Tag Archives: food

bento

: : 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!

health, low sodium

: : Malaysian-made Food : :

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This is a bit of thinking post because I have been a bit stumped at times. It’s one of those “guilt-trip” feelings where after watching a TV commercial on “Buy Malaysian Products”, I actually don’t do it much when it comes to food.

Oh, I eat the raw food that are grown locally i.e. vegetables, fruits, meat and fish. It’s just that majority of the seasonings or processed food, I’ve bought imported stuff. And all for one reason : reduced salt or no-salt labelling. Malaysian seasonings or processed food will either have no labels about sodium content or they would put a generic one of “Less than 2,400 mg” (equivalent to 1 teaspoon).

A good example is the Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. The one that is packaged in Malaysia doesn’t have the sodium content. However, the one imported in from the US does. So I bought the one in the US and not the Malaysian one.

A lot of people have also advocated that sea salt is also good because it has reduced sodium in it. Unfortunately, for a person who has a blood pressure condition, any salt intake is enough to get the heart beating. It also isn’t comforting to know that my Uncle Doctor mentioned that Norvasc will make my heart palpitate a bit more anyways. Aiya…

The difficulty about going on such a strict diet was the amount of hearsay that I hear from people. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Relax a bit. Little do they know that I eat enough now to be satisfied. Plus, because my diet is so clean now that taking outside food will give me discomfort. I either have a lot of gas in my stomach causing me to burp a lot or I get heartburn. I get the feeling that friends are trying to tell me to go easier to comfort themselves that they couldn’t do it. Haha! Ah well.

The one thing that is motivating me from going back to bad habits is my skin, to be honest. It’s starting to clear up a lot and if I ever went back to eating uncontrollably, the reddish bits are going to come back. Now that’s something I do not want to happen.

Also, Malaysian-made seasoning in the rare occasions, will give me allergic reactions. So, I tend to keep away from things like Chilli Boh which I suspect has a lot of artificial vinegar/acids inside it or there’s some bizarre chemical in there that’s giving me problems.

In any case, I hope one day that there will be a Malaysian Food Company who is like Del Monte. They took a very strong stand of reducing salt in their products that their competitors just loses out. Whether it’s can products or sauces, it’s reduced. They didn’t always promote their products as reduced salt but when you compare the products side-by-side, they use less.

Now, just to end this post. The number of people who I meet are now surprisingly starting to eat more healthily. It was an eye-opener for me as they came up to me to either say it worked for them or they are enjoying their meals more. So there is some truth at least in this clean diet business.

Anyway, I have had my cheat meal this week already. Lunch with Dad at Sushi King and an ais kacang dessert. Which resulted in me not being able to sleep well at night. Also, a bowl of Sarawak Laksa for lunch yesterday with Granny. So yes, I have these cheat meals but they are rare and in-between. I compensate it later with more veggie and no-carb meals later on. 🙂 It balances out pretty well, if you ask me. 🙂 But I can’t do this for long. 🙂

I’m off the whole week so posting up stuff on the blog again. Next week is back to work so less time to blog.

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.

bento, japanese

: : Bento 4 ~ Smiley Face with Dino Eggs : :

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Making faces with food. Does that count as playing with food?

See the things I do to keep myself occupied away from playing an online game?

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I was ready to stop when one of the quail eggs I did kind of cracked a bit when I started doing the dino eggs. But didn’t look too bad so moved ahead. See the nest of dino eggs amidst the jungle foliage (broccoli) against a starry night?

OK, I’m cracked up. 🙁

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Was trying to do a checkered board but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Haha! The terrine from the other day wasn’t browned enough to give the effect. Anyway, hid it with some of the carrots where I stuff the egg yolk circles in. Waste not, want not, even if it’s itty bitty little scraps of food.

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Mackerel poached with 1/2 teaspoon of tomyam paste and water and some garlic. Then made the smiley face. The moustache was leftover chai sim in the fridge.

The fish is sitting on a bed of cucumbers. I need to beef up my intake of vegetables and I still got the feeling it wasn’t quite enough.

Haven’t quite mastered the way of the artist but I can’t do much atm since I’m going to be away soon. So can’t stock up on any food else Granny nags me for buying too much and poor her has to eat it. Hee hee!