Long time no bento

Brilliant, as our internet at home is gone for a bit, I got myself this fancy phone that has the internets and all. I can use it as a modem for my laptop but for some reason Blogger is blocked. However, it has a Blogger app. Silly. Anyway, I made a decent bento the other day, with my new addiction, kimchi fried rice, carrot kinpira and mizuna salad. What is your favourite way to eat kimchi?

Return to the world of blogging!

Ok, no more silly excuses. I now have a lovely flat with a relatively big garden and a huge kitchen. There are lots of pictures of food on my hard disk and my cameras. So I should resume blogging, right? Here we go, I hope there are still some people who read this :)


Beetroot (flannel?) hash from Vegan Brunch from ages ago in the Cricklewood morning sun, with some sort of salad it seems. Beets are hugely underappreciated by most people!


Carb attack! I just love aloo sag. This was a quick and mostly fat-free version.


I now live with someone vegan to feed, so I have more excuses to buy tons of food and cook many many dishes :) Carrot kinpira, grilled portobello mushrooms, mizuna salad with tomatoes and ponzu dressing, along with potato and onion miso soup, rice, umeboshi and all the other Japanese trimmings.

Still, there are always leftovers for bento... this pingu box broke last week, a shame because it was a very useful size. On the other hand, blue is not very good at making food look appetising. But come on, poor Pingu! This gives me an excuse to look for another Pingu box (I used to have two but gave one away when I moved country).

Rice!

The thing I love most about "traditional" bento is the rice bit... I'm a carb addict and short grain white rice is my favourite, and it's surprisingly filling for a heavily processed grain.

Somehow I can't get used to brown rice... it's ok for "Western-ish" dishes, but it tastes very wrong with most Asian food IMHO. What do you think?

My camera died a little so this is a bad phone picture of an amazing bento- cannonball onigiri, satay skewers, tomato and spinach (hidden underneath). This was my first time trying the completely round onigiri version, and it was a lot of fun to make and eat!

Friday I brought some sushi to work since one of my co-workers claimed she had never eaten home-made sushi.



Friday night, after all these very Japanese lunches, I badly craved some stick-to-your-ribs food, and since the veg box brought me a huge savoy cabbage this week, I made colcannon with sausages and much brown sauce! Sorry, mashed potatoes with cabbage just can't look pretty...

Yucky Japanese things!

... that's how a certain co-worker who sustains on a salad and pasta diet called my lovely bento! On the right, there's wakame/cucumber salad with shichimi togarashi, the right has rice, some wasabi, ume and "chicken" satay pieces. Both in my Monokuro Boo boxes, matching the motto: "Simple is best" XD

I know it's Saturday already, I've got my two other bentos for the week on my camera, so more to come this weekend!

Classic Bento

... in a not-bento-box, but this former pakora box is very useful and just the right size for a bento!
So yesterday I kept it very classic Japanese, with rice, toasted nori hidden by carrot kinpira and fake chicken breast. I also took a boring little salad with mizuna and rocket to work, but that didn't photograph well at all in the morning.


Tonight I'm going to one of my favourite place in London, the Globe theatre, to see the much-neglected Love's Labour's Lost!

Bento swap

I've been off work this week- officially to study for my finals, but in reality, I don't care much.
So I did a lot of lovely things... going to the farmers' market every other day, visit friends I barely see and travel spontaneously.

Also, I had a bunch of paper stuff translated... cleared out my wardrobe and found that I have too many bento boxes, too!
More than I can possibly take to London with me... so I'll have to give some away. This is mainly for readers in Europe and the UK as shipping overseas is quite expensive.

The bentos below are up for grabs, and I'd love to swap them for some food goodies :)
(if you want to buy one instead, drop me a line, too)
I have tons and tons of accessories (sauce bottles, onigiri molds, food picks and such) that have to go too, so I'd put a bunch of those in as well (if there's anything in particular that you'd like, let me know).

Super cute Cinnamoroll box, comes with one divider, holds about 300ml.


matching side dish container with one built-in divider, holds about 100ml.

sweet Hamtaro side dish container, about 120 ml
Simple black two-tiered box, holds about 550 ml, the upper tier has a waterproof lid.

"Little dolphin" two-tiered box from Japan Centre in Picadilly with awesome Engrish. Holds about 480 ml, the upper tier has a waterproof lid.


Mister Donut's two-tiered Pingu bento box, comes with a Pingu water bottle and big bento bag with zipper, the box holds about 480 ml and has a waterproof lid, too.

Bento routine success!

Let's not make any more lame excuses, but let me tell you about my life.
I know... blah blah...

My initial inspiration in cooking, and in so many other things in life, my grandmother, passed away on 10 January. Ever since, my work (or off work) and private life have been crazy. A very good friend is in hospital. I've met my siblings for the first time in more than 3 years!
Actually, I'm going out Friday night with my brother whose voice hadn't even started breaking the last time I met him.

Exciting times call for a routine to calm things down, so I cooked up a storm and made a nice bento every single day of last week.

