Rainy, rainy day!

Well! It's been a bit whacky here in the Northeast. Today I woke up, thought about going to the pool because it was already hot, but knew it was going to rain. And boy, did it rain!

The rain made it's own pool at our complex!

Makeshift bird bath!

Where's all the seed? What's this nonsense?

Alright, enough with bird photos.

I had a bit of a whacky night in the kitchen, honestly! I decided to make these potato cakes earlier in the week since our potato supply needs to be used up. I had looked at a few different recipes, and came up with one that worked for me.
And, surprisingly, I was in the mood for a "meat and potatoes" meal. As many of you already know I rarely eat red meat so this came as a surprise! So I grabbed a can of green beans, the potatoes, and made myself a delicious meal!

Potato Cakes
4-6 baby red potatoes, mashed (Already cooked them with skins on, added 2tbsp butter, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic salt and almond milk, mashed em up and let them cool)
1/2 C Italian bread crumbs
1/2 C Chipotle panko bread crumbs
1/4 C chicken broth
2 tbsp chopped onions
Salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste
2tbsp oil for frying

Mix all the ingredients together and form them into patties. Fry them until golden brown and let them cool on a cooling rack placed over paper towels.
Also:
Add brown gravy to make them even more delicious!
Makes about 8-9 patties
When flipping them over, pat them lightly back into shape by poking them with your spatula.


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Honestly, I was so sad when I made my first batch. I used WAY too much oil and they fell apart in the pan. So I decided, eh, whatever I'll just try it again. I loathe making such stupid kitchen mistakes. But sometimes, all you can do is throw it in the disposal, wipe your hands on your apron and go again.

And they came out DELICIOUS!

See the mini bell peppers at the top? ANOTHER kitchen mistake! I have an electric stove, and ended up heating up my cast iron griddle instead of the pot I needed for the gravy and figured hell, if it's already hot I might as well throw something on it.
Protip: I love the sound the seeds make as they pop inside the peppers! It makes me smile for some reason.

Anyway, boyfriend had to work tonight so I decided to throw together a bento for him!

He has: Carrot sticks, wheat thins, pepperoni, potato cakes, green beans, kiwi and strawberry.
These potato cakes are so delicious I might be going from referring him as Boyfriend to Husband. He'd marry me for these cakes. And now ladies, you too can make your man want to marry you with potatoes!

After all these kitchen mishaps and very silly wedding thoughts I wanted to treat myself. I've found that I'm in love with Pinkberry - but am poor on a budget, so I had to make do with what was at home!

Raspberry sorbet with kiwi chunks, chocolate chips and whipped cream! YUM!

I hope your evening wasn't rained out and that delicious food came from your kitchen!
Take care!

BENTO: Stir fry simplicity

Oh goodness it's been a LONG time! Life has been a bit all over the place: I moved from Brooklyn, NY to South Windsor, Connecticut and started a new job. Then the boyfriend, some of his friends and I had a road trip to Arkansas for a wedding. It was a very, very crazy time for me and I'm honestly glad to be home and relaxing! The wedding was lovely, however. If I get some photos up I'll post them as an aside ;) Anyway, onto my simple bento for today!

This simple bento was just a chicken with bell pepper stir fry with rice, hard boiled egg, and strawberries and kiwi slices. The bowl to the side contained an extra snack to eat during my manager's meeting of strawberries and kiwi. I can eat as much fruit as I want without feeling guilty about it!

My new co-workers were delighted with my bento. I showed them some other pictures and they loved the idea! Though one co-worker did comment that I ate too healthy because it made her feel bad :P Maybe my bento will inspire her to eat better! I know posting my lunch keeps me on the healthier side. And after all that fast food we ate during the road trip I need a detox!

And oops, you can see my bento stuff in the background! My sauce fish are mostly visible. I love those little guys!

Anyway, hope everyone has a grand week! I hope to get back into the swing of things :)

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Bento: Stir fried fever

Alright so I may be going overboard with the stir fried stuff, but I'm currently heavily addicted to hoisen sauce so forgive me.
Onto the bento!
It's a simple one. I was tired. Hoisen chicken stir fried over vegetable fried rice. Next to it are baby red and orange bell peppers, a hard boiled egg and some grapes. Was simple and tasty!

