Box Lunch Adult v.2

Rice with sakura denbu, tiny oil-marinated fish with blackbeans (inbetween layers of rice), honey beef, quail eggs, ants on a log, and strawberries. Also packed a peach that is not shown here.  Unfamiliar ingredient--Sakura denbu. It's a fluffy, sweet-and-salty condiment make of flaked whitefish, named "sakura" because of its pretty pink color. My sakura denbu was storebought, but Maki has a great recipe for it herethat I'd like to try someday! Once I get over the intimidation...haha.

Box Lunch Adult v.1

Put together this bento. Contains stir-fried chicken with red bell peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, and quail eggs. And lots of rice...because I'm Asian, and that's just how I roll.

Obento for a Picky Eater - Week 2

MONDAY

Contents: Rotelle-cheese pasta with shredded carrots and broccoli, watermelon and mango fruit salad, corn, kidney bean, and chickpea salad, and three cherry tomatoes.
Verdict: She ate some of the pasta, most of the fruit salad, most of the corn salad, and one tomato.

TUESDAY

Contents: Seven cucumber and cream cheese heart sandwiches, one crab cake, bottle of dressing, corn, kidney bean and chickpea salad, piece of banana, mini apple bunny, two cherry tomatoes, blueberries and raspberries.
Verdict: She ate four of the sandwiches, half the crab cake, and the fruits (tomatoes excluded).

WEDNESDAY

Contents: Four shiitake mushroom onigiri, egg-sheet rolls tied with spaghetti, cucumber and cherry tomato flowers, blueberries and raspberries, mango cubes, corn and chickpea salad.
Verdict: She ate two fo the onigiri, the egg rolls, the fruit, and one of the flowers.

Obento for a Picky Eater - Week 1

For the last two weeks of my little sister's preschool class, the students are required to bring a home lunch. She's been enrolled in the school lunch program for most of the year because my parents can't be bothered to pack her a lunch every day, most of which she won't eat anyway. I have no clue what they serve for school lunch, except for one day when she informed me that they'd had pizza for lunch.

I was excited when my mother told me that I would have to make my sister lunch for two weeks, because it would mean I got to use all the adorable bento gear that I've bought. I was hoping that the cuteness factor would get my sister to actually eat the lunch (have I mentioned she's a picky eater?). Plus, secretly, I was hoping that the mega-cute lunches would inspire some envy among her classmates and help with my sister's 3-year-old self-esteem...let me explain...

A week or so ago, she came home from preschool and told our mom and me that she had to have something called a "silly band". Neither of us knew what she was talking about. We offered her a pink elastic hairband, which she rejected, saying it wasn't the right one. We asked her to explain, and she replied "it's not shaped like an animal!". Instantly I knew what she was talking about. Those colored silicone bands molded into the shape of an animal. They'd first started appearing in our local supermarket a couple years ago. We asked her why she wanted one, to which she whined "everyone has them but me!". I tried asking her why she cared that everyone had them, and she could only mumble "Because...everyone else has one..."

Shit. The peer pressure bug had bitten. It's not so much that I'm completely opposed to random trends (am I turning into a hipster?), so much as I'm opposed to the really stupid ones (green movement = good trend, uggs = stupid trend. In my humble opinion). "Silly Bandz", while far from the worst trend ever, symbolized to me the start of her awareness of what "everyone else was doing", and possibly of a journey that might lead to cookie-cutter clone-dom, a journey I was determined to stop. My worst nightmare is my baby sister growing up to be a stereotypical, spoiled, trend-slave princess who wouldn't be happy with herself unless she had the latest "in" thing. I refused to let that happen.

I knew my parents could not be counted on to raise her to be an independent, free-thinking individual. Indeed, I discovered, my mother had considered buying a packet of "Silly Bandz" when she chanced upon them in our local CVS, to be turned off only by the price.

So...hence the reason for the bentos. My reasoning is that she'll probably like it, even though it's not like everyone else's, and hopefully it will help her be okay with not having the same things as everyone else. It's only a small part, but...I figured every little bit counts.

And onto the bentos. Monday was Memorial Day, so there was no school and thusly no bento that day, but starting Tuesday I got up at 5:30 to start preparing.

TUESDAY

Contents: Three onigiri (rice balls) filled with scrambled eggs and topped with ham cut out with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, one octopus hot dog, three tulips made out of watermelon and cucumber, one mini silicone cup filled with diced avocado dipped in lemon juice, and some broccoli florets to fill up the space. Not pictured is a little container of buttermilk herb dressing to dip the broccoli into.
Verdict: She ate the hot dog, the avocado, the tulips, one and a half of the rice balls (although she did pick off all the hearts) and one piece of broccoli. I asked her what she liked about the lunch, and she said the watermelon, the ham, and the octopus. Of course.

