Feisty Bento #376: Homemade Mexican Bento

People often ask me what I think about - or maybe I just like to pretend everyone cares.  Anyway, ideas swirl around in my head, and I pluck at them sometimes, adding a notion, a lil twist of that, this, or the other... and every once in a while, one will feel ripe, I'll squeeze it a little, then harvest it and implement it.  And every once in a while of doing that, I stumble on something so great, that even I'm surprised, though I've been cultivating the idea for a while.

Honestly, this wasn't a long cultivated idea (I came up with it on Monday evening), but it worked so well with such minimal effort, I'm impressed.  And I am my harshest judge, so I was surprised. 

In the left box is chicken tacos - flour tortilla, a quickly cooked chicken thigh sliced up (seasoned with salt/pepper/red pepper flakes when I cooked it), topped with cotija cheese, a relish/salsa type thing, and tons of cilantro.  Cuz I love cilantro, it just brightens up everything I eat. 

In the right box is corn freshly cut from the cob, mixed with cotija cheese and cayenne pepper.  Yep.  Elotes! 

BF and I went to yet another ballgame on Sunday.  He wanted to get nachos from El Verano Taqueria, while I waited on another line for something else.  He also picked up elote (corn on the cob with cotija cheese and cayenne pepper), took a bite, liked it so much he told me "I want to keep eating!" and I told him he could eat the whole thing (it was meant to be shared with me, lol).  I was pretty surprised he liked it so much, actually, since I've seen him eat corn on the cob... maybe never?  He always cuts the kernels off the cob and eats it with a fork.  (It's a long story, but rest assured, there's a totally sane reason for this.)  Also because it's slightly spicy, and BF is really not into spicy food, nor 'fussy' foods, which corn covered in cheese/cayenne/mayo certainly would seem so to his palate.  Whatever.  He liked it. 

The next night, I was wandering through a supermarket, browsing, and I stumbled across cotija cheese.  I've been looking for this casually for ages, so when I saw a 12 ounce wedge for $3.59, I picked it up without thinking too much, grabbed corn on the cob, and discovered this place also had flour tortillas!  (It was an Asian market, and I generally only see the corn tortillas.)  So I picked those up as well, and realized I could and should make a [real] Mexican meal! 

The chicken tacos was just a random cobble of what I had on hand - I'd serendipitously cooked two chicken thighs the other day completely plainly, intending to do I-didn't-know-what-yet with, and here it was! 

Happy deliciousness.  The relish/salsa was a leftover mixture from a restaurant meal that I remade at home - meaning, I took what was there, and mixed it up with some other stuff, and came away with something even better.  Good stuff made better. 

An excellent lunch, yes?  I will be making this again for dinner, for myself & the boyfriend tonight.  :) 

Think outside the lunchbox!!!

PS I'm not a fan of Trader Joe's chocolate soy milk; it tastes extremely chalky, especially as you near the end, blegh.  And the corn I brought for lunch, I didn't use mayo, but it was still very good.  I'll use mayo next time - I only took it off the cob for ease of eating at work.  Mmm.  ;)