Omurice

I've done this before but not for lunch ^^

I messed up the ketchup but didn't have time to re-make it :P

For veggies, there's cucumber, carrot, broccoli and cherry tomatoes. For the omurice I followed another Cooking with dog recipe which works quite nicely. I messed up at first, forgot to mix the rice >.< with the rest.

There's something I want to try for a bento but I'm not sure how to get blue colouring, not using artificial food colouring.  Do you have any advice about how, and what to colour to get a nice blue colour?

Thanks for reading :D

Torihamu & Eggplant

There are two items I have done for the first time here:

I had two eggplants sitting in the fridge for about 3 days and I wouldn't be able to use them this week so, I used a recipe from Just Hungry which turned out delicious (even though I messed up by forgetting the chillis).  My bf didn't like ti so much, so I only put a little bit on his luch (just to tease him :D) it's the little dark thing on the lower right.

The other first try is the Torihamu I made a few days ago. I will try this recipe again sometime soon because I let it dry too much/cook too much and since my oven doesn't measure ºC, only "max" and "min" I will re-adjust the temperature with special attention.

The rest: some plain rice with furikake on top, snowpeas (I always mess these names up), carrot and oregano for aroma. I added the carrot because it lacked colour and I have still to find decent tomatoes at the supermarket :(

Here you can see the difference without the carrot:

I also put some brussels sprouts on mine because I LOVE them and the bf hates them but I refuse to not eat them. Also you can have a better look at the eggplant.

Inspired meals

I had a wonderful weekend on an ongoing project of mine, I guess it reflected on the kitchen. I even made my lunch!

My bf's lunch.

There was some chicken leftovers (I was so happy when I saw I didn't have to cook meat!) which I de-boned and but into bite-sized pieces and put then on a lettuce bed. Next to it there's some broccoli, sliced tomatoes, cucumber and couscous. The problem about having couscous at home is that since it's so fast to make, we make it until there's no more. I just put some couscous on a pot and cover it with boiling water (about 1 finger above the couscous) put the lid on and go finish other things. When I'm done with all of the preparations, I uncover the couscous and it's done!

Surprisingly I wanted to make my own lunch too but didn't want to eat any meat so I experimented a little:

My lunch.

From left to right there's cucumber, hijiki with lettuce underneath, some cheese rolled, olives, sliced tomatoes and broccoli. In the silicone cup underneath the tangerine was a little treat for after my exam :D some pumpkin home-made sort of jam. I don't know the name of the pumpkin in English but in Portugal we call it Gila. It's very stringy and I love the sweetness of the pumpkin itself. It's one of my favourite things to eat since I was a little kid.

While I was eating it I realized these tupperwares are perfect for salads, I've tried eating other things here but I get too full and end up eating more than needed.

I haven't posted so much recently because well, I'm kind of waiting for my things to arrive (which should arrive next month by the 22nd) so I can start improving. I am also waiting for another bento book and when I have it I will post about the books I got on X-mas all at once. Until then, I hope I keep my inspiration up and will to cook wonderful meals!

X-mas meals

And here is most of my meals for X-mas eve and day, I thought I'd share them because even for me, it was a different kind of X-mas meal than I'm used to at my home town. In Portugal there are variations of what should go to the table according to the region: some cook turkey, some lamb, salted codfish, cow meat marinated in whine and garlic, and so on... This was my grandparents' version:

There were some home-made olives, salad, cooked shrimp, whine and the seafood soup at the center

- For x-mas eve, we had seafood soup, salted codfish cooked and then baked with mashed potatoes and a few more treats on an extra table (because the dinner table was just too small (or full?:D)

The seafood soup

I forgot to take a picture at the codfish and mashed potatoes at the beggining, but I still wanted to show you (If I could I'd get you to taste a bit, it was really good) This is what was left when I remembered:

And this was the worse part, or the best:

"The extra table"

Back row: a sweet my grandma made out of almonds and sweet potato, dark dry figs, almonds and raisins, white figs.

Bottles: 2 different home-made liquors, one out of goat milk and the other one out of figs.

Front row: 2 types of olives, bolo-rei and pumpkin puffs. I couldn't find a better translation for the puffs but in portuguese it's called "filhoses".

By X-mas morning the puffs were gone and for lunch we had roasted chicken with potatoes:

We could only eat one for lunch (5 people)

I took this one just for reminding myself how I should roast mine:

This next week I'll have soups and very little or preferably no sugar and minimum amounts of food so I can burn the weekend's.

Garlic Chicken

This was based on grandma's recipe:

This is a very tasty dish and quite cheap (if you can get cheap chicken) due to using very few ingredients: Garlic, olive oil, lemon and chicken.

Portuguese really like sauce on top of the rice and even tho it looks a bit less organized, it tastes really good. As I had to put some vegetables there, I decided to go with a salad since I want to use up all of the lettuce as soon as possible. It's a shame this is already gone. I managed to brown the chicken so well (I was so proud!) and not burn any garlic that I couldn't get enough of the rice and garlic.

This week my sweetheart is going back to the island for a week so, maybe you'll see a few less posts (or maybe more, who knows) of his lunch.

Chicken Teriyaki

And the teriyaki is here again!

Apparently I made way too much teriyaki sauce and I don't know how to store it other than in the refrigerator >.< so I'll be making a lot!

On this one, I had to defrost rice because I ate all of the oven baked potatoes, I don't usually eat out of gluttony but I can't resist to those potatoes, specially while they're warm...

We also ended the veggies that were baked with the potatoes so I had to cut up some emergency veggies. We then have:

- Japanese rice with teriyaki sauce on top (bf loves it like this so I don't argue);

- Chicken Teriyaki;

- Cucumber (probably the last one of the season), carrot and corn.

It's not much, but I think it's only fair to show successes and failures when you're in the kitchen having fun.

I really did great with the teriyaki sauce today, it was the perfect texture, just like the one I was used to last year and those potatoes, oh the .... Where did they go? =D

Don't think I'll be putting much more this week, Thursdays are always hard to take a picture at something.

Oh, I forgot to take a picture, but on Tuesday the bf took the rest of the salmon teriyaki (he must really love teriyaki so much) with some rice and veggies.

Chicken Omelet

I am  not proud of me today. I fell asleep after turning the alarm clock off and woke up 20 minutes before my bf goes to work!! Luckily there were some leftovers that i could use (chicken) so i mixed half an onion diced, an egg, some parsley and salt and made it within 10 minutes. Since it's friday, we're running out of vegetables in the house so I couldn't find much to put in there. I had the same for my lunch and didn't complain =P