Curry - It is So Good!

Today my bento had pinto bean and tart apple curry, sticky rice with almonds, and cilantro and Savoy cabbage coleslaw with several fat delectable umeboshi on top.

It was completely yum and so satisfying that even though I ate it at 11:30 a.m., I was still not hungry by 6 when I got home from work.

Curry curry curry; it makes the house smell divine, it satisfies all the senses, it brings me home to my soul. And apparently it is very good for you as well, since curry powder has been shown to be beneficial for the processing of trace minerals and iron in the body. So everybody eat curry like crazy!

Here's my own personally-invented recipe for the bean and apple curry above:

Pinto Bean and Tart Apple Curry

1 cup of dry pinto beans or other beans you like
2 medium tart apples such as Granny Smith or other; chop in 1" pieces and core but do not peel
one small onion
one or two small sweet peppers, sliced into nice bento size chunks
curry powder, fresh as you can get it
3 tablespoons canola oil


Rinse dry beans, checking them carefully for pebbles (I found 4 rocks in one cup from my co-op! I am shocked!!)

Soak them for an hour or a day or overnight, whatever; this step is very forgiving.

Bring beans to boil in 3 cups of water; boil for about 40 minutes or until almost done (not too done or they'll be mushy).

Drain beans and put aside.

In a big saucepan or skillet, heat the canola oil and fry up the onion until it appears pearly (about 2 minutes); add the sweet pepper, apple pieces, curry powder, and as much water as you like for a saucy but not watery consistency. Cook for about 3 minutes over medium heat; don't toast the curry powder too hot or it gets bitter.

Finally mix in the cooked beans and simmer for just awhile; turn off the heat and let the flavors chat for awhile. Eat and enjoy!!! Super cheap supper and boy is it good.

Fishy Fishy but Egg Salad!

This little double-decker koi bento is one of my favorites but quite challenging to pack, for some reason.

In this one for Jan, I put egg salad - one of my ultimate comfort foods; when I am on my deathbed, bring me some egg salad with capers and Kewpie mayo and I will die quietly I promise! -- and a few slices of Cure 81 ham, plus sugar snap peas and Persian cucumber pickles I made hastily and they're so good.

Just as some bento boxes seem to take in way more food than you'd expect, some others take in less, and that's my feeling about little koi. It's killer cute, but you need to be strategic. Employ strategery. That kind of thing.

Salad Rolls!

I just love Thai salad rolls with lots of yummy cilantro and whatever fresh veggie ingredients are on hand. I am slooooowly getting better at working with the papery wraps they require: not burning my fingers in the water so much, for example and not breaking them in the rolling process.

My goal is to get to the point where I can just whip up 4-5 rolls for a dinner without making a big nervous production of it. The wraps store well in the frig and even come in a container meant to reclose...

So our lunches yesterday were these. Jan's at the top had the rolls, then in the bottom container spicy shrimp and sweet pepper fry-up, with part of my massive tomato harvest on top. The tomatoes are those little spheroid objects in pale red and green. Ha ha Mother Nature, you are a comedian. These tomatoes grew on the back deck to a certain point and then froze in time, neither reddening nor becoming larger. "That's it for us!", they cried in little squeaky tomato voices.

My bento:

has also some of these jokers, all of them green. We both have no-bake oatmeal fudge cookies as our treat, made from my mom's handwritten recipe which I will keep forever.

Friday!!!! Bento

Sticky rice, sesame tofu with green onion, Persian cucumber and tomato with ume vinegar and a few olives.

And Public Service Announcement: If you have black sesame seeds in your furikake for lunch, check your teeth before going to your next meeting!! Don't ask me why I am thinking about this today.

Rain Sleet Snowblobs and Bento

Winter is upon us here in northern Minnesota. Yesterday it snowed large wet blobs of icy stuff that was most unpleasant to feel upon the face and hands. My dogs were horrified to walk out on the deck and feel it slippery with ice.