WEDNESDAY


Contents: Half a ham and cheese sandwich cut into four triangles, two flowers made from egg sheet, three sliced cucumber halves, two pieces of heart-shaped watermelon, two broccoli florets, and one apple bunny.
Verdict: She ate two of the sandwiches (and picked the ham and cheese out of the remaining), the egg flowers, the watermelon, and the apple bunny.

THURSDAY

Contents: Three carrot yaki onigiri, one mini silicone cup of potato salad and one of cubed peaches, one storebought frozen meatball, some cucumber sticks, and a mini jello cup.
Verdict: She ate one yaki onigiri and most of another, the meatball, a one of the cucumber sticks, all but two of the peaches, and the jello (duh). The potato salad appeared untouched ;_;

FRIDAY

Contents: Seven grilled-cheese hearts (a little more than half a sandwich), one mini silicone cup of cocoa-dusted almonds and another with chicken cubes with tomato sauce, a little container with extra tomato sauce for dipping, carrot sticks, broccoli florets, watermelon balls, grapefruit segments, and two mini apple bunnies.
Verdict: She ate all the grilled cheeses and the almonds, half of the watermelon balls, one apple bunny, and a couple of pieces of grapefruit. She didn't eat any of the veggies or chicken at all! The almonds and grilled cheese must have filled her up.


Conclusion for the week: Not bad. I know I probably pack her too much food (she's 3 and a half and doesn't have a very big appetite) but I want her to have some choices. For a toddler who usually had to be coaxed into eating every bite and shuns new food, this was pretty good. One more week of preschool lunches, and then a break before summer camp starts.

Finals Food

Finals week. It's a time of dread for most college students, a period of cramming, sleepless nights, endless rounds of coffee, and meals of limp cafeteria french fries.

For us Parsons students, of course, it's nothing of the sort. All-nighters are a normal part of our weekly routine. Most of us count ourselves lucky if we manage get to bed at 4 am. It is not unusual to have been awake for a solid 48 hours at a time or more. Our class times run from a minimum of 3 hours long to a maximum of 6 hours, with a mandatory 30 hours of class per week compared to the average college students' 15-18. Our teachers (whom I am convinced the majority of are notorious sadists) are one to every 18 students, which gives them plenty of opportunity to spend special individual time with each student, to instruct us. To critique us. To tell us we're doing it wrong and to do everything over. We spend most of our time outside class buying materials, working on projects, writing essays, and studying for Art History exams. On most days, we are a bundle of jittery nerves held upright only by caffeine and adrenaline, but honor-bound by the snootery that is prevalent in our high-profile school to still look "fierce", to not show what a mess we are, to trek the mile to class, carrying our huge portfolios and tottering in skyscraper heels. This is our regular life, for weeks on end.

Finals are just a step up. Only it's Finals month, not week. One month of shading, vectoring, sawing, photographing, cutting, pasting, and inking. One month of transferring documents from one format to another, trekking to the computer labs at two in the morning to print images due in a few short hours, and redoing spreads when a teacher deems them insufficient. One month of consecutive all-nighters, stress, and emotional breakdowns. No one is forcing us to do this but ourselves, so in a way I suppose only we are to blame. We put our time and energy and (no drama here, sleep deprivation is serious) health on the line to achieve our dreams and goals. And because of this, I can confidently say that a student at Parsons works just as hard, if not more, than any average student at a "regular" college.

Which is why it so completely galled me when I confided in a friend who attended a "normal" college how completely exhausted I was, and received the incredulous response "But you're in art school!"

Excuse me?

The voice in my head bordered on hysteria. I'm sure if he had said that to my face, I would have hit him. I was speechless with indignant shock for a good few minutes. I wanted to scream--and not just at him, but at all the people I've encountered who'd said "Oh, you go to art school? That must be fun!" I wanted to shriek "Just because I go to art school does not mean I sit around doodling rainbows and unicorns all day long!" I could hear the little, broken, emo-kid wail in my mind "No one understands meeeee!" I should have let him have it. I didn't. But at least now you know why I've been so absent, so woefully negligent for the past...months?

It's almost over. Only five more days of torture (and I do mean torture, because I literally cannot conceive of how I will finish all that needs finishing in five days. Which is why I am writing this post, to ease my quiet panicking.) before I pack up and leave NYC, a city which I have grown to completely love, but haven't had time to enjoy.

And with that little bit of martyristic prattle aside, we can get on to the food bits of this post.

I'll be honest, I haven't really been cooking much lately. Aside from during a visit by The Boyfriend over his spring break (tomato soup, grilled cheese, potato salad, lemon chicken, fried rice. In rotation. The Boyfriend is not an adventurous eater), and a last-minute catering gig for a party which I will eventually recreate and blog, I've been throwing meals haphazardly together and subsisting off the generosity of my classmates' huge school meal plans. And here are the results--for the most part, not bad, if a bit (alright, a lot) odd.










