Best of Luck Bento

   I had my first day of my new job today! I wanted to start off my week right, so I made this adorable and very delicious bento.

I used this cute sakura shaped bento with two tiers. 

I remade left overs of bbq steak (sliced very thinly) and sauteed vegetables (mushrooms and bok choy) into a stir-fry with rice. I also used some fresh salsa as sauce with my vegetables. I made sure to season this well because I planned to eat it cold.

I included halva (this is a dessert type item made with tahini, this particular one has chocolate, too), a mochi, a stalk of celery with peanut butter, some fruit snacks and a Vache Qui Rit Cheese (a.k.a. Laughing Cow Cheese).

     This lunch was not only nutritious but also delicious and easy to eat. It was a good lunch to keep me going through the whole day!

     When you pack nutritious, good food, it can give you the energy to get through the day, and keep you full until dinner time! You can also pack some healthy snacks (like celery with peanut butter) to ward off hunger mid/late-afternoon. Until next time, happy munching!

Homemade Chicken Salad Sandwich

Here is a great nutritious idea for a sandwich for your lunch!

Most of us have tried a chicken salad sandwich at some point. Most likely this came from a can. I am going to show you my recipe for making your own chicken salad sandwich that is not only healthy but also delicious and hearty.

First you need some cooked chicken. For an easy shortcut here, you can now buy slices of cooked chicken breast. You can really light or dark meat for this but I used the breast.

Cut your chicken into slices..... 

(you will need more chicken than this if you want to follow the ratios you are seeing in the picture)

... then cut your chicken into small cubes.

Take some stalks of celery.....

... and mince them very small

Take a green onion...

... and also mince it small.

Mix all of your ingredients together in a large bowl with some mayonnaise, and some salt and pepper, you can even throw in a splash of white wine vinegar, or hot sauce and your own variety of spices (I used a roasted red pepper and garlic blend). I also threw in some minced garlic.

You can eat it immediately, or you can let the flavours develop in the fridge for a few hours.

I served my chicken salad on a ciabatta bun. 

It was delicious!

This would make an amazing sandwich for your lunch! 

Feel free to give it a try!

Please comment to let me know if you like this new step-by-step pictures posting style!

Until next time, Happy Munching!

Caribbean Resort Food

 Just got back from my honeymoon in St. Lucia and thought I would share some pictures of the food that we ate while we were there. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of some of the more gourmet meals we had, but I thought I would share with you the pictures I did take.

One day for lunch I had a fajita, and some eggplant and tomato curry on rice and some steamed carrots. The curry was so good... I really want to find a recipe to try to make this myself. If I do find one that is similar I will be sure to upload the results to you all.

Prosciutto and melon balls with a dijon mustard sauce.

This was very tasty. I tried prosciutto with melon for the first time at one of the other restaurant on the resort and thought it was great, so when I saw it on the menu a different night I did not hesitate to order it again :).

Tomato and Fish Bisque.

My husband tells me it was quite good.

The chicken chiquita. It was stuffed with cheese and sundried tomato.

It was very tender and tasty.

One night they had an Asian themed buffet.

Here is all the sushi! I believe all the sushi had cooked fish however.

They had a stir-fry station set up. You could fill your bowl with all the vegetables you like, and then bring them to the chef and they would cook them up with chicken, beef, shrimp or combinations of the three options.

I got lots of veggies, some chicken and some beef. it was very good.

Well that covers all the food pictures from my honeymoon. I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into the culinary aspect of my honeymoon.

Until next time, happy munching!

5 Minute Bento

This morning, I was running a bit late, consequently, I had about 5 minutes to spare to make my bento (and I ate my breakfast at the same time! Talk about efficiency!). This resulted in a rather simple, but complete bento. My bento gear ended up being themed, but due to my hurry it was actually unintentional. The theme seems to be Studio Ghibli (it will become more obvious when you see the closed view and the bag).

In the bottom tier of the bento, I cut up one pita into decent sized pieces not only for storage but for dipping. They are to be partnered with the small pink container that actually contains a bottom layer of fresh salsa and topped with a thin layer of sour cream. The top tier contains not only a cute cat shaped pick but also an assortment of cheese (swiss, gruyere and cheddar), some dried mango, almonds, and some beef pepperoni sticks cut up into little pieces. These type of components are easy, delicious and quick and useful for fillers in your bento (which is why you may notice they repeat sometimes in my bento). You also may notice here I used a white divider that is shaped like an H. It actually came with the bento (along with a another simple straight divider and a special tray for small pieces of sushi or small onigiri). This divider was really useful for this sort of application because it easily, quickly and effectively divided the upper tier into four sections. Finding a box that has included dividers that are made to fit securely in that bento is a very good strategy. It will really help you fill your bento in a neat and tidy fashion. It will also contain food items a lot better than some of the flexible dividers that one can use such as the thin plastic grass dividers. I am really looking forward to this bento. I am sure it will be quite tasty, although it was simple and only took 5 minutes to make. This goes to show that even if you only have a few minutes, you can still make an interesting and yummy lunch, even if it is simple, and having a lunch with you is much better than trying to get through your day either without one, or having to spend money at the cafeteria or at fast food restaurants because you didn't have time to make a lunch. 

Here you can see the theme a bit. The main bento is Ponyo themed, and the small container is Kiki's Delivery themed (it is actually one of three similarly shaped containers that all fit inside one another!). 

And here is the bag. I apologize because it is not a very good picture and it doesn't show the bag very well, but at least you can get an idea of what the pattern on one side looks like. As you can see it is Totoro themed. The great thing about this bag is that it has quite a bit of room inside, it as a little mesh pocket inside, and it is thermal! So I also included an ice pack inside because I wanted to make sure the salsa, sour cream and cheese stayed cool. 

Well I hope you enjoyed today's entry.... Until next time, happy munching!