June bento

Here is a quick shot of my bento lunch from yesterday. My sandwich is a re-creation of a delicious vegan sandwich I had recently in Ellensburg, WA, but my version has a little turkey. Hummus on one side of the bread, fresh avocado on the other side with sprouts and tomato slices between. Looks like I got a little carried away with the fruits and veggies on the side, but can you really have too many?

I snuck in another August bento!

I made a  couple of quick bentos for us earlier this week. Mine is on the left. Chickpeas, with pepitas. Caprese salad with a bit of cucumber from my mom's greenhouse added in, and an Asian pear. Hubby's bento was heavy on the desserts. He had a sandwich thin pocket stuffed with Laughing Cow cheese and deli turkey and honey mustard dipping sauce, tapioca pudding, cookie, peanut M&M's and some popped bbq chips. We were able to get out and enjoy the sun for a bit too!

Foodie Pen Pal - Month 2

It is month two of participating in the Foodie Pen Pals program and this month comes with exotic fruit! This month I was matched with Melissa in Florida who is a yoga instructor and Holistic Health Coach. She doesn't have a blog - YET! She seems to have a lot of good info to share that I think the blog world would really enjoy...come on Melissa! We've already had a few emails about how I can get back into a regular yoga routine which I hope to do very soon. I'm always surprised at how much better I feel once I'm back at it. Anyway, back to the FOOD!

Here are the goodies:
Fresh lychees! I've never had these before. They look a little odd, but that is something I love - odd looking fruits, veggies, and flowers!
Mango - fresh from the tree. So much better than the half ripe ones we get in the grocery stores in Alaska.
TJ's Balsamic Glaze
TJ's Harvest Grains Blend
Sorghum Syrup
Homemade superfoods mix

They don't have Trader Joe's where Melissa lives in FL and I don't have them here, but I love, love, love TJ's and always try to stop at one when I travel. Melissa took time out while she was traveling to New York to stop and TJ's and pick me up some goodies. How sweet! She noted from looking at my blog that I love balsamic and picked me up a balsamic glaze, and a grain mix. Both are on my must-try very soon list.

The lychees were very good. Surprisingly refreshing and tropical. And you just can't go wrong with fresh mango. I love them so much!

The Harvest Grains Blend has Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa! Sounds like a great combo! I can't wait to try it.

The superfoods mix is delicious. I broke into that before I even had the box unloaded.

Looking forward to trying the sorghum syrup. I've never tried it before. Melissa says it is and old fashioned sweetener that is high in antioxidants. Would I use it in place of sugar or more like molasses?

Without going into graphic details I will say I've been sick since just after the box came and I have not yet been able to try the grains mix, glaze, or syrup. They have just been sitting on the counter mocking me day after day. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll break into them.

Thank you Melissa for a wonderful box of goodies and several good email chats.

If you'd like to see what I sent to Ryan at Spicy Richmond you can head over to her blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want to join the fun of Foodie Pen Pals hosted by Lindsay at The Lean Green Bean here is the info:

Here’s a detailed explanation of the program:

-On the 5th of the month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.

-You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal!

-The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!

-You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)

-Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you can choose to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month.

- Foodie Penpals is open to US, Canadian residents & UK residents.

Please note, Canadian Residents will be paired with other Canadians only. We’ve determined things might get too slow and backed up if we’re trying to send foods through customs across the border from US to Canada and vice versa. So, I’m going to keep two separate lists and match US w/ US and Canada w/ Canada! 

***If you’re in the UK, please contact Carol Anne from This Is Rock Salt at rocksalt@thisisrocksalt.com to get involved!

Last Bento of 2011

At the last minute yesterday I decided to throw together a quick bento lunch. My last bento of the year. And sadly, there weren't that many of them to start with.

This stacking bento has a container of fruit; kiwi and pear with a wedge of brie...oh brie, how I love thee. The larger container has a fried egg sandwich on a flatout fold bread and a little bit of garbanzo beans. I just found out in August that I LOVE garbanzo beans - straight out of the can! They're delicious on salad.

The background is a scarf I picked up on our recent trip to London. Maybe I'll have time to throw together a little post about our trip to England.

Happy New Year to all. Here's to a year of more doing, less stress, less crazy, and hopefully a few more bentos. Cheers!

Kumquat Bread

In my farm-to-table box last week I selected kumquats so I could try something new-to-me and expand my palate a bit. I looked around for recipes that didn't sound too difficult since I've been short on time lately. I came up with the following recipe, altering the original to make it more Weight Watchers friendly, and left out the pecans in hopes that my hubby would like the bread too. It came together very quickly, with the exception of getting the little seeds out of the kumquats.

Kumquat Bread
adapted from Kumquat Pecan Bread

2/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup sugar substitute
2 cups white wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup pureed kumquats (sliced and seeds removed before pureeing)

Mix together first four ingredients. Add in sugar substitute, then baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix in flour and then stir in kumquats.

Bake in 350° oven for 50-60 minutes.