Proof:
Rice, pickled ginger, hoisin-fried tofu, mixed salad. Hoisin sauce is my new love. It's like BBQ sauce, only Asian!

tagine with "Rumfort"-veggies ("Rumfort" being my own invention... it's German for "was rumliegt und fort muss" or "what's lying around and has to go or it'll go bad"), ugly apple cobbler from Joy of Vegan Baking (though it's me that made it ugly), homemade tomato bread (Jamie O. recipe and the best bread base ever!)

bulgur with carrots and parsley, crack olives from the Turkish grocery, artichoke hearts, cocktail tomatoes, tiny veggie box banana

Two stages of pho. I had a bowl in the morning and one at work in the afternoon. Rice noodles, bean sprouts, carrots, Thai basil and bok choy. I packed the broth in a separate (un-sexy) container.


TVP-based Thai massaman (muslim) curry, a kiwi fruit, cocktail tomatoes and nuts.

The mail, the Japanese, the Irish

It's gotten very cold and wintery here since last week. We had a crazy storm and even snow Friday last week (where I live, if we get snow at all, it's usually only a day or two in early January). So you can tell I felt like some stick-to-your-ribs goodness. A certain Irish girl that's sorta my flatmate at the moment requested stew, so we ended up making Dublin Coddle after Cherry's recipe but with homemade seitan sausages.

Seriously, I don't like European cuisine much usually, and especially not potato-based dishes, but this was the best thing I've eaten in a very long time. I was sceptical at first because the recipe seemed very simple. But all the spice and flavour from the sausages were coddled (=slowly simmered) into the stew... soooo good (and omni Dublin girl approved, what more can you ask for?).

This should probably be served with soda bread, but I didn't have any time for baking so we had it with whole wheat sandwich bread (yes, I was that busy!).






Some lovely things arrived in the mail the last two weeks or so (yay to Christmas bonus!):
This is what I received from the "Savoury Snack Swap"

a) a couple of rice cracker mixes and Mushroom Crisps! My co-workettes went crazy about the rice crackers but I haven't dared to try the shroom chips. Though, it's mushrooms and chips, so how can those possibly be bad?

b) Tapioca sticks and banana chips and from Saudi-Arabia! Haven't tried them yet... I'm scared of getting addicted to banana chips again, like I did when I was 12 or 13.

Even without celebrating Thanksgiving, these are days of friends and family feasts.
Yesterday was my grandmother's 60th birthday and I made the most awesome banana hazelnut muffins... and forgot my camera! They looked and tasted ace, I promise!

But I've got some pictures from last Saturday, when we had a small girly weekend cooking session + wine + British comedy (far too short though!).


Rachel and mystery girl sitting in my kitchen, ready to dig in! We had Japanese curry, teriyaki tempeh and stir-fried bok choy and bean sprouts with garlic (not pictured).
























Another fab Japanese thing is my new Monokuro Boo bento! I love San-x, and Monokuro especially because it's not all pink and girly, but still ridiculously cute. I already have a four container-black/white piggy bento set, and a bag, so this completes the collection:










(bento holds millet risotto with peas, a plum, mixed salad with cucumber, olives and sprouts)

November Rain

Happy World Vegan Day to all of you!

This also means the MoFo is over... and I'm relieved. Honestly, I still don't understand how people manage to blog, cook, bake, shop and be an AR activist and still have a life... I can't. I'm happy if I find the time to check my private e-mail every other day. I'd love to do more for the vegan cause but I just can't spare the time.

I won't be doing much today since it's the only day and I've been to busy lately to arrange for a meetup or something :(
I had so many great plans for Halloween but work got in my way... which leads me to thinking... (yes, I should start a vegan foodie philosophy blog)-

Still, we had a neat little Halloween party, featuring too many Jamie Oliver recipes and the fact that Halloween is originally an Irish custom (when I asked people about Halloween, they'd often answer "We don't need to adapt all that American shit, do we?"). No pictures sadly, I had to revive my camera this morning (it sounded like a duck when I tried to start it!).

Anyway, recent eats:

very blurry tom yum soup! We're on winter time here again which means it's still almost dark when I get out of the house and I don't return home before it's dark again, so I'm back in my vampire vegan mood with horrible pictures. Sorry!

Fried tofu, broccoli and brown rice with homemade sweet/sour sauce.

More rice and curried veggies made with *gasp* a jarred organic curry sauce. When I buy convenience food, it's usually the only in the house that's not organic- turned out to be a big mistake. This sauce cost 2 € (would make 4-5 servings) and is divine! I didn't add any seasonings, and usually I use a lot of extra chili, ginger, garlic and soy sauce on anything.

And the only pretty bento I made this week. I'm not sure why, but all my other lunches this week looked like butt, not due to bento-making-skill or no time, but because of the nature of the dishes (curried/lentils and so on), so I didn't take any pictures. I swear they still were yum and nutritionally balanced :)
Pretty bento has mini knödel/German dumplings (not gnocci!), raw tomato sauce, 2 falafel-sort of balls and steamed peas, green beans, broccoli and brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar.