My bento for today has nice fresh sticky rice and three beautiful umeboshi from my Madison Asian grocery haul; Persian cucumbers from Trader Joe's in Madison also, a rather flat omelet, yogurt, ginger jam and sunflower seeds for topping the yogurt, and a Snickers mini.

Here's the little peanut gallery that watches me prepare bentos every morning; they are hoping I will drop down some rice or crumbs:

My Trip to Madison Wisconsin

With my trusty doggy companions, I visited my second Number 1 Son in Madison this past weekend, and had some fun bento-related times.

First of all, I was able to salvage his damaged rice cooker. This lovely Zojirushi rice cooker with 'smart' brains had been left with some rice inside until it rotted and became too terrifying to deal with. So son and friend moved it from their previous abode, onto the back deck of their present abode, but did not deal with it any further. It was there last June, and there it remained this October.

I got it cleaned up and ran a load of rice through. There were strange pincher-backed bugs inside it who rushed out when it began to heat. But the rice was cooked to perfection. All Hail Zojirushi, who make a rice cooker that can withstand several months in the sun and rain with rotting rice inside and an interior bug colony, and still cook up perfect rice!!!!!

OK, that was gross.

We did have some more positive food-related times. But first here's aphoto of my son the geneticist:



Oh my am I proud of this dude. Yes he trashed his rice cooker, but he is working on a genetic cure for eye diseases which might have a spin-off for Alzheimer's. He manipulates DNA all day long. He is awesome.

So back to our food in Madison: we had great sushi



at a place where the waitress was so cold she was like an angry relative. But the sushi was divine and the green tea was like dynamite to the brain.

And the next night we went to the Flat Top Grill where you select your ingredients and then they are grilled for you on a giant grill surface:



This was most educational because it showed how easy it is to make awesome Asian grilled dinners. We chose rice or noodles, veggie ingredients, sauces, and meat or tofu, then at the end you could put a pick into your bowl to indicate what extras you wanted: egg, flat bread, shrimp skewer, etc.

It was all then thrown into the grill and brought to your table when done. I had noodles and veggies and a coconut curry sauce with hotness; it was divine.

My dogs indicate their support of the Wisconsin Badgers here but alas! the Badgers lost their homecoming game this same weekend -- an event we noted mainly as it caused ghastly traffic problems as we went about our business.

Noodle Mania

I loooove noodles. So imagine my joy when Amazon sent me a message that this book had been published. How nice that Amazon.com has such psychic powers. I try to resist these little ad placements but....in this case it was kismet. I literally could eat noodles every day at least once.

The author, Corinne Trang, has eaten noodles in all parts of the world and has the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Noodleology; she grew up with several different kinds of Asian grannies and aunties making their own noodles and fighting over the best combos of toppings and broths.

Trang sets our minds at ease by saying that any noodle can be used in any dish. There are better and worse choices but no catastrophes with this divine ingredient. The book has great recipes like this one:


Somen noodles with spicy shrimp curry and peas!! I need to make this asap; what a great winter lunch or supper. There are tons more great looking recipes for all the types of noodles, and explanations of the way these types came to be.

It also has great general cooking tips including a section on what you need to have in your kitchen (both foods and tools) in order to make great Asian recipes of all kinds. She is very economical and practical, and I plan to buy a copy of this book for both my sons when they get a bit more settled in their adult lives.

Today's bentos reflected the noodle influence:



Soba with the basic noodle sauce consisting of a splash of mirin, a splash of rice vinegar, a splash of soy sauce, and a few drops of sesame oil to make it all stick. Into the soba went some previously barbecued pork, and some sweet red pepper rings. Shoyu tamago (soy-soaked hard boiled egg) with black sesame and fluffy salt furikake.

There is also another attempt at carrot kinpira, not a rousing success (tasted like salty carrot slaw). Need to look around for a better recipe. And some tomatoes from the frantic harvest prior to frost.

So noodles for everyday and everyone! is my new motto. Noodle up!