LCE #41

I'm trying to get back in the swing of the Lunch Cuteness Experiments. Here is an attempt at a Train Grilled Cheese sandwich with cheese & cucumber accents, lettuce smoke and a star grilled cheese mini sandwich. Pickles, tomato soup (oops, it was actually vegetable soup) & apple slices rounded off the lunch.

The Train was actually a big hit and she ate everything off the plate which was amazing!

Recipe - Summer Soba

The original recipe for this dish was 'Cold Noodles with Sesame Sauce' from Madhur Jaffrey's "World of the East Vegetarian Cooking". But as is so often the case with my spice cabinet, I didn't have all of the ingredients that it called for and ended up making substitutions. Here is the recipe as I make it.

Soba noodles, drained and rinsed
Cucumber, thinly sliced
Carrot, thinly sliced
Onion, extremely thinly sliced

Sauce ingredients:
1 TB sesame oil
4 TB black sesame seeds
1 TB Tamari
1 TB Soy sauce
1 TB Balsamic Vinegar
1 1/2 ts sugar
1/2 ts cayenne
1/2 ts salt
1/4 ts white pepper
1 TB vegetable oil
3 TB vegetable stock

1. Cook Soba noodles according to directions on the package. Drain and rinse well with cold water, set aside for a few minutes.

2. Combine all sauce ingredients together and whisk until well mixed.

3. Arrange cold soba noodles in a bowl with vegetables on top.

4. Pour sauce over noodles and veggies right before eating so that they don't get soggy. I use a lot of the sauce myself, but I put less for my husband and even less for my daughter. Sometimes if we are eating this dish at the table rather than in a bento I will have the bowl of sauce on the table, allowing each person to get as much sauce as they like.

Summer Soba Bentos

Left to right: Summer Soba with carrot & cucumber, Sweet Love Broccoli & Tofu, rice underneath an apple flower with carrot center & cucumber leaves.

Top tier: Apple square, Sweet Love Broccoli, rice with Sweet Love Tofu

Bottom tier: Summer Soba with Dragon: Cucumber body & wings, mustard seed eyes, carrot fire & wing detail, onion clouds.

Top tier: Sweet Love Broccoli & tofu, apple bits, cherry tomato, rice chex cereal with mixed dried fruit.

Bottom tier: Summer Soba with carrots, cucumbers, onions & black sesame seeds.

The Sweet love broccoli is so well liked in my family that I decided to try expanding it with tofu, which was delicious! I fried the tofu triangles first and then browned them in the leftover sauce mixture after taking out the broccoli. Yum! (Sweet Love Broccoli recipe here: http://bentoanarchy.blogspot.com/2007/05/sweet-love-broccoli-recipe.html )

My Summer Soba dish is from the 'Cold Noodles with Sesame Sauce' recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's "World of the East Vegetarian Cooking". I didn't have any black vinegar so I substituted with balsamic vinegar instead and added about 2 TB more of the vegetable stock. It was fantastic, we all three loved it and ate every bite.

Inari Maki Bentos!

My daughter's bento: Rice hidden under peas, corn & sesame carrots. Inari zushi sleepy time friends with mozzarella heads, carrot hair & hands, origami paper faces, cheese slice blankets. Skewer of peas, corn & carrots, Japanese sesame cookie, babybel cheese, hash rounds, broccoli & black olives

My Bento: Japanese turtle shaped cookie who hid sesame carrots, babybel cheese, hash rounds, broccoli, 3 inari zushi with provided seasonings and corn centers. Rice hidden under sesame carrots, corn & peas/broccoli mixture.

My husband's bento: 3 Inari zushi with provided seasonings, pea and corn centers, Japanese wheat cookie, broccoli, hash rounds. Rice hidden under corn, sesame carrots and pea/broccoli mixture.

This is the first time that we've tried Inari Maki. It was yummy! At least, I thought so. My toddler had vastly different opinions and stopped at one bite. My husband felt that it was okay. (I'd thought he knew what it was, but he didn't. He mentioned that the pastry was a little squishy, poor guy.) It was a little bit sweet and the seasonings for the rice were a little bit sour. Overall I was pleased. They were easy to make and fun to eat, although these were tiny - much smaller than I had expected.

On a side note, I learned this evening the difference between inari zushi and inari maki. The zushi refers to filling the tofu pocket with sushi rice while the maki refers to regular rice or vegetable filling.

The japanese wheat cookies were yummy. The turtle and the folded one have a taste and texture that reminds me of fortune cookies, but with something extra added to give them a little kick. The sesame cookie is harder to describe. It was very good too, especially since I (and apparently A-chan) love anything with sesame seeds in it/on it.

Lunch Cuteness Experiment #40

3 plain onigiri with carrot stars on top, apple bunnies, peas with carrot star cut outs, udon noodles with carrot ribbons.

I'm having trouble making the adjustment from the high chair tray to the toddler plate. It's much harder for me to make cute lunches on the plate than on the tray. With more practice at it, perhaps my brain will switch back into cuteness functions but lunches are a lot more plain right now.

Super H Mart Loot, Part 3

I had not thought to find anything vegetarian in the frozen section, but I was so wrong! There were lots of things like the two items below that were vegetarian and that I really want to try.

Savory Stuff:

Cabbage Buns

Veggie Gyoza

Left to right: Udon noodles, Inari Zushi with seasoning packets for rice, Buckwheat Soba noodles.

Super H Mart Loot, Part 2

We had an excuse to go back to Super H Mart on our next trip into Atlanta and here are pictures of what we bought. This shopping experience with them was much better than our last one. Perhaps our mood was improved by not being so tired, not having been rained on, etc.

Since we are vegetarians our shopping reflects only a small percentage of the wonderful array available. Most of the things in the store have some sort of english labeling, including an ingredients list which is soooo helpful! I've never spent much time in grocery stores like this one, full of exotic things that I have no idea what to do with. But it's been great fun just browsing the aisles and picking up a few things to experiment with. And I can't resist the sweets! Don't be intimidated, have an adventure, it's worth it. :)

Sweet stuff:

Cookies for my toddler.

Pocky, wonderful Pocky!

3 kinds of Mochi: japanese rice cakes with sweet red bean filling.

Top Left: Sesame seed covered, Top right: Mochi without sesame seeds

Top: Japanese wheat cookies

Bottom: Korean cookies