Wholesome lunchbox October!

I seriously need to get back into bento-ing. Ok, I need to get back into pretty much everything ambitious cooking, I've been so lazy the last couple of weeks!

As most bento events are a) contests and I hate competition in my free time or b) about cutesy bento or even artistic kyara-ben. I love cooking with a bit of cute in it, but I'll always stay an impatient girl.

So I was very happy to find out about the monthly Wholesome Lunchbox event hosted by Coffee and Vanilla.

This is tomorrow's bento and my entry for this month. I even bothered to "make" a background!

The green "Natural Leaf" box (because who doesn't "Love Natural Blessing"?) has crispy homemade gyoza with seitan, spring onion and mushroom filling. Underneath, there's a small tossed salad of spinach, some tomato wedges and home-grown mizuna.

For sweet things, I have green grapes and Italian lemon/orange cake (recipe to follow soon!).
Can't wait for Monday!

Four-corns and the infamous emo sheep!

This week was crazy, and it's not even over yet!

Work was especially insane and so I ended up not checking my emails in four days, let alone doing anything else that required switching on the computer at home.

So today I decided to kick back a little and went to Gut Heimendahl, a non-profit farm that specializes in breeding old cattle breeds, especially sheep.

While it's not a vegan place- they sell their own pork, chicken and wool- they sell very little and it's one of the most animal-friendly farms I've seen so far (and I visited a lot, growing up in the country).

It always makes for a nice weekend trip and they have an awesome shop that sells local veg, homemade bread, sauces, chutneys, pickles etc.

This guy first didn't want to come near us, but then kept posing and seemed slightly disappointed when we put the cameras away. Notice- four horns! They also had a breed that had "only" three.

The cutest doggie that joined us when we sat down for a while, and Eva taking a probably better picture of him ^^

I have more pics but no pictures editing programme to flip them round... I'm still learning about Linux, I guess.

Consumerism: I bought a sourdough bread mix for my new bread machine, tomato-apple chutney and plums for from the farm's shop. If I weren't so lazy I'd have made a tart with it already. Maybe tomorrow.



Recent bentos:


Pizza, cherries, dates and cucumber




Cucumber/wasabi maki, pickled ginger, tomato slices, a packet of Maoam candy and Mexican chocolate cake.

Eating my reds... and greens.

So I was back to work on Monday and had a lot of stuff to catch up with, hence no fancy cooking. Monday night I realized that I had green beans that were about to go bad, so I made the amazingly quick from Vegan Forum's South Indian Recipe thread :) I couldn't believe something without onions and garlic could be so good!


This week's bento: Mini Mr Bento with the most awesome chili I've ever had- I'm not particularly fond of chili and know I know why- it just didn't have sausage and pasta. Try Jade's recipe, it's grand (second post on this thread). The other containers have strawberries and red currant cake. I've been exploring some DIY sites lately and was pleased to find out both Craftster and Instructables have a bunch of vegan recipes and green living ideas. Yet another one with strawberries and currant cake, plus dates and mixed nuts and the Shepherd's Pie from one of the Irish foodie mags (must remember to post the recipe!)- what is it with Shepherd's pie that it doesn't photograph well at all? The blue strawberry has brown sauce. Somewhere along the line I remembered to switch from eating all those red things to getting my greens, so here's my leafy green bento with farfalle with capers and spinach, peas, cherry tomatoes and dates. Anyway, the recipe of the week came, as so often, from a Jamie Oliver book. It's cherry foccaccia, which is so easy I don't have to post a recipe really. It's a yeast dough, shaped into a flat bread with vanilla-sugarry cherries and margerine kneaded in and it's best right out of the oven for breakfast or as a dessert with ice cream. Today's cooked breakfast followed up close... I've talked about Germans and cooked breakfast before, anyhow, this morning I decided it's time for a nice hash, sausage and shroom breakfast.

It's Sunday after all! Still, isn't the best thing about summer the abundance of red food (tomatoes, berries...)?

My Asian Vegan Kitchen

I haven't made enough recipes from The Asian Vegan Kitchen to do a proper review like I did for Vegan Fire and Spice, but I can already say I love the book a lot, especially because it doesn't focus on the "common" Asian countries for cooking (aka Indian, Japanese, Chinese and maybe Thai), but also has breathtaking Malaysian, Vietnamese and -joy!- Burmese recipes.

I don't know anything about Burmese food, but I know the Cauliflower Curry with pasta is worth the entire price of the book.

It's not as spicy as your average Indian curry and not tangy like Thai curry. It's totally different but familiar at the same time. It's creamy and above all, it photographs well, which is quite unique for curry.

Go make it if you've got the book!

Recent bento:

Pasta with pesto, garlicky white asparagus and cherries... the last proper asparagus of the sesason that I could lay my hands on :/

Simple overslept bento: brown rice with scallions, and sesame seeds, plum sauce in the green container, half a fig, three cherries and two mini chocolate chili muffins.