The verdicts:
Raw: I did taste a couple of raw kumquats before I chopped and seeded the rest. Interesting. The outer skin is sweet, while the inside fruit has a bit of a bite to it. Not sure I would want to just sit around eating them raw, but they would add a little zip to fruit salad, fruit salsa, or in a sauce. Gave a bite to each of our dogs as well. They love tasting stuff and both gobbled it up just like any other fruit I've given them. Next time I have the opportunity to get kumquats I'd like to see them in a sauce over chicken, maybe with some caramelized onions.
The bread: The bread came out great. Not really sweet and that hit of citrus tang from the kumquats is very nice. See the next post for the lemon curd - it's amazing if I do say so myself!

Lemon Curd with Blood Orange

A tasty experiment went down in my kitchen this afternoon. Lemon Curd with blood orange! I had a couple of Meyer Lemons to use, as well as a blood orange and came up with this delicious combo.

Lemon Curd with Blood Orange
recipe adapted from Cooking Light

Yield:  1 1/3 cups (serving size: 1 tablespoon)

3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind - Meyer Lemon
2 large eggs
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 large lemons, or my version - 2 Meyer lemons, 1 small regular lemon, and 1 blood orange)
2 tablespoons butter or stick margarine

Combine the first 3 ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a whisk. Cook until sugar dissolves and mixture is light in color (about 3 minutes). Stir in lemon juice and butter; cook for 5 minutes or until mixture thinly coats the back of a spoon, stirring constantly with a whisk. Cool. Cover and chill (the mixture will thicken as it cools).

Note: Lemon Curd can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. You can easily double the recipe and freeze half of it in a heavy-duty zip-top plastic bag. Thaw in the refrigerator, and use within 1 week of thawing.

1 Tbsp = 1 WW PP

Bento & Sky

We are supposed to get a big snowstorm tonight - storm warning and all. They are calling for 12" but it's still kind of decent looking out. I took this scenery pic today at lunch time. We drove across town and sat in the sun while we ate. I just love the dramatic sky and clouds we get in the winter.

Not only did we have sun we also had a simple bento lunch. I had the one on the left - strawberries, pineapple, string cheese (it's buried under the animal crackers) animal crackers, celery & pb, and a flatout with cream cheese, carrot, & raisin. Dave's was basically the same, minus the fresh fruit. He had a babybel cheese too.

Honeymaid Fruit Salsa

 


I found this recipe about a year ago on the back of the graham cracker box. It's really easy to throw together and can be modified to add additional fruit or change some of them out. I've added diced kiwi & mango to the other fruits in the recipe. Next time will try pineapple.

HoneyMaid Fruit Salsa
Serves 8

1/4 cup chopped red apple
1/4 cup chopped seedless grapes
1/4 cup canned mandarin orange segments, drained & cut in half
1/4 cup chopped strawberries
2 Tbsp. apricot preserves (also good with peach Simply Fruit)
Graham Crackers or Graham sticks for dipping


Mix fruit and preserves until well blended. Place in small strainer over bowl (funny, I don't ever remember seeing that part of the instructions and I'm sure I've never drained my fruit). Refrigerate at least 30 minutes (I rarely do this when I first make it either).


NI per 1 Tbsp: 80 calories, 1g total fat, 0g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 95mg sodium, 18g carbohydrate, <1g fiber, 9g sugars, 1g protein.

Full Circle Farm

This week I received my first box of subscription organic fruit & veggies from Full Circle Farm. Full Circle started as a CSA for just Washington, and then added Alaska to it's list of locations for subscription produce.

Subscriptions are on either a weekly or every other week schedule (every other week for me, at least to start), and are delivered to a variety of locations all over Alaska - even the bush communities! The week before the box comes you receive an email detailing what's going to be in the next box and have the opportunity to change out as much or as little as you like, depending on what's available. We don't normally get the best produce in Alaska. Most of it is shipped up by the bigger grocery chains and comes from  California or wherever happens to have some manner of fruit or veggies that appear somewhat ripe.

I was so excited to receive my first box! I've been pleased with the quality of what came in our box - though it's hard to tell from the bad mobile photos.

Bento #10 - Sunday's Bentos

Today's bentos were fun. I made my very first apple bunnies & tomato heart! woo-hoo for me!

My bento has turkey & cheese roll ups, lots of fruit and a little fruit dip, apple bunnies!, trail mix, and tomatoes stuffed with fresh mozzarella & basil. Kitty sauce cup has balsamic vinegar for the tomatoes.

D's bento has the same turkey cheese roll ups, but he ended up taking them out and rolling them into a Flatout honey wrap so he didn't have to touch the meat, he has the tomato heart, apple bunny, fruit, graham crackers & fruit dip, applesauce w/sprinkles and monster mix.

Bento #8 2.11.2010

I finally took a few minutes this week to make a couple of bentos for me & D. :) And I got a couple of cool background papers for Valentines Day so maybe I could enter them in the BOMB Challenge at Hapa Bento. My bento has 100 calorie goldfish, pb&j on a lip shaped sandwich thin (inside out), colby-jack hearts, radishes, carrots, celery, grape tomatoes, pineapple, cucumbers, and apples. Oh, and the blue silicone cup has more roasted eggplant dip.

D's bento has a turkey & cheese heart sandwich (he did not like the turkey showing through the bread like that, next time I'll have to put the piece I cut out back in there inside out so it shows), 100 calorie mini fudge stripe cookies, apples, heart cheese cut-out, carrots, wheat thins & roasted eggplant dip.