Feisty Bento #206: Mmm, repeat

Top tier: leftover veggies and mashed potatoes from Friday night's dinner
Bottom tier: wedge of lime; lemon chicken nuggets

HAPPY BENTO!!!

Feisty Bento #205: New Item

To make you envy my weekend :)

Friday night's baked clams

Friday night's dessert platter

Saturday's lunchtime fried zucchini

Saturday afternoon's treat, post-movie (not for me: I'm allergic to raspberries)

MY post movie treat, chocolate-chocolate chunk cookie.  Hehe :) (well I only ate a piece of it, I didn't eat the whole thing in one sitting)

Sunday's baseball game.  You can see the ball as it's approaching DW! 

The awesome promotional item they were giving away.  There's Billy Wagner in bobblehead form, sitting on top of my CPU.  I fully intend to get a DW poster (of him winding up at bat, tongue sticking out, of course) for that corner... it'll be my Mets corner!  Unfortunately, next month's Santana bobblehead is only for kids :( anyone want to lend me their child for a game?  Hahaha... I actually detest Billy Wagner for his blown saves in the past month or two.  Jerkface.

Sunday night's dinner.  I was surprised by this dish.  But a full review is to come, so that's all I'll say.

Sunday night's dessert at another place.  This is disgusting.  Who puts sake in ice cream?  IDIOTS that's who.  Gross.

And today's crooked bento. 

Top tier: leftover veggies and mashed potatoes from Friday's dinner
Bottom tier: lemon chicken nuggets; lime wedge for chicken; small piece of corn on the cob

After seeing this recipe on JustBento, I had to make it.  Before I did, I pressured NotExactlyBento to make them- which she did!!!- and said they were yummy, so enough from me, and I made them.

Being me, I had to make a few changes, since I wanted them super lemony... they still are just a slight lemon pucker at the end, which is great, but my major change was adding a bit of lime juice (and a lime wedge) to the marinade instead of just lemon, oh and at the end?  Instead of juicing a new lemon/lime, I used what the chicken had marinated in and poured that into the whole pan, letting it cook off and create a caramelized crust itself.  Waste not, want not, right?  :)  So yummy... I am so happy I still have some for tomorrow's bento!

As always, HAPPY BENTO!!!

Feisty Bento #204: Cute Props

Last night's dinner... yes, I made that.  Don't you love that little cup?  I bought them 4/$1 on Sunday after brunch, not sure what I would do with them, but here they are, appearing in a post already!  ;)  And you guys were making fun of me... ahem MK ;P

Strip steak (which I rarely order and have never bought before... I don't like this cut, it's got too much fat around it that I have to cut off! and the bone is annoying!), baked potato with butter and sour cream.  I used this recipe again - the same one I used for sirloin last week - lowering the times a little to get it a bit more medium rare.  Worked like a charm, and I was able to bake my potatoes at the same time.  Normally, I would cook this the same way I do rib eyes - but my cast iron skillet was not at hand.  YUMMY!!! 

Top tier: sliced strip steak; mashed potatoes
Bottom tier: the last of the 'lish macaroni salad; roasted homegrown tomatoes; a roasted green bell pepper

So this morning... I took an extra baked potato I'd made, removed the skin, mashed it up with some salt, butter and sour cream, and called it a day.  YUMMY!!!

Happy BENTO!!!

Feisty Bento #203: More Leftovers

Top tier: shrimp macaroni salad; BBQ chicken
Bottom tier: green beans; home-grown grape tomato; small corn on the cob

I have no patience today for idiots.  This morning, the radio pissed me off.  The dj's said something pretty ignorant, possibly racist and no one corrected them.  *annoyed

Anyway,

HAPPY BENTO!!!

Feisty Bento #202: Good eating is not just for weekends anymore

And now, more food (dinner last night at my sister's house):

Stuffed artichokes

Deviled eggs

LOBSTERRR straight from Maine!

Shrimp macaroni salad... yumm... so good... and I don't even like shrimp normally but it's really good like this!  (I also have a fondness for shrimp potato salad I had once upon a time... swoon...)

Captain's Chowder... don't remember what goes in this, but it was uber 'lish.  YUM.

