A bento break-through!

Well well well, we do seem to keep bumping into each other on Sunday nights!  🙂

After all that rain and cloudiness, today was just beautiful.  It was sunny, breezy, and warm.  I got to enjoy some of the lovely weather while running my grocery errands and hope there’s more of this weather to come!

Anyway, I’m continuing my Sunday tradition of trying to cook something  so that we have dinner and lunch for the first couple days of the week before it gets too crazy.  Mr. Spice’s one request was that I didn’t make chicken.  I do tend to do chicken a lot since it’s so quick and versatile.

I decided to make Japanese beef curry and teriyaki salmon.  Now don’t think I got too ambitious or anything.  Please.  The beef curry was easy — I just pre-boiled some stew beef with garlic, ginger, and a little turmeric.  Then I dumped it in a big pan with some potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli, added water, brought it to a boil, then added a block of Japanese curry roux and let it simmer away until everything was tender.  I used S&B Golden Curry Hot because that’s what I had in my pantry.  I know this stuff probably isn’t the best for you, but it’s what I wanted.  To me, this stuff tastes like curry-flavored stew and is very not like the curry I grew up with, but not in a bad way.   And the teriyaki salmon was just skinless salmon marinated in teriyaki sauce and baked in the oven.  No pic of this yet since I’m intending it to be lunch one day.

Anyway, since we had leftovers I definitely wanted some for lunch on Monday.  I got a new bento box a couple weeks ago that I’d been wanting to use and decided to just go for it.  I also decided to use something else I’ve had for a while — my heart and star food cutters!  I lurk a lot on some bento sites and love seeing how creative people are with their food.  Most people seem to use them to cut shapes out of their veggies, cheese, or lunch meats.  I’d bought some fresh veggies since my body is revolting against my recent eating out and eating crap regime, so this was the perfect chance to use them.  Plus any help I can get making my salad not look like salad is great.

So here is the finished product:

I think I might have gone a little overboard with the cutesy veggies, but it was so fun!

So on the left I have a bed of green leaf lettuce, then some tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots.  And a little container of blueberries for color and contrast.

On the right some leftover rice from our Chinese food takeout last night, with a tomato heart garnish.  Then separated by a food divider, we have the Japanese beef curry on a bed of green leaf lettuce and some carrot and cucumber accents.

I guess it’d be nice if you could actually see the curry, but trust me, it’s very brown.  Oh and sorry for the lettuce explosion.  It almost looks like it’s trying to come out to grab you.  🙂

This is probably the first time I’ve been excited about eating salad, guess all it took was a new look!

Have a great week!