lunch: 12.02.08

lunch: 12.02.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

the background has been changing for my lunch pictures. most of the previous photos were taken with my iphone on top of my kitchen counter (ivory corian). this day's lunch was taken just before chowtime, and the background is the dining table at my work lunchroom (which is really a demoted boardroom table).

lunch consisted of leftover mushroom chicken with steamed rice, russian salad (which i ended up not eating because it didn't bode well with the other food), and orange slices. i sprinkled furikake on the rice right before eating for more texture.

lunch: 11.20.08

lunch: 11.20.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

obviously today is not 11.20. i'm playing catch up here. this was the last bento lunch i made before thanksgiving. it's a chicken salad melt with avocado slices and cheese. and lots of fresh fruit. yum.

on 11.21, i neglected to bring my lunch. but all was well, because i ended up going to eat at the japanese restaurant next door with my co-worker (whom i never see anymore--she was squatting at my office and they severed the cord and made her move into her own office). and it was good playing catch up with our lives.

the week of thanksgiving, i only worked on monday. i was up in north county making presentations at a bunch of training sites, so i couldn't bring lunch, as i didn't have fridge/microwave access. for lunch, i ate fish tacos at a mexican restaurant with the director of our nc programs who was also kindly chauffering me around.

the monday after thanksgiving, i overslept. i was pretty spoiled with a week of vacation that i didn't have time to figure something out. plus, we didn't celebrate thanksgiving at our house this year (it was at my aunt's house) and didn't bother to bring home leftovers, so there really wasn't anything in the fridge that i could toss in my box with minimal preparation. i did remember that i had a can of progresso italian meatball soup, so i packed up the last sourdough bread round from the kitchen table and ran off to work.

and that, my dears, is the reason for my lack of pictures and posts. hopefully that won't happen too often. i like bringing my lunch. it saves me time, money, and GAS! which even though prices have dropped to below $2/gal, is like freaking gold to me.

lunch: 11.19.08

lunch: 11.19.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

this was meant to be tuesday's lunch, as i originally packed it on tuesday morning. but if you follow my personal blog, i had the longest day at work ever, which didn't have time to include sitting down to eat my lunch. by the time i was able to catch a breath, the catering for the evening's board meeting had arrived, so i ended up eating that instead.

anyway, i didn't want to waste this food, so i decided to save it for today. i had spinach salad with baby spinach, dried cranberries, pecans, and cheese. raspberry dressing to top it all off. i also had a hard boiled egg that i ate with wheat toast and honey ham. simple as that.

i think for tomorrow, i'm going to make some onigiri. i can't wait to play with the rice molds. maybe spam musubi for lunch? we'll see.

lunch: 11.17.08

lunch: 11.17.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

today's lunch includes: portabella mushroom ravioli on a bed of baby spinach and loaded w/ pesto genovese (a la fresh&easy), some honey sliced ham, garlic bread, and baby carrots.

lunch: 11.14.08

lunch: 11.14.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

this one is a mix of monday & wednesday's lunches. pita w/ herb-crusted chicken & tzatziki sauce, spinach salad (baby spinach, pecans, cranberries, & babybel cheese w/ a raspberry vinaigrette, and blueberries in the pink bento box.

lunch: 11.13.08

lunch: 11.13.08
Originally uploaded by frannybaloo

packed my lunch before heading off to bed since i've got an early day tomorrow.  it consists of shrimp gyoza w/ rice, egg&spinach salad, and blueberries.

we'll see after lunchtime if this was a good combination?

the goods.

since i didn't take a picture of my packed lunch for today, i thought maybe i'd share the supplies i stocked up with on my two trips to daiso.  it's not much, as i am just beginning my bento collection.

(these pictures were taken with the camera on my iphone)

this is the first of two bento boxes i purchased.  yellow, with a faint design and little white flowers, it's a 600 mL total capacity.  i'd get out the ruler and measure it for you so you can get the idea of dimensions, but it's getting closer and closer to bedtime and i'm lazy:

this is the second bento box i picked up.  it's also a 600 mL total capacity, and the top cover's prose reads: the life that bounced.  i wonder who translated that and from what japanese phrase it came from.  i like this one a lot because it has a compartment on the cover for chopsticks, but that can also just be extra goodies space.  this box is skinnier and longer than the previous one.

food picks and food separators.  oh, and my chopsticks that match the pink bento box, but oddly don't fit into the chopstick compartment on that box.

those silicone cupcake cups are used to separate food.  the cookie cutters are for cutting shapes into fruits and veggies.  and the things that look like clappers are actually onigiri molds.

these are condiment containers.  they're really small, but apparently just the right size for dressings and sauces and all that other good stuff. i love the monkey ones, they're for spreads, and the bananas are actually little spoons to scoop and spread the goop.  the thing on the far left is the butterfly belt used to hold the bento box together while it's filled with food.  and those clear containers on the top right are for furikake.  i took the liberty to fill one of them with the good stuff already.

i also purchased hard boiled egg molds, but they were in use when i took these pictures.  aren't bento supplies just so cute?  

like mary poppins' carpet bag.

i really wish i had taken a picture of my lunch from today.  it wasn't bad at all, for this being my second day of packing a bento box.  i'll have to remember to do that in the morning when i pack my lunch.  i was going to take a picture of my lunch spread right before mealtime, but i worried that my co-workers would think i was odd.  the lunchroom was surprisingly abuzz when i went in to eat today (it's usually empty at the time i take my lunch, which allows me the luxury of catching an episode of the bonnie hunt show or ellen while i enjoy my food).

