in the bottom of the box.  It's actually full of salt, for sprinkling on the tomato and egg!  Dante said it worked very well, so score one for the creative repurposing!!  Woo hoo!

My bento: (I had an epiphany!  Just because the boxes CAME all blue/red doesn't mean they have to STAY that way!  I mean... they're the same size/shape, so I can mix and match!!) Tater tots, with a super-cute blue flower cup of pickles and tomatoes to use to make chaos tots (I picked up ketchup and mustard packets at the little cafe downstairs from my office).  The cheese for the tots is in the bottom layer, along with some salad, again with garlic powder and sea salt.  Slightly more colorful today, which is good!

We also did some experimenting this morning, since I worked a later shift today.  We made oat-nigiri (onigiri made with oatmeal instead of rice!  Idea courtesy of One More Bento Fan's Flickr page).  Basically, cooked oatmeal with a little less water than normal to make it super-sticky, draped a piece of plastic wrap over my pancake puff pan, put a spoonful of oatmeal in it and squished it into a cup-shape with wet fingers, put fillings in the well (PBJ, dried cranberries and pecans, apples pecans and brown sugar, and maple/brown sugar), put a bit more oatmeal on top, then used the plastic wrap to squish all the oatmeal into a solid blob and do some rough shaping and stuck them in the fridge.  Then, in an attempt to reduce the sticky texture, we fried them lightly in a skillet to give them just a bit of a crust.  Consensus was, though, that the texture was still less than ideal and maybe next time we'd try deep-frying them, donut hole style (Dante's suggestion).  And IMPORTANT NOTE: two of these is PLENTY.  Oh my goodness are they filling.  Neither one of us wanted to move after eating them.  I took a picture, but it seems to have been corrupted on my camera, so no pics of the oatnigiri.  Bummer.   

Anywho... Happy bento!

Rowan