BENTO: It's a rice world.

Greetings! It's been a while! I've been incredibly busy and haven't gotten to take any pictures of my lunches at all!

But this morning I had a bit of extra time and threw together a good lunch for my late night at work.

Sorry there's no pictures of it all as one, my camera is awful in the lighting of my kitchen.

Bottom tier is leftover rice patties made from a cookbook that my friend Renee got me for my birthday! They were a mix of hoisen sauce, soy sauce, rice, egg, scallions and a few other things. They were grand, though a bit of a chore to make. But Boyfriend and I seem to have had the method down by the end, so I hope we make it again!

I took the leftover patty mix and stir fried it with an egg and soy sauce and made the side rice.

Top tier is simple. Hard boiled egg, blanced asparagus, grapes, and a mix of potatoes, bell peppers and soyrizo. I needed something a bit more substantial in this bento since it has to last me til I get home at 8pm!

I hope everyone enjoys their day! (And lunch!)

BENTO: Leftover chorizo madness

Hi! Today's bento was very simple, as I just didn't feel up to cooking this weekend. I had made a fresh salmon filet on top of pasta, collard greens, and chorizo mixed with kidney beans. It was freaking delicious!

So of course I ate all of the plate, but had PLENTY of leftovers for bento fodder. I keep a container in my fridge of various leftovers to throw into bento during the week:

It really helps to have that on the mornings that I'm just too tired to throw anything together. Also makes for fast dinner!

So anyway, enough of the non-bento!

This one was easy to throw together last night. There's leftover chorizo with kidney beans over collard greens and pasta on the left. On the right, there's sliced kiwi, strawberries, apples, cucumber and some quickly fried red potato slices! There's so much green in this bento it reminded me of my friend Renee, whose favorite color is green!

Hope you enjoyed & everyone has a great start to the week =)

BENTO: Connecticut bound and back again!

Hi! This past Friday I got the opportunity to see some lovely friends of mine in Connecticut! I was really excited to go, and packed a lunch to eat during the day and of course a lunch to eat on the train up there. I didn't get to eat the bento on the train, unfortunately, because it was all over the place! So I saved it and ate it a bit later.

This lunch was a big one for during the day Friday. It's pretty simple: veggie noodle soup, asparagus, tuna salad sandwiches, grapes, hard boiled egg & some kiwi!

I love the LunchBots box that I got at Ohayo Bento! Please check out her store if you're looking for great quality items for not a great amount of money ;) The sandwiches are just tuna with mayo between Jamaican hard dough bread.

My second box was for eating on the train, which was just not in the cards for me at all. That's okay, because it was still delicious!

More soup! I'm souped out.

The bottom was simple. More tuna wraps with kiwi, asparagus and grapes on a bed of lettuce. I'll be cooking more exciting things, I swear. I'm pretty sick of the same thing every day!

I had a great time in CT! I got a tan playing four square, had breakfast with new friends and old friends, took a capoeria lesson (and my muscles STILL hurt), played war, went to a brewery and watched quite possibly the saddest movie in existence. It is so sad, I will not mention it here. But the weekend was GREAT and thanks to everyone who spent it with me!

Until next time, enjoy!

Bento: Sandwiches and fruit galore

Good evening! (Night, actually...) I had a rough day today, and was glad to have such a substantial bento for lunch today. I didn't get to eat until around 3pm! Not going to be making the mistake of having early breakfast on my late day again. Silly Mande.

Anyway this bento was thrown together (again)...in the morning... so sorry for the hasty pictures! But at least the lighting is much better in my kitchen in the mid-morning hours than at night.

The top half is a simple array of tuna sandwich w/ lettuce roll ups on a bed of romaine lettuce. Next to that are terrible apple bunnies nomming on some cucumbers. I'm a bit paranoid about using my knife today as I cut myself pretty badly chopping veggies for soup last night. So minimal knife work for me today.

I just didn't have the time this morning to make everything cut all cute, so I put some colourful picks on the food! It held the kiwi in place quite nicely, I must say. Here we have grapes, kiwi slices over some red bell peppers, a hard boiled egg and some blanched asparagus.