Well, this is what happens when you have dinner with my family.  Not photographed: strip steaks; sweet corn on the cob; green beans; grilled peppers; grilled homegrown tomatoes; grilled chicken; watermelon; cookies... Yes, we all eat very well indeed.  Props to my bro for providing the lobsters & chowder (driving them down from Maine himself!); props to BF for the strip steaks & bell peppers; props to my sister's in-laws for providing the delicious mac salad and fresh sweet corn; and the rest, to my sister and brother-in-law :)

Bento~!

Top tier: grilled chicken thigh, not sure how my sister prepped it; the super 'lish shrimp macaroni salad
Bottom tier: grilled homegrown tomato; green beans with fu yu (fermented fish; it's not as gross as it sounds, it's just slightly salty)

YUMMY!!!

Also, more shots of my gorgeous flowers (in a proper vase this time).  Am I supposed to do something with them?  They seem to be fading fast... :(

HAPPY BENTO!!!

Feisty Bento #201: Chinese People really DO eat everything...

It had to be said.

---

ANYway...

I was scrolling through the pics on my digicam, deleting stuff I don't need anymore (no room on my laptop! augh!), and said outloud, very absent-mindedly, "You know, I really eat quite well..."

My boyfriend just looked at me and rolled his eyes.  Hahahahha.  Well, I forget sometimes - I mean, I don't really think about it, but even when I'm at home, and I slap together something (eggs, udon, rice) it becomes something that looks really nice and tastes really good.  No wonder I'm not losing weight!  Hahahahhahaha.... well, whatever.  At least I'm not as fat as I was a year ago *shudder* yuck. 

Per usual, my weekend in food:

Friday night, nothing interesting, and I didn't whip out my camera to photograph the hot dog I ate while waiting on line.  BF arrived at the IMAX theater at 5:45 and was 5th in line to see the 8:45pm showing of Dark Knight.  Dude.  Well, whatever, we got great seats, ruined only by the fact that I paced my water intake improperly (I thought the movie was ending soon!) and wound up having to pee during probably Heath Ledger's best scene (I say probably because I missed nearly all of it, so I can't say for sure).  Oh well, I'll re-watch it, I know the gist of it.

***NO SPOILERS but if you are like me and don't want people to talk about movies you haven't seen yet, you should probably skip this paragraph.  Can I just say how much I love, love, LOVED Heath Ledger in this role?  Even better was, from a personal POV, the fact that I could see the parts of the Joker he took from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, probably the best Batman comic EVER (and one of the best comics ever, period, single issue, full story, just awesome, you have to read it if you are into that sort of thing at all).  Heath drew upon this inner darkness that all of us have, but only some of us are able to tap into and leave alone at the end of the day.  *shivers*  He was, quite simply, amazing.  Sigh.  It's a complete shame that he will never be able to reprise the role.  I love the Joker being tha dark instead of a clown.  ***

Saturday was an interesting/odd day.  We went to a one year old birthday party held at a catering hall - the one at which my boyfriend previously worked.  He showed me around and I couldn't stand there any longer because the food had made me ill so I made a mad dash for the bathroom and spent the latter half of the party in there, throwing up.  Grrr.  It ruined the entire day, because it was our 5 year anniversary; after the party ended, instead of having fun and spending time together, I laid on the couch, curled up and in pain, afraid to move.  Sigh.

BF picked me up at 1, and surprised me with flowers.  Not these- the wrapping around the bouquet itself had these little flowers tucked into the twine (I would have taken a picture of the whole thing, but we were in a hurry and I could see he was impatiently waiting for me to be done unwrapping, boo).  So pretty!  (I took off the little flowers and plopped them into an AeroMexico wine glass I um, have.  It's perfectly sized for a bud vase.)

A huge bouquet of orchids.  He said, "I tried to get you Calla Lilies, but they were out."  Awww... (I like Calla lilies a lot, but I can't say they're my favorite flower.  I haven't found a favorite yet.)  I think these are absolutely gorgeous, and I love them (and I purposely cut off the vase in the picture because I couldn't find the proper vase in my apartment, and later discovered I left the heavy crystal one with a narrow mouth at my mother's, so I will hopefully grab that tonight and re-vase it, so I can take a proper photo tomorrow morning).  (The one I have on hand is a wide-mouth affair, so branches like this will either fall unattractively to one side - as in the above photo, they're leaning against the window frame in my bedroom - or splay out when I cut the wrapping twine, neither of which I want.)  I've decided women who say orchids are their favorite flowers are high maintenance.  The amount of care that is necessary to care for an orchid is outrageous.  (Though I bought my mother an orchid plant in March for Easter, and it's still alive and flowering.  She's got a crazy green thumb.)