anyway.  so today i packed the pink bento box (also 600 mL), and surprisingly was able to squeeze much into it today.  the bottom tier held the makings of my spinach salad: baby spinach leaves, crushed pecans, dried cranberries, a round of babybel cheese, and a small container of raspberry vinaigrette.  the second tier held two heart-shaped onigiri surrounded by coin slices of kielbasa (remnants from my dad's dinner last night).  the cover had a little compartment meant to store chopsticks, and i capitalized on that space by filling it with blueberries.  it was a lot of food in such little space!  i also brought carrots, an apple, and yogurt for snacks, plus a bottle of ramune soda for my lunch drink.  all of this fit into that little army green lunch tote i had picked up at daiso.  one of my co-workers commented on how much food i was seemingly pulling out of a small bag.  which is kinda funny, because on sunday night i was worried that i'd go hungry if i packed lunch in those small boxes.  looks can be deceiving, i guess.

my co-worker's mary poppins comment brought me back to high school, because mary poppins happens to be one of my favoritest disney movies ever, and my college application essay was one in which i wrote about how mary poppins and i were like one & the same person...practically perfect in every way.  now i know i'm nowhere near being practically perfect in even one way, but you have to play up your assets on college applications to the point of sounding almost too perfect--even if you are convinced (like i was) that college admissions folks simply threw stacks of applications up and down staircases, and the ones that landed on either the top or bottom step were the ones that would be accepted to that college (ok, sort of, but not really).  anyway.  that was a pretty long tangent.

so lunch today was very good.  it looked good too, with all the color variations.  and i didn't eat the snacks i packed (yogurt, carrots, and apple) because i wasn't hungering for it!  woohoo!  ok, i've gotta go pack tomorrow's lunch now to save time in the morning.  i've got a breakfast meeting i need to set up for early in the am and everyone who knows me knows i love my morning sleep.

stocking up.

as i mentioned in yesterday's post, today is a holiday.  veterans day, honoring the hundreds of thousands of valiant men & women who have and continue to defend our freedom--my poppa included.  and thanks to these folks, i have no work today!  so the bento lunch box experiment will resume progress manana.  

i did, however make another trip to daiso and marukai market today to stock up on bento supplies, not to mention nori & furikake.  i think we got a little overzealous with the seaweed, because my grocery bill was like $30, and two-thirds of that was dedicated to four different flavors of furikake, and plain/teriyaki flavored nori.  lol.  i guess i won't need to go shopping for that stuff anytime soon.

at daiso, i picked up chopsticks that matched one of the boxes from before, along with more food separators and mini-containers.  cuteness.  my younger bro likened my presence in daiso to me being in target or walmart.  lol.

i wonder what i'll pack for lunch in the morning...

lunch is fun again.

somewhere in between the changing of the seasons from summer to autumn (which is a joke in southern california because it tends to get freaking hot in september/october), i fell off the "bring your lunch to work" wagon. well, i admit i was never one to make my own lunch. my brown bags consisted of dinner leftovers or a frozen meal from fresh&easy. but with the assortment of eateries to please a hungry stomach just up and down the street from where i work, it got really easy for me to forgo the lunchpacking and choose a different fast food joint or casual restaurant to eat at each day. especially when in doing so, meant that i had an extra fifteen minutes or so to snooze the alarm in the morning.

but lately, i've been so intrigued by the bento box lunch (and the fact that the new finance tracker i'm using has opened my eyes to the hundreds of dollars i am spending each month on eating out) that it's got me wanting to pack my lunch again. browsing through the flickr, i spotted bento box groups and was so amazed by the creative ways people packed their (or their kids'/spouse's) lunches. it made me wish i was five again and i got a bento box for my snack/lunch. the most creative thing i ever got in my lunchbox was pb&j triangles (no crust) and celery boats (which might i add, all the other kids made fun of me for, but ended up bringing to school the following week--my first, and perhaps my only, trendsetting experience), lovingly made by my lolo (bless his soul).

so i made it a point to stop by the daiso in kearny mesa for some bento lunchmaking supplies this weekend. although i wasn't too impressed by their bento selection, i managed to scoop up a couple of boxes, a butterfly lunch belt, a mini tote to put the boxes in, a couple of onigiri molds, vegetable cutters, food separators, food picks, and condiment containers. and i love that it didn't break the bank. my total purchase cost less than $23, and that included a mesh laundry purse for my unmentionables. if you're not familiar with daiso, it's a chain of 100-yen stores (japanese version of the 99-cent store, except most of the items are $1.50 and they're a lot cuter).

upon closer inspection of my goods when i got home, i worried about the size of the bento boxes. they seemed too small to accommodate a full meal for a hungry person. but this morning when i woke up, i creatively managed to fit my lunch in a two-tiered box (600 mL). i packed a pita cut into quarters, 8 sliced pieces of this herb-crusted chicken, a small container of tzatziki sauce, and a handful of blueberries. i also packed a container of yogurt (note to self: vanilla-flavored yoplait light=blech!), an apple (yet to be eaten), and a little pack of baby carrots for snacks. and at the grocery store last night, i managed to find a pint container of soy creamer, which made this girl very happy. so that was brought to work too. i like to drink my tea with a bit of soy milk, but i didn't like buying a big carton of it just for this purpose, because i never finish a whole container before the expiration date.

i gladly report that i finished my lunch, feeling satisfied, and not full to the point of food coma, and this really helps me get through my mid-afternoon slump. i think bento box lunches will help me to portion control a whole lot better...and it's got me thinking creatively about what i want to eat for lunch!

tomorrow is a holiday for us...so day 2 of bento box lunch experimentation will happen on wednesday. yay!