All in all it was a delicious lunch! I finished it up again with some SkinnyCow ice cream and relaxed in my break room watching the Food Network!

This weekend I'm heading to Connecticut to see some very lovely friends. I've already packed my bento for lunch tomorrow, and made one to eat on the train on the way up there. I'll post those when I get back.

I hope you enjoyed!

RECIPE: Faux potato curry from leftover samosa filling

Good morning! The past week I've been eating enough potato curry to curry myself out. So I figured I could share how I made it and others can try this easy way to use up some leftovers!

A bit ago I made veggie samosas. They consisted of 1 carrot, 1 potato, 1 onion, 2 cloves garlic, some peas finely chopped mixed with curry powder, S&P and sauteed. Then you add ~1/2c veggie stock and let it simmer down to thin it out. Afterwards you just add it to filo dough - and bake! I had a ton of filling leftover!

A girl simply doesn't need to eat THAT many samosas. Leftover filling!

As you can see - holy tons of extra filling, Batman! After thinking for a bit, I decided to make a faux potato curry with it.

I chopped up two more red potatoes

I removed the skins because they taste funny to me.

They went into the sautee pan with a spot of oil to soften a bit, then I added the leftover samosa filling, some more veggie stock, more curry powder, S&P and covered it to let it simmer for a while. "For a while" I mean about 20-25 minutes. I stirred it pretty frequently - once every 7-8 minutes to make sure nothing stuck to the bottom.

The water in the pot in the background is for blanching asparagus!

Afterwards it was a delicious, hearty faux curry that I really enjoyed! It packed wonderfully in my bentos for the week and tasted just fine warm/room temperature/or cold!

Hope you enjoy!

BENTO: Nom ALL the leftovers!!

 

Sorry kids, today's bento isn't all that exciting. I was exhausted and had a terrible time sleeping last night! No idea what was up with THAT nonsense! So I pretty hurriedly packed lunch for today this morning instead of the night before. Won't be doing THAT again!

I have quite possibly enough leftovers that truly need to be eaten by tomorrow to feed 3 people. So I figured bento today, dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow except - tragedy of tragedies - I ran out of rice! As I didn't realize that until I got home, I'll have to make do with having soup tonight to use up the veggies that are in my fridge threatening to rebel if not eaten.

I'll be posting the recipes I used for what I have in this box tomorrow or Monday - I'll be in Connecticut this weekend! I plan to pack a bento for Friday lunch, and one to eat on the train for dinner since I'll be running to Grand Central right from work.

ANYWAY, in this bento: jasmine rice, leftover potato curry, large hard boiled egg. On the right side are some strawberries, raw red bell pepper, collard greens sauteed with more red bell pepper (I like peppers!) and some asparagus buried underneath. (Not pictured: for dessert I had a SkinnyCow chocolate truffle bar! OMG! Yum!)

And that's all she wrote. I might post the recipes tonight - depending on how long it takes me to make the soup. Hope everyone enjoys!

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Bento: Tuna Cakes w/ fruits & veggies

Only one picture of this bento: I was tired!
I had been cooking for a friend lately (he was my guinea pig!) and he wanted crab cakes. I dislike crab meat, so I decided to make the same recipe with canned tuna instead!

All I did was put a two cans of tuna (I made a lot) in a bowl, mixed in some mayo, jalapeno pepper, scallions, a whole egg, salt, pepper, parsley and then mixed in some panko and crushed ritz crackers. They were delicious! And so easy! I just threw them into a sautee pan until they browned up and they were ready to eat.

On the bottom of the tuna cakes is a potato and apple hash I tossed together. I just put in some thinly chopped red potatoes with salt and pepper, cooked that until it got a bit brown, and added in some chopped granny smith apples until they got soft and presto: my version of a simple potato and apple hash.

The rest is pretty self-explanatory: blanched asparagus, cucumber, some grapes and a hard boiled egg.

This bento was just really leftovers from the dinner I made my friend and myself, and I was able to prepare it the night before so I could sleep a few extra minutes that morning! Hope you enjoyed!