The food once we got there:

Waiting for us at each place on every table.  The starch parts of this plate sucked (the cup holding the salad and the wrap surrounding the mozz and tomato, which was totally unnecessary but obviously trying to be fancy).  The salad bit was good, the mozz a little old/dry, and the veggies, well, I like those veggies.

The pasta course, which was really quite good - I hate when places overcook the pasta, or let it sit too long so it becomes overcooked and not al dente.  Perfectly cooked, though the sauce was a bit bland.  Tasty but could have been better, more depth.  Like my not-vodka sauce :)

Between courses - Creepy much?

SIL's chicken Bellagio.  She really liked it.  A LOT.

Not sure what I was looking at when I took this shot.  Veal Marsala, which was unanimously agreed upon to SUCK hard.  Overcooked, the meat was wasted as it was tough/harder than it should have been, and the sauce itself lacked oomph as well.  Boo.

Pastries... I think this was where I got sick.  Too much cream all day and then pow, with coffee, I was off.  Oh, and a ton of wine.  I didn't feel drunk at all... boo.  But I looked really good! 

Mmm, yummy!  Brunch on Sunday at Craft Bar.  Note to self: don't bother learning how to poach eggs perfectly so they look nice.  Just cover them in Hollandaise and no one will be the wiser hahahahahaha. 

And now, bento:

Top tier: Chinese take out leftovers - beef with snow peas, some rice
Bottom tier: marinated cucumbers and tomatoes; baby carrots

Ok, I know.  It's Chinese take-out, the bane of my very existence, practically.  Well, I was over at my mother's when she and my brother came home (yes, I was watching TV alone at her house) from their annual trip to Maine.  My mom said, "Are you hungry?  I want to order Chinese take-out," and I was not going to deny the woman.  I let her pick for me, and she chose this, which was alright.  It was today at lunch that I discovered... Chinese take out does not make for good "let's not microwave right before eating" leftovers.  Blegh.  Congealed sauce is gross.  Ick, ick, ick. 

BTW, did anyone notice that I formed "200" with the steak in my last post?  :P  Hmph!!!

And tonight, I dine on lobster ;)

HAPPY BENTO!!! sorry for the super long post today but ... yeah!

Feisty Bento #200: Happy 200th!

Happy 200 bentos to me!

Top tier: sirloin steak; "confetti" around it is marinated cucumbers and tomatoes
Bottom tier: kickin' chicken; baby carrots; roasted pine nut hummus; cucumber sticks

By popular request, kickin' chicken!  I got the 3rd comment after I'd already packed this and left the house, so unfortunately, I couldn't incorporate that into my bento.  Sorry!  There are a LOT of things I've never put in my bento... let's say... frog?  Hehe... before Tuesday, I'd never put sweet Italian sausage in my bento!  So, I don't know :)

Honestly, I bought chicken thighs the other day, unsure of what I'd make with them, but I am happy to report that my tummy is happy with the choice of kickin' chicken!  Also: I am an idiot.  I bought a package of chicken thighs that looked skinless (and my mind assumed they were therefore, also boneless).  $1.89/lb.  I opened it up and it turns out the skin was pulled back and tucked under!  The sticker didn't actually SAY boneless/skinless, so I guess they're not lying per se, but totally deceiving!  There was bone, too!  (I don't mind bone-in chicken, or skin-on.  But for my lazy ways, it's so much easier to deal with kickin' chicken - the pulling-apart step - with boneless/skinless chicken.  I just wound up taking the skin off after this was cooked... and popping it into my mouth anyway =X baddd Yvo.) 

I can't believe I'm up to 200 though.  It took me about 6 months to get to 100, and I guess just a little over 6 months again to get to 200.  Ahhh, how time flies when you're eating well!  

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!  Don't forget to enter my contest if you haven't already! 

On a personal note, happy five year anniversary to my sweetness!

HAPPY BENTO, EVERYONE!!!

PS This bento also was totally awesome because it took me all of 5 minutes to pack.  :)