Category Archives: bento

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Lunch : Lemon Chicken

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Lunch : Lemon Chicken

Yep, this was a lunch protein source to make lunch a good square meal. Back in university, a friend of mine taught me how to make the lemon sauce from scratch, rather than relying on the lemon sauce from the bottle. The only problem is that a lot of sugar is needed so I cut out a lot of sugar.

The chicken was pan-fried after being seasoned with pepper. The sauce is made up of purple shallots, garlic and ginger with 1 squeezed up lemon juice. I think I also added in about 1/2 teaspoon of cornflour to thicken the sauce up as well as 1-2 teaspoon of brown sugar. The pink stuff you see there was the result of the onions getting discolored by the lemon juice.

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: : Thermos JBA Lunch Jars : :

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41IttOA4tiL__SS400_41ycwNUi9UL__SS400_ Bento Lunch Jar

3 different types of Thermos and I finally managed to hunt them down. The black one on the left is currently for sale at Parkson Grand for about RM149 but without a bag. However, it comes with a travel mug. This was the one I bought and it turn out to be the one I’m currently using. I used one of the small containers for breakfast. The lunch container is the middle big one. And the afternoon snack is the small one that usually contains fruits. It may seem a bit small to some ppl but it’s enough for me. Once you’ve eaten like this, it’s very hard to go back to the big meals that one used to take.

The middle red and white one is available from the RHB Creditcard Rewards program for 2008 – 2009.

And the blue one is available from the Citibank Creditcard Rewards Program for 2008 – 2009.

For all three jars, the containers are all microwaveable except for the lids. Those would have to be removed. They all come with chopsticks so if you need a fork and spoon, you will need to bring it separately.

More pictures after the fold.
Continue reading : : Thermos JBA Lunch Jars : : →

bento, health, japanese, low sodium

: : Bento ~ Playing around with new toys : :

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I had new cutters. 🙂

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The faces were cut using the red cutter in the picture above (left). Bought them from Bentomarket.com. And yes, it’s just as expensive in Japan or US as the pricetag you see there.

One thing I realised about using those cutters is that sometimes the vegetables will crack a bit. The cooked carrots actually did crack a bit although I think it was probably due to it being too thick a slice. Need to cut it smaller. Those smilie faces will go a long way in decorating salads though. Hee hee hee!

bento, health, low sodium, salad

: : Breakfast salads : :

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I find that in order to eat raw salad, I had to chop up the veggies into small pieces so that it goes down better.

The other thing that I find that I had to do was not include lettuce so much. Can’t stand the taste of it too much.

And finally, the salad needs to have a minimum of 4 different ingredients so that I get an interesting flavour.

Breakfast : SALAD again!

This was an experiment with feta cheese. In it, I had fresh cherries, shallots (small onions), 1 glove of garlic (minced), celery, carrot and onion. The size of the container was 200 ml and surprisingly, that amount is enough to last me until lunch time. Not bad for a person who used to have huge carb breakfast meals.

More pics another day. Cheerio!

art, bento, health, low sodium, Uncategorized

: : Bento #8 ~ Inspired by olive! magazine : :

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Waiting at the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport, London, I picked up a free cooking magazine called olive! that is published by the BBC. Flipping through it, came across a very tantalizing picture of fish with soba noodles and edamame. Well, inspiration for one of my lunches one day.

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Remembering that I had bought some somen noodles and edamame beans before I left for UK, I decided to give this a whirl. I substitute the salmon for mackerel since that is what we have at hand in the fridge. I had the 5-energy somen noodle from an organic shop (looking for reduce salt noodles isn’t easy) and also inspired (again) by another picture.

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I could only squeeze in 4 of the noodles in here. It doesn’t look a lot, I know, but I think it was ok. And it will be filling enough for me. I put them into small quaint silicon cups.

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The last somen noodle, I put into a small container and put it in the fish. The fish was poached with miso paste, lemon juice and cracked black peppercorn. I actually pounded the peppercorn using a pestle and mortar. Marinated it for about 10-15 min and then poached it. The edamame beans were boiled until cook. To be honest, I think that they are still partially cooked but it shouldn’t be a problem eating them.

According to the recipe link, this should be under 500 calories. It may actually be less because my fish and noodle portion wasn’t as big so I hope that it’s not over the 500 calories. Also, there’s reduced salt here as I didn’t used as much miso paste.

Anyway, I really loved the magazine olive! and the concept of Eat In, Eat Out, Eat Away. Plus, the fact that they publish out the actual calories and nutritional information for each recipe (well, nearly all), is definitely interesting. And the fact that there is a face-off between Gordon Ramsay and a reader on their meals, it sure is interesting.