Bowl of macaroni with tomato sauce and mushrooms. Looks a bit chunky, because instead of simply pouring the tomato sauce on the drained pasta I stir-fried the whole lot. It made the taste heartier, and better. That pink sausage in the corner there is my finger.




Mushroom bruschetta. Essentially mushrooms, onions, and chives sauteed in a lot of butter, and placed upon toast fried in a frying pan with (you guessed it) more butter. It was heaven. Although The Boyfriend will surely disagree.










A bento box I brought to class, with leftover salmon, steamed rice, grape tomatoes, and broccoli and asparagus I blanched in the microwave with my mom's Pyrex measuring cup.

Another bento, in my new special onigiri bento box (I am slightly addicted to buying bento boxes and supplies--I now have 3, as well as a whole stash of little picks and bottles). This one had onigiri, grape tomatoes, a boiled egg, and apple bunnies. The apple bunnies were surprisingly hard to make! There are only two because I wrecked the rest of the apple with my failed bunny attempts.


My first-ever wild salmon filet. The farmed stuff will forever suck in comparison. Totally worth the $6.88. Drizzled in a little lemon juice with salt & pepper, I picked it apart with my fingers and annoyed The Boyfriend with my rapturous texted comments. I have to note that the color was amazing. I had no idea "real" salmon was supposed to look like that--this photo is completely unedited!

Fried potato and onion. This was just because I realized I had a huge sack of potatoes and onions in the fridge. A delicious carb overload paired with rice.


Lemon chicken. I really will have to give a detailed recipe on this eventually, because I've altered it so much since the first time I made it.


There is no name for this dish. It's a bizarre combination of grits, butter, and peas, topped with tobiko (flying fish roe). Comfort food. It sure photographed well in my desk lighting.









Chicken-veggie soup. I had no noodles, so instead I substituted more peas, more carrots, more celery. I stir-fried everything, first the chicken, and then the vegetables, along with some diced spring onions, and then tossed everything into a cup and a half of boiling water and simmered for a few minutes. It was delicious.


Sometimes I really believe that food is the only thing keeping me sane through all this. No matter what anyone says, dieters, health nuts, whatever, there are inherently good feelings associated with food, with the act of eating. And in the middle of everything right now, it's so good to sit down for a few minutes and eat something.

Thanksgiving Treats

A weekend home means oven access, which I intend to take full advantage of. In addition to churning out a few cheesecakes as per my parents' demand (not without mistakes, I forgot the eggs, but they turned out great anyway), I decided to try something new.

As you might have guessed, I'm not the most careful of cooks--eggs forgotten, 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice added instead of 1/2. Baking, a science which requires accuracy to ensure success, is not exactly my forte. So browsing my virtual library of recipes, I decided to try something that wasn't too easy to fuck up.

Meringues. The most challenging part of this recipe, to me, anyway, would be getting the egg whites to foam. I've tried twice before without success, and was beginning to think the ability to whisk egg whites into a perfect fluff was just something you were either born with or without. This time, I Googled "how to whisk egg whites into peaks" and came up with the following list of handy tips:

-make sure your bowl and beaters are completely clean, because oil will keep air bubbles from forming.
-make sure there is absolutely no egg yolk in your whites. Now we know where I went wrong last time.
-use a copper bowl, which will help air bubbles form. I have none, and am unwilling to go out and buy one, so a plain metal mixing bowl will have to do.
-use an electric mixer. Duly noted.
-use older eggs, which, due to chemical changes that take place in an egg overtime, will be more easily whipped into foam.
-add a pinch of salt to the whites at the beginning of beating to stiffen the proteins.

So...how did they turn out?

Meringues
From REC(ession)IPES

3 egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

~Heat oven to 225 degrees F.
~Beat egg whites and vanilla until the mixture begins to stiffen and form small peaks
~Slowly add sugar while continuing to beat until the sugar is more or less dissolved and the mixture is not grainy
~Place spoonfuls of batter on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 4-5 hours until they are hard, crunchy, and the centers are not chewy.





Bento Stream

Stir-fried noodles with mushrooms and carrots, romaine lettuce salad from a bag, italian dressing, hardboiled egg, mochi.

Rice with salmon furikake, cut kielbasa, hardboiled egg, mochi, three apple Kasugai gummies.

Egg omelet sandwich, veggie-grits croquette, persimmons. Not pictured: Teriyaki dipping sauce.

Scallion and kielbasa omelet, kielbasa on the side, mashed potatoes.

Plain rice, octopus hotdogs, raw broccoli florets, Ranch dressing for dipping.

Fried potatoes, octopus hotdogs, tomato and romaine salad, mango cubes.

Random bowl of macaroni.